Wilderness therapy can be a life-changing experience for young adults. After spending weeks in nature reconnecting with themselves, a positive peer group, and their families, your young adult may feel ready and excited to come back home. Or they may not. A wilderness therapy program is a safe space for many young adults, and for some, the idea of leaving that space and returning right back to their regular lives can feel daunting.
Stepping Down From Wilderness Therapy…What Comes Next?
Upon graduation from a wilderness therapy program, young adults are faced with two choices: go home or transition to another program. You may think that your young adult will be excited to return home, but for some, the return home can be a source of anxiety.
One of the big benefits of wilderness therapy is being removed from the temptations and triggers of their daily life. Some young adults may wonder: “When I go back home, will everything go back to the way it was before?”. This is a perfectly normal concern and while some young adults are ready to go back, others may benefit from some extra support as they work towards being back at home. For these young adults, a transitional program can give them the structure and guidance they need to feel more confident when they leave their wilderness therapy program.
Benefits of a Transitional Program
A transitional program is a supportive community of students, therapists, educators, community liaisons, and mentors who collaborate to establish achievable goals for each young man or young woman in the program, all the while working side-by-side toward realizing those goals. A transitional program feels more like a home environment while still providing therapeutic and life skills plans and support. Young adults in the program continue to develop the strengths and positive habits that they have created during their time in wilderness therapy.
Transitional programs will use assessment tools to help your young adult develop an individualized action plan. This action plan will include long and short term goals. Another benefit of a transitional program is that it gives young adults to make new positive peer connections in a new program. This can help ease anxiety about socialization when they return home.
Foundations Asheville Can Help
At Foundations, we serve young adults between the ages of 18-24. Our goal is to support them launching successfully into their adult life. Many of the students who come to Foundations are struggling with anxiety, depression, executive functioning, and experiencing challenging family dynamics.
Foundations Asheville regards each student as a unique individual. As such, a treatment plan, education plan, and independence plan are designed in concert with the student to meet their personal goals. Highly experienced, licensed clinicians help each young adult identify life goals and support them in seeing them through to completion.
We support our students by helping them work toward success in college, success in the workforce, success in relationships, and authentic social engagement. We also help them to manage finances responsibly, learn functional living skills, and grow into independent young adults.
If your young adult is looking for next steps after stepping down from wilderness therapy, please call (877) 318-7273.
The Foundations Team” profile “We work tirelessly to empower individuals with the essential skills and knowledge to thrive in their personal and professional lives. To contact our admissions team, call (877) 318-7273
