Our Approach

 

Our Philosophy
The WinGate program: Ages 13-18
Strengths Based/Natural Consequence Model
Building skills and relationships
Resistance creates resistance
Reflective storytelling

WinGate Pendants: recognition of success

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Create an awakening of the heart by healing the pain of the past, understanding the value of today, and gaining the strength to move forward into the future.

 

WinGate Vision Statement

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WinGate blends ancient cultural systems, advanced clinical techniques, and the healing elements of the earth to re-unite the hearts of teens and their families. Our decades of experience in wilderness settings, commitment to hiring seasoned and professional staff, genuine concern for each of our students, and exacting safety standards create the ideal environment to help troubled teens look inside themselves and discover who they truly are.

 

Our Philosophy

At WinGate, we believe in cooperation rather than confrontation. We have positive regard for every student and work hard to gain insights into each individual. Although certain rules must be followed in order to maintain safety and overall program effectiveness, we also honor and respect each student’s own path. Our nurturing yet challenging environment allows students to grow, gain perspective, and attain a new level of maturity as we address their specific behavioral issues and problems.

 

The WinGate Program: Ages 13-18

Teenagers still living at home seek independence even though they don’t always know how to achieve it in constructive and healthy ways. Enforcing boundaries can become next to impossible for parents of troubled teens. Some parents try, relentlessly, to regain some sense of control over their teenager who is becoming ever-increasingly out of control. Lecturing—“do as I say, not as I do”—fails miserably. Anger creates anger in response. Pleading, cajoling or bribing only seem to make matters worse. The overall and inevitable outcomes of such confrontations are hostility, tension, and more defiance.

 

At WinGate Wilderness Therapy, students gain the ability to achieve desired outcomes in healthy ways, learn from their mistakes, and understand the natural consequences of their behavior—both positive and negative. In a surprisingly short amount of time, they begin to understand how their past behaviors and attitudes have held them back. This, in turn, provides the motivation needed to get them moving forward in their own personal process and continue in the right direction long after they’ve graduated from our program.

 

Strengths Based/Natural Consequence Model (The Wingate Model)

Here at WinGate, we’ve created a Strengths Based/Natural Consequence Model that empowers teenagers in constructive ways. It helps them look beyond their negative behaviors and struggles to see who they really are. They learn to get along with others and cooperate while working toward common goals. Positive natural consequences serve as rewards for positive actions; hence, teenagers become internally motivated to act in constructive ways.

 

Other programs often establish a set of strict rules, demand adherence to those rules, and then impose negative consequences when the demands aren’t met. Basically, it’s like boot camp.

 

WinGate Wilderness Therapy is designed to provide experiences that help students motivate themselves rather than trying to force compliance and adherence to a set of rules. When students experience direct and natural consequences for their choices—positive as well as negative—they begin to act accordingly. By empowering teenagers with choice, they gain a sense of accomplishment, self-confidence, and self esteem. They exercise their independence and act autonomously while complying to rules and guidelines at the same time.

 

Building skills and relationships

WinGate field instructors build the foundation for strong therapeutic relationships by teaching students skills that are enjoyable as well as useful, such as whittling, beading, crafting and stitching leather, starting a fire, cooking, wilderness hiking, and setting up a proper camp in order to stay safe and dry. After a few weeks of living in the wilderness together, students and staff experience a full range of emotions while building a strong sense of camaraderie within the group. Working side by side in a joint effort to reach common goals helps teens learn healthy patterns of communication that they can apply throughout the rest of their lives. While a teen’s idea of communication may have previously been restricted to halting acronyms and cryptic messages sent via modern technology. In other words, using Twitter to tweet a hundred of their closest friends.

 

Out here at WinGate Wilderness Therapy, there are no cell phones, or computers, or video games. The environment is naturally conducive to personal, human-to-human communication. Teens actually talk with other teens openly and honestly while hiking, setting up camp, “busting” a fire, preparing meals and developing skills. They are encouraged to open up even more during group therapy led by the same professional therapist they’ve been learning to trust during individual therapy. It is also the same therapist that has been talking with their parents every week as part of the process that helps re-unite families in healthy and positive ways.

 

Resistance creates resistance

Teenagers are often resistant to anything they deem confrontational, such as authority, rules, boundaries, and therapy. This can result in a battle of wills, from which neither “side” emerges victorious. One of our goals at WinGate is to eliminate the concept of sides. Out here in the wilderness, everyone works together in a spirit of cooperation for the benefit of the group.articles. Click here to read the full article.

 

Reflective storytelling

Analogies, allegories, and parables have been used for centuries in order to increase understanding and communicate greater meaning. At WinGate, we tell various stories with deep meaning so we can convey important concept to teens and families.

Burdens, Baskets and Peace

 

 

WinGate Pendants: recognition of success

As students begin to advance through the therapeutic process here at WinGate, they make changes and uncover positive traits such as forgiveness, strength, cheerfulness, responsibility, setting goals, and making amends. When this happens, we celebrate the achievement by offering a pendant that is symbolic of the very changes they’re making or the personal traits they’re discovering. This is done in a ceremony of profound meaning and honor.

Pendant Booklet