Woodstock-based author and energy healer Tammy Billups has released her fourth book about animal-human relationships, Your Animal - Your Soul Mirror: Healing the Emotional Wounds of Animals and Their People. Her previous books—Soul Healing with Our Animal Companions, Animal Soul Contracts and Animal Wayshowers—racked up one silver and two gold awards from the Coalition of Visionary Resources.

Billups is a certified Interface Therapist who started her healing work with humans, but because of her love for animals, she wondered if her talent and skills could be applied to animals as well. Not only could she, but through observation and experience, she discovered that people and the animals that come into their lives are fated to come together and partner with each other to heal shared emotional wounds. In this interview, publisher Paul Chen talked with Billups about her latest release.

Chen: We’ve been conditioned to think trilogies are definitive, so after you finished your last book, I thought you’d completed your series perfectly. But now we have Your Animal - Your Soul Mirror! Please give us some context. What are you trying to do with this book?

Billups: My new book dives into the five emotional wound patterns that both humans and animals carry from past traumas or emotional woundings. While emotional wounds can arise from countless situations, they can all be understood within five primary patterns: abandonment, betrayal, invasiveness, terror and detachment of self. During my Interface Therapist certification in the early 2000s, I studied these patterns deeply. Then, through my work with animals, I discovered they were using the same ones. And in close relationships, they almost always mirrored their person’s pattern.

I wrote a little about that in Soul Healing with Our Animal Companions, but that book came out seven years ago, and I’ve gathered so many more insights since then. I knew I’d eventually share them, and now I finally have.

I believe that once people understand how these patterns show up, whether in behaviors or physical issues, they’ll see it as the missing piece of the puzzle. And with that awareness, they can step into a new level of healing and peace with their animals.

My goal with Your Animal is to give readers knowledge and tools from a higher perspective to more easily embrace all of their negative emotions when they arise. By doing so, both they and their animal kin can release outdated protective patterns that block their higher path to wholeness. This opens the door to moving beyond habitual reactivity cycles and to stepping into grounded, conscious responses.


Chen: Since experts often define terms differently, I have to ask: How do you define “emotional healing”? Why is it important? And how does one accomplish it?

Billups: Most people discover their emotional wounding when they notice repetitive, undesired patterns in their lives or when they realize their emotions are behind certain physical issues. Sometimes it shows up as the sense that something is missing, and sometimes as a feeling of disconnection and not belonging. These trapped emotions stay in the body and subconscious mind until we—or our animals—find the inner strength to release them and remember our innate goodness, despite what we’ve endured.

That’s what emotional healing is: becoming aware of and recovering from emotional wounds or trauma. It means recognizing unresolved pain, allowing yourself to feel and release it, and gradually revealing more of your authentic, truest self rather than living from reactive patterns created by unhealed wounds.

Both humans and domesticated animals form survival patterns to cope with painful circumstances and protect themselves from feeling their original wounds. At first, the patterns help them to get their needs met. But as they mature, they over-identify with the patterns and mistake them for who they are. In truth, those patterns block their truest selves. I think of them as having an expiration date; the longer we rely on them, the less effective they become, and the more they keep us from living fully.

My book provides clear practices and tools to identify and start unraveling survival patterns. Most people don’t know how to begin, so the loving inner healing work gets sidelined. For many, the process feels intimidating and overwhelming, so they consciously or unconsciously avoid it. Others grow overly attached to their patterns or believe they don’t deserve healing because of distorted beliefs rooted in early wounds. But healing doesn’t have to be complicated; it’s often simpler than people realize. For people to have more love, joy, ease, abundance and wellness in their lives, they might want to consider prioritizing their emotional healing journey. It’s the gateway to true freedom.

Chen: Then, if the first part of emotional healing is recognizing that we have unresolved pain, what are the most effective methods available to release that pain?

Billups: Obviously, I’m a fan of energy work, but there are many other options. The key is to find a practitioner with whom all parts of you feel safe. You need to trust them to hold a sacred space to release the emotional pain behind the patterns of protection. Many psychotherapists now offer EMDR, Brain Spotting, EFT and other modalities to more easily release the traumas locked in the energy field and psyche. Meditating with the intention to work with your light team to help you raise your energetic vibration can often help to take a deeper dive into your inner healing. 

Chen: Your Animal - Your Soul Mirror strikes me as a very solid guidebook/workbook for addressing much of what people see therapists for. It doesn’t, of course, negate the need for therapists, but it does strike me as being very helpful on a wide range of issues that therapy addresses. Moreover, I sense that people could benefit quite a bit from your book, whether or not they have an animal. Please speak to these two ideas. Can it serve as a primer and guide for therapeutic self-practice? And is it an “animal optional” offering?

Billups: Oh, how wonderful to hear you got that from reading the book. My hope is that it truly offers the resources people need to feel more comfortable taking a deeper dive into their unreleased shadow parts. While the book is animal‑optional, I also want animal guardians to recognize that when they themselves begin to feel better, their animals will naturally mirror that healing back to them.

In the book, I include charts that outline each of the five emotional wound patterns. They cover not only the origins and overviews of the patterns, but also the potential characteristics, the physical and psychological issues that may arise, and a wealth of practices, tools and healing guidance for both the person and the animal. I also offer suggestions for types of practitioners who might provide additional support, depending on which emotional wound pattern is most used by the individual.

My sense is that the readers who will most appreciate and benefit from this book are those who love animals, whether or not they currently share life with an animal companion. At the same time, the practices and insights can be applied just as meaningfully by people who don’t feel drawn to emotional closeness with animals. The core teachings are universal.

Chen: Among your women clients, is there one core wound that is far more prevalent among women than the others? I ask because 80 percent of our readers are women.

Billups: Well, the women I work with are mostly animal lovers, and those who contact me for healing sessions tend to mirror their animals’ emotional wounding and in general, tend to have more invasiveness, more abandonment and more trauma in their backgrounds. Those with these three emotional wound patterns tend to have more empathy and want those in their wake to feel safe, accepted and not judged.

Chen: Please share a story of how you helped a client feel and release an unresolved pain so we can give readers a taste of what they can expect from your book.

Billups: Sure. When my client Cathy called initially, she was concerned about a situation in which a cat she had adopted two years prior had been bullying her elder cat, Storm. Cathy was relating to Storm, who was experiencing the invasiveness, and she wanted to fix the “bully” cat. 

As we got talking, it turned out that Cathy had experienced oodles of invasiveness from her very domineering father and from a sister who had emotionally tormented her on a consistent basis. After one or two sessions, the attacks from the newer cat completely stopped! 

Then Cathy went on a deeper dive into healing her emotional wounds and had a miraculous, beautiful journey of strengthening her boundaries and releasing repressed anger and pain. She released others’ emotions and pain as well, because when you have a lot of invasiveness, you’re prone to absorbing others’ energies around you, because your boundaries are so porous. 

That’s why it’s important for people who have animals to look at the mirroring that’s happening. Whatever is happening in their behaviors is almost always mirroring something for them that they’re repressing. The animal helps them shed light on the healing that is needed for them to feel better, lighter and more empowered.

During Cathy’s final session, she shared that she’d had a dream the night before where there was a child who was locked inside a cage. Suddenly, someone broke the lock and opened the door, and the child walked outside of the cage, took a deep breath, and from the depths of her soul roared like a lion. This symbolized Cathy’s inner child being free to courageously step out of the bondage and pain of her past to embrace her authentic power. ❧