Adventure Therapy, it happens.

Therapy is termed as treatment intended to prevent, relieve or heal a disorder whether physical, emotional or cognitive.

Therapeutic interventions have become a more familiar face than what a lot of us are used to. The world we are living in has changed such that people in this day and age need more therapeutic assistance than ever before. Therapy can be necessitated by trauma, which is a strong emotional response to a negative event. This event can be a major incident like an accident, rape, or natural disaster. Trauma can also stem from seemingly “ordinary” experiences such as ongoing bullying, small occurrences of neglect over time, or abuse.

During a therapeutic process there is a significant formation of relationship between a patient/ participant and their guide/coach/ therapist, an agreement on objectives, progress toward desired changes, and mental health or physical maintenance.

While the traditional model of therapy – visiting a therapist’s office and talking – still exists, it’s just one piece of the puzzle. Therapy has become far more dynamic, offering a wide range of experiential approaches. Clients can now choose from art, drama, music, play, animal-assisted, aquatic, and even nature and adventure therapy. This diversity allows therapists/ counsellors/ guides/ facilitators to tailor treatment to the specific needs and preferences of each client, making therapy more effective in addressing a wider range of issues.

Adventure and wilderness therapies, in many cases, are collaborating. Adventure therapy breaks people out of their daily routines, offering a fresh perspective on themselves. Mastering challenges together fosters both self-confidence and social skills in all age groups, but specifically adolescents. This, most of the time, happens in the wilderness.

Wilderness adventure programmes tap into adolescents’ natural desire for excitement and challenge. These programmes provide a group-based environment that caters perfectly to their developmental needs. Through participation in shared challenges and activities, adolescents build stronger peer relationships, learn to collaborate effectively, and develop essential skills like trust, communication, and problem-solving.

Therapeutic programmes require small groups, with an emphasis on reflection and discussion, to improvise and to adapt activities to best address the challenges of participants. If programmes are not intentionally structured, it can lead to the opposite of healthy therapeutic interventions. Experiences where the stress, pressure and risk, due to a lack of competence, can increase trauma and lead to devastation and disaster on both a physical and emotional level. Being in the outdoors for a longer period of time, able to design progressive experiences to address “issues” or “concerns” that was raised by the group is an added benefit of adventurous experiences or excursions.

Typical adventure guides and facilitators who are not therapy orientated, not trauma sensitive, are also not aware of the potential fragile nature of the participants who join them on adventures. If they knew that, they may be much more sensitive when considering experiences. Specifically, their choice of words, choice of people they pair together, attention they give to briefing experiences, attention they give to body language, make more of one-to-one discussions, sequence activities more gradually, and be more intentional with time spend on reflecting about experiences.

We need to consider the strong, but also the fragile.