On the screen are my ESSAs ! Cali - (dog) my current essa <3 Comet - (alien) my old essa :3 ————————— If you don’t know, an ESSA is short for emotional support stuffed animal ! It’s a plush, most commonly a Douglas branded dog, that many people use to comfort themselves during situations that would usually overwhelm them ! Now, a lot of people think that ONLY Douglas dogs are valid ESSA’s are valid, which is not true. Though cali, my current ESSA is a Douglas dog, comet is not ! Any plushies that comfort you in overwhelming and overstimulating situations is an ESSA! ALSO, a lot of people just think that ESSAs are not valid and people are using it for attention and don’t need them, which makes NO DANG SENSE. it’s a comfort mechanism, though some treat the people who use them like children. As an ESSA user myself, it genuinely annoys me. This is short and not really a rant but idk what else to call it so here ya go :3 EDIT: I recently found out that some people use service dog vests or tags on their ESSAs, or say they are reactive service dogs. This is completely incorrect because service dogs are trained to react to medical emergencies, which plushies simply CANNOT do. I don’t understand why this is happening because all this does is cause drama. It makes me sick that people do things like this just for attention .
