Somewhere on the side of a rural highway in Georgia I unknowingly began my journey to Evoke. At the time, I was co-leading a group of 11 high school students to bike across America along with my co-leader, an ex-professional bike racer who spent his free time doing multi-day, 500-mile bike packing races. Today, he and our support car driver were an hour and a half away at the doctor with one of our campers. Today, I captained solo.
My 19-year-old son has been tattooing his arm with artwork since he became an adult. Each piece has meaning to him and it’s been a joy to hear him share the why behind each new ink print on his arm.
Last month I presented at the National Association for Therapeutic Programs annual conference about a relatively new profile called Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA). PDA has been studied over the last 40 years by psychologists and mental health providers. Elizabeth Newson, a British developmental psychologist, and her colleagues, were some of the first to explore the profile of these young people referred for assessment, diagnosis, and treatment who reminded referring professionals of autism but differed in important ways (e.g., sociability and imaginative play) (Newson, Le Marechal & David, 2003). It became clear to Newson and her colleagues that these young people did not fit into traditional Autism or Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) type diagnoses, and they proposed a separate diagnosis (PDA) within the general diagnostic category of pervasive developmental disorders.
Communication throughout the wilderness therapy experience can feel very different for most families in treatment. At home, communicating is as straightforward as talking around the dinner table or sending your child a text, and in residential settings, phone calls typically happen a few times each week. In wilderness, however, the majority of communication happens through letter writing. In and of itself, this can be a drastic change for most families, and for this week’s blog I wanted to touch on one of the biggest shifts I navigate with families regarding the letter writing process.
Self-care has become a buzzword in therapeutic and self-help spaces in recent years. People throw it around as a catch-all remedy for myriad issues. Are you burnt out at work? Self-care! Did you get into an argument with your partner or child? Self-care! Are you experiencing the consistent and pervasive existential dread that is the hallmark of the human experience? Self-care! But what does "self-care" really mean? What does it look like in practice?
One of the most powerful elements of immersing ourselves in nature is the freedom we have to match our pace to the pace of the season. Within our day to day lives, which typically include a 9am to 5pm work schedule (or 8am to 3pm school schedule), caring for a family, running errands, doing chores, balancing extracurriculars, upkeeping a home, and trying to fit some sleep in between all of that, it becomes quite difficult to feel as though we can ever change our pace of living.
In March 2020, I had just found new tenants for my condo in Honolulu and moved with my 17-year-old daughter to Salt Lake City, where we knew virtually no one. We settled into a tiny apartment with only two beds and two chairs as we waited for our wordly possessions to come over from Hawaii in a shipping container. A few days after I started my new job at Evoke, the world shut down and my kiddo and I were locked in this tiny, underpopulated, under-furnished world.
When I write, “being a lightning rod,” what I mean is being willing to step into the path of rage, anger, and the intensity of however many kilowatts of emotion our loved ones are feeling. It can be terribly painful work; however, it can also be incredibly powerful if one has the bandwidth to do so. I do want to name at the onset of this piece, that there are times where it is absolutely unsafe to do this, so it is critical to check-in with yourself about your capacity and desire to place yourself in the path of someone else’s pain. Some of the most empowering moments I have ever seen in this work are those in which a caregiver has named their boundary, described their limit, or said sorry, knowing that there was no extra room in their cup. I have the utmost respect for individuals who can be clear and loving with their limits. If that is the case, this writing, in this particular moment, may not be for you. My focus today is for those of you who are being confronted with your loved ones’ pain, and who do have the bandwidth and willingness to receive some part of that.
The other night I had an interesting dream. I was swimming in a deep ocean with my kids. I could see my two boys floating ahead of me just beyond my reach. I could feel the coolness of the water and the contrast of the dark blue depth below me and the bright glow of the sun above. In depth psychology, the image of water is referred to as a symbol of the unconscious. Dreams remind us of a vast ocean of emotional experience that we have yet to fully understand.
I headed southeast along 60-some miles of gravel and dirt towards the Colorado River. It was exactly the space I needed to contemplate what my next year would look like—a mindless, alluring path with a seemingly important end. I leaned my head against the frozen window watching the sun greet the frost-covered ground. Despite all my consternation about the future, the world continued to sparkle.