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Holistic Wilderness Therapy: Restoring Mind, Body, and Spirit to Young People in Recovery

An Interview with Dennis Thompson, LSAC

By Meghan Vivo

In the classroom, teachers often appeal to as many senses as possible, with demonstrations for visual learners, discussions for auditory learners, and activities for tactile learners. Research suggests that we retain 10% of what we read, 20% of what we hear, 30% of what we see, 50% of what we see and hear, 70% of what we discuss, and 90% of what we say and do. This means that for most people, learning is most effective when it becomes an experience rather than a lesson.

The same approach is effective in teaching new life skills to young adults in wilderness therapy programs. According to Dennis Thompson, LSAC, a pioneer in wilderness therapy since 1984 and a counselor who works with young adults at acclaimed wilderness program Passages To Recovery in Utah, young people need to be engaged physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually in order to break free from self-destructive patterns and experience profound change. Engaging their imaginations is key.

Physical

For most people, wilderness therapy presents a physical challenge. Learning to hike across unfamiliar terrain each day, cook meals over a campfire, and put up and take down a campsite as part of a daily routine can be an adjustment from urban life. But as students at Passages To Recovery begin to feel invigorated by regular physical activity, balanced meals consisting of healthy and organic foods, plenty of water, and eight hours of sleep, they begin to heal their bodies and prepare to heal their minds.

At Passages To Recovery, students struggling with substance abuse cleanse their bodies and minds of the drugs and alcohol they have abused or become dependent upon in the past. As they take advantage of the silence of nature to listen to their bodies and observe their breathing, their physiology begins to shift and a sense of calmness replaces the chaos and confusion generated by their previous lifestyle.

The physical challenges of living outdoors create an opportunity for wilderness field guides and therapists to build bonds of trust with the students. "The students turn to their guides and each other for some measure of physical comfort from the bugs, cold, wind, and moisture around them," says Thompson. "When they work as a team and learn to lean on one another, they reap immediate rewards like a warm fire or clean campsite. In this way, the physical challenges set the stage for relationship-building."

Mental

The first thought expressed by many students of wilderness therapy is, "I don't want to be here." For some, that thought turns into, "What is going to happen to me next?" According to Thompson, young adults often exhibit a victim mentality, pitying themselves for a perceived lack of having what they want and blaming family, girlfriends or boyfriends, society, or the world for any unhappiness they feel.

What transforms these negative thoughts, says Thompson, is engaging their minds in the here and now and giving them the power of choice - not with the usual distractions like drugs, alcohol, television, or video games, but with the skills and opportunity to choose a more fulfilling life. "I want to help these individuals answer the question, ‘Is there another way for me that’s as good as or better than the old way of satisfying my legitimate needs without the negative side effects?’”

In order to learn, people need novel experiences, says Thompson. In his sessions with the Passages To Recovery students, Thompson works to create an unpredictable atmosphere using guitars, rhythm sticks, and drums and introduces students to meditation, self-affirmations, and breathing techniques. This way, the students have fresh experiences each day. The outcome is to engage the students’ emotions, imagination, and the five senses as well as cognitive processing. In doing so, the connection from positive experience to positive experience forms new beliefs of possibility that are then generalized to other areas of life.

“I’ve discovered over the years that the mind looks for differences. If you’re familiar with the experience, there’s no learning because it’s the same old thing,” explains Thompson. “In wilderness therapy, we strive to keep students’ neural networks alive and continually open to something new.”

If the experience is powerful enough, says Thompson, it creates choice points where students will choose to try something new rather than follow the old neurological grooves, repeating patterns of experiences, internal images, and emotions. The strategy is based on the presupposition that people make the best choice available to them at any given point.

The “best choice” is a perception that is created by multiple repeats of satisfying the core need. “The basic message is ‘You have choices in life. You can continue doing what you’re doing and you’ll probably get pretty much the same result, or you can consider taking control and doing something else,’” says Thompson. The trade-off is the ability to get what you want consistently via new strategies with beneficial side effects.

Emotional

Negative thoughts often turn into negative emotions, unless individuals learn to break the cycle of reactivity, stop responding instinctually, and identify alternative choices, says Thompson.

Wilderness therapy students often feel frustrated and confused at the start of a wilderness program because nothing is familiar and they are struggling to adapt. Thoughts that start out as, “It might be nice to have drugs or alcohol” quickly turn into, “I’m going to die if I don’t get high.” Almost every student goes through a series of emotional stages in pretty dramatic ways, says Thompson, whether they are threatening to leave, acting out, being the joker, isolating themselves, or engaging in some expression of anger.

When people can’t engage in their usual drug- or alcohol-seeking behavior or other negative patterns, a gap is created, which leaves room for other thoughts to come into their minds, explains Thompson. Instead of thinking, “I have to have drugs and alcohol to survive,” they start to realize, “I made it through the day without it.” They begin to correct the erroneous survival instinct of the midbrain and replace it with thought from the more highly developed frontal cortex responsible for weighing out cause and effect, relationships, and the meaning of events, holding check on impulsivity, as well as other higher executive functioning capacities.

The catalyst for these new thoughts and emotions, according to Thompson, is the students’ relationships with their field guides, therapists, and other students. The frustration, sadness, anger, guilt, and anxiety that feed addictive behaviors are replaced with trusting relationships and close interpersonal bonds. Individuals feel they can survive when they have someone to share their frustrations and victories with and someone to look to as a role model.

“My primary goal when I’m in the field is safety, but the second most important goal is role modeling how being open and willing to listen to my sense of a higher power can allow me to relax, drop my self-preoccupation, and be present,” says Thompson. “I am there to show them how I find meaning and opportunity in daily challenge, a wider range of choice in how I respond to situations, and how I experience the joy of connectedness being in this world.”

The students at Passages To Recovery look forward to their individual and group sessions with Thompson because of the relationship they’ve developed with him. “Over time, the students begin to realize they don’t want to go back to their old lives, which creates a sense of fear and uncertainty. What calms this fear is the knowledge that there are opportunities and that we’ll be open and honest with them,” he says. “I like being a type of grandfather figure for these students, nurturing and caring for them and guiding them through this period of intense change and self-exploration.”

Rather than playing the “role” of the all-powerful therapist or lecturing endlessly, Thompson builds authentic relationships with his students by sitting quietly, listening, and asking questions out of curiosity and genuine interest.

“More important than what we do is our way of being,” Thompson says. “By holding authentic space for students, they feel accepted and understood. That way, when I pose a question or alternative, they are more interested and actually listen because they feel empowered to explore and follow their own intuition and creativity. Their self-acceptance develops some strength. When they leave the program and I’m not around to guide them, they’ll take ownership of their story, saying to themselves ‘I am basically good and what I want to share from my heart has value.”

Spiritual

Spiritual questions represent a core component of Thompson’s work in wilderness therapy. In his experience, many students are not connected with their own higher self let alone a higher power. In fact, most associate spirituality with organized religion or the childhood agony of trying to sit still in Sunday school.

At Passages To Recovery, the staff creates a safe space using ritual, ceremony, and rites of passage for students to explore a connection with powers greater than themselves. Thompson doesn’t preach any religion or expect students to connect with a higher power. His hope is that students are willing to “walk through the shadowland of previously avoided emotions, and become a seeker,” open and willing to learn from their experience rather than attempting to alter it via drugs, alcohol, or manipulating others.

He often repeats one of the Words of Wisdom in AA: “The 12-Step model works for people who believe in God, and for people who don’t believe in God – but it doesn’t work for people who think they are

God.” Thompson asserts that the way we perceive ourselves is through the stories we tell ourselves. Passages To Recovery provides a way for students to revise their story as a Hero’s Journey.

Thompson has found that most substance abusers have been living in a world of chaos and confusion, of self-deception, blaming, and criticism. This prevents them from being able to find their place in the big picture. One way Thompson assists his students to replace negative thoughts with self-affirming ones is by teaching his students the AA Words of Wisdom. On index cards, the students draw pictures to prompt their memory in a game-like atmosphere. They draw mnemonics for “One day at a time,” “Keep it simple,” and “In nature there are no rewards or punishments, only consequences,” then test each other by flashing the cards and competing to answer them.

Thompson also asks students to create a phrase they would use to communicate with a higher power and ask for help, and to draw what their higher power might look like, giving it a color, sound, or feeling so they can become more aware of its presence in their lives.

Mind, Body and Spirit

This combination of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual awakenings is part of what makes Passages To Recovery so effective in assisting young people in turning their lives around. The outcome of this holistic approach to wilderness therapy is an opportunity for students to reconnect with themselves and their families authentically and to find a purpose in their lives greater than they have known before. It is Dennis Thompson’s intention to foster in each student the confidence and internal motivation that comes from meeting challenges successfully and the resulting desire to live sober in the full force and wonder of “Life on Life’s Terms.”