As somebody who did summer camp and hiking as a youngster I have no doubt these sorts of programs can be very helpful and it's unfortunate that legislators are overregulating them.
Thanks for your thoughts, Dan. I agree, there is something inherently therapeutic about being outside and doing something challenging - like hiking. And this isn’t just our opinion, the benefits show up in the data, in study after study. But people want a quick fix, they want a med, they want to sit on a couch and vent to their therapist. No doubt these things are helpful, but without action, without trying something different, change doesn’t occur. That’s what wilderness therapy offers that many other treatments do not: action and application through healthy challenge.
Amen. And quick fixes often fail. The work, the battle and the joy of overcoming, the resilience developed by failing, and the quiet and beauty of nature that brings a deep healing (as it was designed to), you cannot find this in a therapist's office or a pill. You and I are on the same page about this.
It's tragic that programs like these for young people are closing.More should be opening... and frankly, it is an excellent therapeutic approach that might even be modified for young drug and media addicted adults. Common sense and the recognition of our need to connect deeply to Nature and the pace and unnegotiable exigencies of the natural world have completely disappeared.
Thanks for your thoughts, Theresa. I wholeheartedly agree, more should be opening! There actually are young adult wilderness therapy programs that treat these issues. I don’t work in the industry anymore but if you’re interested I can message you some names I’m aware of. WT programs, as far as I can tell, were more popular among young adults in the mid-2010s but seem to have fallen out of favor - perhaps due to all of the poor media coverage.
Incredible... This is exactly what ALL the young people need! A natural antidote to all the safe space and self-victimization nonsense. I notice we don't really even have scout troops anymore!
You need both! This is difficult to talk about because it isn’t either/or. One problem with only having “safe spaces” is that, as you rightly say, they become woe-is-me-victim echo-chambers. A second problem is that without boundaries and expectations people don’t really feel safe. Kids need adults who will protect them/enforce the rules AND they need to know that when they push up against the rules/break the rules the adults try to understand why. In others words, they need adults who enforce the rules while still caring about their feelings. WT is more life-like, more well-rounded than talk therapy in this way. Talk therapy is all safe space, soft and gentle. We need that. But without follow up, rules, and application, it’s all just talk and softness and becomes navel gazing. WT is feelings and action.
Wow. You have such a good take on this. I can't think of an issue that more deeply troubles me at this time than the state of our young people. I wish to God we had sent our younger son to someone like you ten years ago when he was floundering in school and in his social life. I know for a fact he longed to reconnect with something deep and primal and sovereign in himself. When he was only eleven, he very gravely said to me, "You know, Mom, if we were back in olden times, I'd have a wife and kids by now." Lol! But isn't it the truth that especially for young men coming up, their deepest sense of themselves finds no avenue for authentic expression and fulfillment? Not to mention, that in the years that followed that hilarious but also very moving moment with my son, he was to come home feeling beaten down and guilt-ridden for his so-called "toxic masculinity." And yet, a more gentle and sensitive young man there never was. But the girls suffer, too... and now they will suffer as women because their men feel unmanned.
My rather progressive, very independent-minded GenZ daughter bemoans the fact that she can’t find a man who knows how to “lead” in her college’s historically-themed ballroom dances. She actually wants someone to take her firmly in hand on the dance floor and guide her through the steps. (Which she knows how to do—so SHE ends up leading.)
Connecting with “something deep and primal and sovereign” was, I think, one of the more ineffable and hard to measure parts of what made WT such a powerful experience. Where I worked and in many WT programs there are strong elements of rites of passage and ceremony tied to achievements and milestones. There was a rhythm to the day, to the arc of the time that a child spent there… I think for just about everyone, the experiential components of the program, whether it is making fire, or a sunset, or the sounds of the birds or fire crackling, it becomes part of you, and you’re often proud of it and carry it with you. You look back on it fondly even though it was damn hard. I wish your son, and a lot of other currently lost men, had done it.
As somebody who did summer camp and hiking as a youngster I have no doubt these sorts of programs can be very helpful and it's unfortunate that legislators are overregulating them.
Thanks for your thoughts, Dan. I agree, there is something inherently therapeutic about being outside and doing something challenging - like hiking. And this isn’t just our opinion, the benefits show up in the data, in study after study. But people want a quick fix, they want a med, they want to sit on a couch and vent to their therapist. No doubt these things are helpful, but without action, without trying something different, change doesn’t occur. That’s what wilderness therapy offers that many other treatments do not: action and application through healthy challenge.
Amen. And quick fixes often fail. The work, the battle and the joy of overcoming, the resilience developed by failing, and the quiet and beauty of nature that brings a deep healing (as it was designed to), you cannot find this in a therapist's office or a pill. You and I are on the same page about this.
It's tragic that programs like these for young people are closing.More should be opening... and frankly, it is an excellent therapeutic approach that might even be modified for young drug and media addicted adults. Common sense and the recognition of our need to connect deeply to Nature and the pace and unnegotiable exigencies of the natural world have completely disappeared.
Thanks for your thoughts, Theresa. I wholeheartedly agree, more should be opening! There actually are young adult wilderness therapy programs that treat these issues. I don’t work in the industry anymore but if you’re interested I can message you some names I’m aware of. WT programs, as far as I can tell, were more popular among young adults in the mid-2010s but seem to have fallen out of favor - perhaps due to all of the poor media coverage.
Incredible... This is exactly what ALL the young people need! A natural antidote to all the safe space and self-victimization nonsense. I notice we don't really even have scout troops anymore!
You need both! This is difficult to talk about because it isn’t either/or. One problem with only having “safe spaces” is that, as you rightly say, they become woe-is-me-victim echo-chambers. A second problem is that without boundaries and expectations people don’t really feel safe. Kids need adults who will protect them/enforce the rules AND they need to know that when they push up against the rules/break the rules the adults try to understand why. In others words, they need adults who enforce the rules while still caring about their feelings. WT is more life-like, more well-rounded than talk therapy in this way. Talk therapy is all safe space, soft and gentle. We need that. But without follow up, rules, and application, it’s all just talk and softness and becomes navel gazing. WT is feelings and action.
Wow. You have such a good take on this. I can't think of an issue that more deeply troubles me at this time than the state of our young people. I wish to God we had sent our younger son to someone like you ten years ago when he was floundering in school and in his social life. I know for a fact he longed to reconnect with something deep and primal and sovereign in himself. When he was only eleven, he very gravely said to me, "You know, Mom, if we were back in olden times, I'd have a wife and kids by now." Lol! But isn't it the truth that especially for young men coming up, their deepest sense of themselves finds no avenue for authentic expression and fulfillment? Not to mention, that in the years that followed that hilarious but also very moving moment with my son, he was to come home feeling beaten down and guilt-ridden for his so-called "toxic masculinity." And yet, a more gentle and sensitive young man there never was. But the girls suffer, too... and now they will suffer as women because their men feel unmanned.
My rather progressive, very independent-minded GenZ daughter bemoans the fact that she can’t find a man who knows how to “lead” in her college’s historically-themed ballroom dances. She actually wants someone to take her firmly in hand on the dance floor and guide her through the steps. (Which she knows how to do—so SHE ends up leading.)
Connecting with “something deep and primal and sovereign” was, I think, one of the more ineffable and hard to measure parts of what made WT such a powerful experience. Where I worked and in many WT programs there are strong elements of rites of passage and ceremony tied to achievements and milestones. There was a rhythm to the day, to the arc of the time that a child spent there… I think for just about everyone, the experiential components of the program, whether it is making fire, or a sunset, or the sounds of the birds or fire crackling, it becomes part of you, and you’re often proud of it and carry it with you. You look back on it fondly even though it was damn hard. I wish your son, and a lot of other currently lost men, had done it.