High quality mental health care, 
without the armchair.

Adventure therapy is "the prescriptive use of adventure experiences provided by mental health professionals, often conducted in natural settings that kinesthetically engage clients on cognitive, affective, and behavioral levels" (Gass, et.al. 2012). I like to say it's using experiences to make change. Here are some of the active ingredients that make the process so effective:

 

It's experiential. Experience itself can facilitate growth and healing. With this logic, emphasis in session is focused on the act of "doing" as opposed to "talking about doing." In this way, people are learning about core competencies such as regulation, collaboration, planning and perspective through real time application. 

 

It encourages growth through challenge by choice. Adventure, by nature, involves challenge and risk. Our optimal growth zone sits between too much and too little psychological arousal. Everyone is guided to choose their own challenge based on where that growth zone is for them. I sequence the experiences to help keep you in the growth zone as you gain confidence and mastery of skills.

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It extends learning to areas beyond itself. Adventure lends itself to metaphor and story-making, which are known tools to learning retention. Through intentional use of metaphor and narratives, people generalize learning in one setting to another. Everyone loves a good mountain analogy, after all. 

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What does this look like in practice?

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Sometimes we may just sit still and be present or take a walk while we talk, other times we may play games (or make them up!), and we might even go climbing or get coffee. I scaffold the experiences based on your capacities and trust level. This mean that activities will typically start small and nearby home, like going for a walk at the park or playing a card game at a picnic table.  As we get to know each other better, these experience will expand to other areas like going climbing and other bigger adventures.