Youth ‘Chrysalis Experiences’
THERAPEUTIC WILDERNESS INTERVENTION STRATEGY PROGRAMMES - PRACTITIONER TRAINING WORKSHOPS
Our training workshops are for all those practitioners who want to expand their working skills box by using Nature and the Natural Environment as a metaphor for change.
We run open courses (weekends, five and ten days duration) or can arrange closed training sessions for groups at rates that are both reasonable and competitive with other outdoor therapeutic training programmes/courses.
WE ALSO RUN WILDERNESS VISION QUEST PROGRAMMES WITH THE AIM OF HELPING AND SUPPORTING MODERN DAY YOUTH MOVE TOWARDS MEANINGFUL CITIZENSHIP PAYING DUE REGARD TO THEIR EMOTIONAL, PHYSICAL, INTELLECTUAL AND SPIRITUAL STANDING
Programme Venues:
Lake District
Lancashire
Scotland
&
Pillis Forest -- Hungary
Dates: We do not organise set dates or venues for this type of programme but are happy to enter discussions with any agency, organisation etc to tailor make a programme for you so long as we had access to water (stream or river) and woods or a forest.
Costs:- We are always open to negotiation.
A Vision Quest as a Rite of Passage
Introduction to the Program:
The Chrysalis Experience programme places special emphasis on supporting and assisting modern day youth to make sustainable and appropriate connections to the concept of meaningful citizenship.
The purpose of the programme is to help individuals ‘unlock’ doors and overcome barriers that may be preventing them from resolving internal issues thus preventing them from making this vital and important connection.
Many of these individuals may be presenting behaviors such as:- self-harm, eating and/or sleep disorders or employment difficulties through an inability to concentrate or having poor interaction and communication skills. In addition, within their social/personal life they may well be finding it difficult to sustaining appropriate and meaningful relationships with family members, work colleagues and/or peers.
There can be no doubt, that the quality of life for any individual is a prerequisite for positive change to take place, and in particular, for those presenting behaviours that would indicate that they are disconnected and removed from the idea of being an equal partner within society or their local community.
The programme will combine environmental initiatives and outdoor activities as the principle tools and metaphors to equip the participants with lasting skills and self-confidence in order to make changes to their behavior patterns so that they can make a positive move towards being accepted by both the self and others as an equal citizen in to-days modern demanding and ever changing materialistic world.
The project mandate is to provide a supportive environment that emphasizes quality of life, trust, teamwork and increased community support and would in essence, be a form of human expression, giving the participants an opportunity for self-discovery and personal challenges with a view to helping them overcome obstacles and adversity within their daily lives. To assist them in this activity, each individual will be assigned a mentor for the duration of the programme.
The programme will undoubtedly extend our knowledge about addressing low level mental health issues which in itself is an enormous drain both emotionally and financially to families, society and the local community and the national economy.
Using a combination of adventure therapy, therapeutic adventure, wilderness experiences, counselling and social and life skill training, the program will aim to demonstrate that this unprecedented blending of approaches will prove to be a very useful and positive tool for assisting to ameliorate the difficulties associated with low level mental health issues and problems within adults.
Accommodation will be in a variety of structures – yurts, bunk houses, Iron Age round house, tepees, tents and wooden lodges. The program will involve a solo vision quest experience within the realms and boundaries of personal safety, and, involve a wide variety of life story work using the natural environment.
Because of the nature of the programme it would be unsuitable to those young people who:-
i)Frequently abscond or run away from their carers;
ii)Have some major physical or mental health issue which would prevent them from being individually mobile and safe in a wilderness environment;
iii)Have some level of psychiatric disorder or any other issue requiring constant supervision;
iv)Are known to present sexually aggressive and sexually reactive behaviours towards other young people*
*We operate separate programmes for young people in this category.
Please enquire as to our next programme.
The programmed activities will fall into seven categories – adventure, social, skills based, group work, individual work, social development and experiential education and psychoanalytically be underpinned by three major corner stones of practice.
The three corners stones are, in no order of importance
Nature and Wilderness Therapy constructs and concepts
Inner
core
Self
The CAMBERT approach. Driver Behaviour constructs.
Each corner stone provides the bedrock for continual therapeutic input on a variety of levels with both defined outcomes as well as those that arise by chance. The seven categories are the tool by which these corner stones can be applied irrespective of where, when or what activity is being pursued.
Seven Categories:-
1]Adventurous Activities – may include some or all of the following:-
rock climbing, mountain biking, abseiling, gill scrambling, hill walking, caving and canoeing, camping although individual and group safety will be paramount when undertaking any such physically demanding activity.
2] Social Activities – will include living and cooking together, team work, cooperation and communication, trust, respect and appropriate and inappropriate behaviour interaction.
3] Skills Based Activities – will involve learning how to build a bivvy shelter, light a fire bush craft style, cook on open fires, bush craft and survival strategies, along with the skills required to undertake adventure activities among many others.
4] Group Work – will take place every morning and every evening as standard but will of course, happen naturally during the course of the program. Topics for discussion will be an important feature of this activity and will be provided by both participants and members of staff. These sessions will be led by experienced and qualified practitioners, skilled in therapeutic techniques and group work leadership.
5] Individual Work – will be a major feature of the program and will be undertaken by a consultant therapist, counsellors and experienced group workers. Topics will be selected to meet the individual needs of each participant.
6] Social Development – will take place through the general group living experiences. Topics that will be included are: communication, language, Driver Behaviour, personality matrices, learning styles and barriers to learning and change. In addition, there will be opportunities for 1:1 counselling sessions; life story work individually and collectively; relationship exploration; ego states, ‘games people play’ and Driver Behaviour, [Transactional Analysis constructs]
7] Experiential Education – throughout the program, staff will take advantage of any situation where participants can have the opportunity to learn something, either about themselves, about life in general, or how to deal and cope with stress and anxiety on a daily basis.
In effect, all the above areas will naturally arise during the life of the program and this is where experienced staff will be able to capitalise on opportunities when they arise to address a plethora of issues that will undoubtedly present themselves.
Nature and Wilderness Therapy constructs and concepts:-
This cornerstone is based around the concept of Nature Therapy which will incorporate the ‘Tacky Talk’ model, Nature’s Jehari doorway and window within the natural environment. These approaches utilises the natural environment as a metaphor to aid partial or full recovery from unresolved trauma issues. This approach is based on the Native American Indian philosophy that nature and everything in it is imbibed with spiritual energy and when tapped into, can be an effective healing tool. The Tacky Talk model has been re-designed especially for use with individuals presenting mental health problems and issues as has the Jehari Doorway and window.
Participants will be expected to keep a daily record of their feelings, emotions and thoughts which will play a significant role in the session when evaluations, assessments and reflective reviewing is carried out towards the end of the program. This may be either through writing in a daily personal diary, recording onto a tape recorded, in pictures and drawings or in poetry.
In addition, throughout the program we will make attempts to undertake some if not all of the following-
*Using Trees to connect with the inner self.
*Using string (with/without trees) to define connectedness with others and the self.
*Going on a Vision Quest 24 hour Solo.
*Write a letter and address to self (during solo experience)
*Using the Natural Environment to represent understanding of one’s own life story.
*Ancient Rite of Passage – a symbolic ritual of self-discovery for change using Nature’s
Doorway ritual.
*Viewing life’s past, present and future through Nature’s Jehari window.
*Making a mask of spirituality both internal and external.
*Story telling using metaphors and reality during camp fire ritual.
*Re-inventing the new ‘you’ - (photos and old clothes ceremony)
*Re-connecting to a magical and special awareness - (toy or toy representation)
*Journey memory sticks.
*Toon cards – giving and taking to/from self and others.
*Self portrait in poetry.
Of course, we will be interacting continually with Nature and the Natural Environment and will be using many aspects of this as we Journey through it in order to participate in many aspects of the above program content.our solo bivvySolo
The CAMBERT approach:-
This working perspective was devised many years ago by Frank Grant through his work with victims of child sexual abuse where he utilised the Natural Environment as a working metaphor to aid partial or full recovery from unresolved inner trauma issues. This approach assists the individual to explore their ‘mirror image’ through Nature so as to allow them to begin to understand the complex psyche of this image that others see, so that they can make informed choices to change aspects of it if they so wish.
CAMBERT is an anagram of Connecting; Awareness; Meaning; Becoming; Ethics; Realisation and Transcendence and represent the stages an individual needs to go through in order to connect with their inner spirituality.
Connecting with the inner self – gaining an increased awareness of a connection with the self and others through aspects of mother earth and her natural mantle of life.
Awareness – understanding the meaning of individual spirituality in relation to Nature’s life rhythm and its significance to a spiritual [non religious] existence.
Meaning –understanding the significance of life within the context of this modern ever changing ever demanding world - making sense of personal situations, life styles and our very existence.
Becoming – an exploration of an unfolding life that demands reflection and reviewing in order to seek a spiritual path forward.
Ethical values – exploring beliefs, standards, morality and a life philosophy that needs to be cherished in order to develop and move towards total spiritual freedom.
Realisation - that we are responsible for our own spirituality, our own life’s journey and more importantly, the sacred path we are free to choose throughout life. Of course, this area looks at those barriers we ourselves and others put in our path.
Transcendence – to experience and appreciate life outside and beyond the self.
This in is essence, total self-actualisation of the body, mind and spirit.
Driver Behaviour constructs:-
On the first day of the program, each individual (including staff) will complete a twenty five question paper which will when assessed by a set criteria, give an indication the Drivers that ‘drive’ the individuals behavior patterns and more importantly, influence and sometimes dictates their responses to daily situations they find themselves in. This is an individual activity and individuals will not have to share their Drivers with the other group members as each individual is able to evaluate their own answers and therefore only they will know the outcome. However, the program leaders will use the concept of Driver behavior throughout the program to illustrate certain behaviors when the issue arises.
Driver Behavior is a Transactional Analysis concept and explains that as we develop Drivers in our infancy, we learn about how we should behave in order to get the approval, love and recognition that we feel we need from others, usually parents, family members etc. These messages taken in during our infancy can be particularly powerful in shaping later behavior especially when as infants our “thinking” argues that our very survival could be at risk unless we have the love and approval of caring adults around us.
In essence, we take on board those messages about what we must do to please adults and in particular, parent figures and those in authority. These messages we take on board, can be either verbal or non-verbal in origin. In later life, we develop and shape our own behavior by ‘modeling’ from such adult/parent figures and from the ideas we develop about life from the rewards and punishments we have received whilst growing up.
In reality, individuals rarely fit into nice neat boxes as each of us have personal patterns which involve to some degree, a combination of some driver characteristics which may in design, be very similar to that exhibited by individuals harboring unresolved trauma issues.
Whilst our preferences for how we behave are dependent on the strength and interpretation of the messages we received in our childhood, there are similarities in the messages we may have interpreted from those adult who have the responsibility of caring for us through our developing childhood. These Drivers operate as working styles, or a preferred approach to life. Each driver has both strengths and weaknesses and it is the contamination of these strengths and weaknesses that allow one or more Drivers to be more influential in our everyday responses and interaction with other individuals.
When we become stressed, we feel compelled or “driven” to behave in a particular way or manner. Driver Behavior, is therefore rather like a superstition: i.e. we will operate as if certain styles of behaviors will ward off problems and earn us the respect and ‘love’ of others.
Unfortunately, we can never do quite enough of what any particular Driver calls for and in seeking to be more and more as we think we should be, further problems are created. We can become stressed and so we put even more effort into our ‘Driver Behavior’ which again, creates even more problems leading to even more stress. Before long, we get caught in a vicious cycle that we can only get out of by having an insight and awareness into our ‘Driver Behavior’.
During the program, not only will we discover how our own internal ‘Drivers’ [Hurry Up, Be Strong, Be Perfect, Try Hard and Please me/Please Others] works in practice, but more importantly, come to understand how they can affect our internal emotional state as well as everyday presenting behavior patterns. In addition, we will explore the drama Triangle with the view of understanding our own ever changing position between being the victim, the rescuer and the persecutor as this may well be dictated to what Driver is being used in any given situation.
Project objectives:
1) To demonstrate that an innovative combination of adventure therapy and therapeutic adventure with more traditional approaches to treatment and life skill training is a powerful combination for serving adults who present low level mental health issues.
[It will be a meshing of modalities that is innovative and unprecedented in this area of work with such a client group]
2) To serve as a powerful adjunct to our community partners’ treatment regimes for their own clients who present similar behaviour patterns.
3) Advance the clinical goals of our partner mental health professionals.
4) To reduce risk factors in participants such as addictions, eating disorders and other debilitating behaviours.
5) Advance the cause of leveraging the benefits of adventure therapy, therapeutic adventure and wilderness therapy into the treatment regimes of our adults harbouring mental health issues by promulgating the results of research on the effectiveness of an innovative program model.
6) To help identify any underlying psychological problems to allow post program work to be carried out by referring agencies.
Program Rationale:
Adventure Therapy, Therapeutic Adventure, Nature Therapy and Wilderness Therapy is an emerging health practice that acts as an effective adjunct for other forms of therapy and rehabilitation. It differs from traditional therapeutic techniques in that it demonstrates the value of nature, the environment and wilderness as a healing source for the participant.
Outdoor adventure therapy research literature, indicates that self-esteem, self-agency, and identity development are positively influenced by adventure therapy programs for individuals (e.g. Kaly & Heesaker, 2003). Other outcomes include greater appreciation of the physical body through physical activity (West-Smith 1997), greater sense of self-control as self-sufficiency (Ewart 1989), rise in self-esteem through increased competency (Stromba 1998), positive relationship focus (Berman & Davis-Berman 1996, Mitten 1994), and increased resiliency (Neill and Dias, 2001). Adventure Therapy helps bridge the gap between outpatient services and inpatient programs. It involves immersing the participant in unfamiliar environments, group living with peers, individual/group therapy sessions and an application of living skills.
Relevance to Local Health Authorities and the Community in general:
This program will focus on improving mental health in general to participants by providing cost effective treatment and support, reducing ‘risk’ for those individuals exhibiting inappropriate and anti-social behaviors, in addition to start to build community capacity to support effective and appropriate treatment programs.
Target Populations:
The program will target individuals who may be ‘at risk’ as a result of a relapse into psychological instability. This program will primarily involve individuals known to mental health agencies, social work departments and hospital outpatient clinics.
Descriptions of service strategies and interventions:
The overall program will provide participants with experiential and meaningful outdoor journeys. By engaging individuals and groups in adventure-based experiences – particularly nature, experiential challenges, and social relationships – participants will be helped to begin to understand their lives and actions in new ways.
Possibilities for change will hopefully be opened and participants will typically come to perceive themselves and their problems in a new light through being able to navigate through the melee of their chaotic and sometimes dysfunctionate and uncertain life styles.
The TWIS program will focus on the social, cognitive, cultural, and emotional processes of change for individuals who present mental health issues and problems. Through the experience of story telling, connection and adventure, the programs aim will be to empower individuals to construct solutions for sustained personal growth and to modify their own perceptions as well as that of their community and society at large in relation to images of their struggles and experiences.
By building relationships with each other, with nature and the program leaders, individuals will be assisted in reconciling their past experiences with the view of discovering a new commitment to themselves, their families and to their communities.
We also aim to identify and increase competencies and solutions rather than further problematise or highlight inadequacies. Counsellors, therapists and activity leaders will collaborate with clients to generate new preferred ways of being – ones that represent counter stories to their challenges.
Although it is not always easy for individuals to re-write their stories and to stand up to problems – like abuse, depression, self-harming practices, substance misuse, oppression and so on – outdoor experiences offer a powerful, therapeutic context in which to promote change and healing.
Participants will engage in physical challenges that will:- build inner strengths; improve physical health and wellness; allow for somatic connections; address personal needs; be an effective tool within an holistic setting to identify behaviour patterns that are preventing them from moving forward positively in their lives.
In effect, participants will be challenged by their own choice and invited to reflect and integrate connections (i.e. metaphorical links between experience and therapy) back into their everyday lives – individuals will be supported by clinicians, peers, and members of their community of concern in the reflective process. Participants will also facilitate each other’s development through healthy peer and mentoring relationships (i.e. program/adult carers/leaders).
Each participant will be helped to engage in life affirming perceived ‘risk taking’ in order to help them reduce their risk of relapse through the integration of adventure-based therapy. This approach will be supported by evaluations that highlight changes or competencies in moving through a challenge, efforts by members of the participant’s community of concern, and solidifying solutions through reflective conversations.
The cultural focus of the interventions will revolve around each participant's unique cultural make-up, including: family culture, ethnic culture, gender culture, and employment status.
Participants will be invited to build observable connections with nature through experiential education, story-telling, and reflective learning; to research weather, flora and fauna, marine life, geology, and contemporary local history.
Participants will also have the opportunity to learn concrete skills that they can use in their everyday lives, such as: decision-making, trip planning, compassionate communication strategies, risk assessment, and managing problems through prevention, harm reduction, and the construction of direct solutions.
At the core of working perspectives, is the promotion of spiritual healing and wellness through healthy outdoor experiences. Nature can inspire and enrich the lives of all people. Individuals will be invited to participate in experiential activities that build supportive and respectful spiritual connections with nature, these include: meditation, nature exploration and experiential meaningful challenges.
Also included in the overall cost of the programme is an aftercare element which is essential to the success of this programme approach and is included for several reasons:
(1) Such an approach, reinforces and concretes the re-storying process;
(2) It helps to maintain and promotes changes that were gained on the programme;
(3) Strengthens the development of solutions to everyday challenges;
(4) Supports practitioners and professionals involved with the individual, back in their home community setting;
This after-care programme allows for 2 follow up group meetings and 2 individual meeting between participant and their programme mentor.
Intended outcomes:
To help participants discover their abilities, strengths and increase their self-confidence.
To help participants find new coping stratagems in relation to anger management, dealing with stress and anxiety and to identify barriers that are preventing them from acting/behaving as an effective individual.
Reduce risk factors associated with mental health issues and problems.
Provide a healing experience for health professionals who are faced with the ongoing demand of a hospital setting.
Improve life skills and accelerate recovery regimens.
Instill an understanding of multiplicity within communities through meaningful connections with people of diverse cultural, health related and economic backgrounds.
Provide an environment that encourages positive relationships, leadership, teamwork, and sharing.
Support community integration and inspire a greater sense of belonging.
Provide a healing experience that promotes positive health, a higher level of independence and autonomy.
Reduce participant’s feelings of isolation; consolidate self value to others and self.
Incite a re-connection with the natural environment and promote an understanding of it’s value and inherent restorative qualities to participants, their family members, and society in general.
These outcomes are based on research that shows that adopting a multi-modal functional analysis of behavior driven by mental health issues and problems acts as a useful framework within which to assess risk and treatment needs (Perkins, 1991 – BARE-PCS model).
Similarly, there is more opportunity for positive outcomes when a programme is delivered under the guise of an holistic cognitive-behavioral treatment programme which is delivered individualistically within a group setting (Thornton & Hogue, 1993 and Perkins, 1991 & 1993).
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