Mountain Seed Foundation’s unique approach to healing
Rather than a descriptive adjective, in our program healing is a verb, a volitional, action – oriented process that evolves with time and effort. The traditional approach to healing after a trauma or loss can be described as the process of making or becoming sound or healthy again. As Drs. Martin Seligman and Chris Peterson described the disease model of treatment, this focus can be illustrated mathematically: helping the client progress from -2 (experiencing debilitating symptoms, negative thinking, lethargy, anger, depression, anxiety and maladaptive behaviors) to 0 (a return to baseline functioning.)
Unlike most traditional programs created to treat the symptoms and decreased levels of functioning that often follow a trauma or loss, our unique approach aims to promote a state of well-being beyond adequate functioning. Rather than help the participants progress from -2 to 0, our program is designed to promote and encourage a state of flourishing. A progression from 0 to +2.
To achieve this goal, there are two critical criteria for acceptance to the program. The first is that the participant does not have a significant history of behavioral or psychological difficulties. Another equally important criteria is that the participant is at least nine months to a year post the devastating/ traumatic event. By this time the initial shock, grief, anger, and debilitating symptoms have subsided. The participant has either received professional treatment for these symptoms or the symptoms have diminished with time and community support.
When applying for participation in our camps most participants demonstrate adequate levels of functioning. They can perform daily tasks, manage their finances, go to school, tend to the needs of the family and meet life’s basic demands. But surviving is not living.
When our participants arrive at the camp they are at best in a state of languishing – feeling empty and joyless. Most have lost a sense of agency, purpose and hope. They are resigned to existing in shades of gray.
All of us are familiar with this feeling of languishing. A place somewhere between depression and flourishing where many of us lived during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. We functioned, we got through the day (mostly in sweats) but most of us did not thrive.
We just survived.
How does our program promote flourishing? How do our participants progress from 0 to +2? The name of Mountain Seed Foundation’s therapy program is Permission to Flourish®️
Giving oneself permission to flourish is the the essential first step to creating a life worth living. This is often a difficult challenge for most of our participating widows, orphans and injured veterans.
Many of our adult participants are concerned about being judged by others in their community. If they laugh, if they enjoy a conversation, if they wear a colorful dress, they fear being criticized for not grieving enough, not being sad enough, not being serious enough. They fear being perceived as selfish if they engage in self-care or take time to be alone. The widows in particular feel the need to present themselves to the outside world as continuously suffering and sacrificing.
Others experience guilt when doing something fun, creative, or whimsical. While living in ongoing war zones it seems as if only negative feelings of grief, fear, and uncertainty fit their circumstances. How can one experience happiness when so many are suffering? As a result, participants tend to passively tolerate negative emotions thinking that those are appropriate to their difficult circumstances.
Some of our participants have forgotten what it feels like to be joyful and enthusiastic. Facing a physical injury, like a broken arm, one can easily remember what a functional arm felt like and that memory creates motivation to regain that function. When languishing for a prolonged period of time it is far more challenging to remember the experience of feeling joy or gratitude. Languishing becomes an embedded part of one’s personality. How does one strive towards feeling fully alive when that feeling has become a vague memory from a long- gone life?
Our team’s positive psychological approach combined with physical challenges in awe- inspiring natural settings help our participants rediscover those aspects that make life worth living. Rather than focusing on problems and negative emotions we illuminate and help participants cultivate their character strengths, positive emotions, sense of purpose, resilience, and hope. Together we grow a beautiful garden by watering the flowers, not the weeds.
From the moment the participants first arrive, the staff greets them with exuberance and warmth. We create an atmosphere of acceptance, connection, tolerance for all emotions, and actively encourage the pursuit of positive emotions like trust, achievement and delight.
Using a positive therapeutic attitude, we exude and transmit the belief that one can flourish even in dire circumstances.
We teach specific positive cognitive-behavioral skills and tools to enable every participant to feel more confident, manage anxiety, experience a sense of agency, and set intentions. We encourage participants to use all their senses to actively seek and pay attention to those extraordinary moments of beauty or accomplishment that may not be essential to survival but enhance one’s quality of life. We help each participant rediscover his/her signature character strengths and core values.
By participating in various challenging physical activities in a natural environment, as well as self-expression through painting, learning life skills and the importance of self care while living as a community, participants begin to incorporate and practice the essential ingredients of a life worth living. According to positive psychology’s PERMA+ model, these include experiencing positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning and purpose, achievement, hope, as well as cultivating healthy lifestyle habits. Our program provides the structure and opportunity to immerse oneself in these ingredients.
On or around the third day of camp, staff begin to observe the shift occurring in both children and adults. The worn, skeptical, and blank faces that greeted us the first day begin to transform. We see a twinkle in the eye. We hear a giggle. Someone is jumping up and down. There is communal singing after dinner, and we see smiles and outstretched arms. People are proudly talking about their accomplishments, the fears they have overcome, the exquisite beauty they have observed, the inner artist they have met for the first time. Children, able to watch their parents having fun and laughing, now give themselves permission to be silly and loud, make friends, and behave like children.
By the sixth day participants begin to experience life in vivid color. Negative emotions constrict our cognition, behavior and creativity while positive emotions expand them. We now witness hearts and minds bursting with ideas and a desire to teach others all that they have learned. Participants express heartfelt gratitude for this extraordinary experience and a wish to pay it forward. They begin to talk about ways to help their neighbors, friends and fellow veterans at home. They want to share what they have learned and inquire how to begin a nonprofit organization like ours. Before us are hearts and minds growing with the delight of living and the wish to share their discovery with others.
Camp attendees have once again experienced what a life worth living feels like. They readily describe an afternoon of running in a field of flowers, the promise of a bright future in the wind, and the sun’s warm rays on their cheek. Having given themselves permission to flourish, our participants say: “I want to live, not just survive.”
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