WinGate Overview
It starts with a belief.
Living what we teach.
Brief changes in behavior vs. lasting internal change.
Replacing downward spirals with upward spirals.
Effective treatment for a wide range of issues.
We have positive regard for every student that enters WinGate and respect each individual’s path. Our nurturing yet challenging environment allows students to progress, gain perspective, and attain a new level of maturity as we address their specific behavioral issues. Most importantly, we look beyond behavior problems to view each student as a unique individual with intrinsic worth.
WinGate Wilderness Therapy for teens and WayPoints Wilderness Therapy, our expansion program designed for young adults, are the only two wilderness programs located in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument region. This vast expanse of land with its contrasting flat and rugged terrain, remote location, and spectacular scenery provides the ideal environment for positively impacting lives. The awe-inspiring location is combined with our time-proven wilderness treatment strategies, professional therapists, and parental involvement to help students leave behind destructive patterns and discover who they truly are.
It starts with a belief.
Living what we teach.
Teenagers can spot insincerity a mile away. That’s partly why everybody here at WinGate Wilderness Therapy lives what we teach, from our field staff to our Executive Director, Shayne Gallagher. It is especially important for field staff to do so because they remain out in the wilderness with the students 24/7. Although this continual monitoring is important, it is the mentoring that has the greatest impact. Students are able to see living, breathing examples of how important principles play out in daily life and bring about positives outcomes. In subtle yet significant ways, the members of our field staff become mentors, serving more like older peers than what teens consider “authority figures.”
As the parent of a teenager, you may have already learned—the hard way—how teenagers tend to resist authority. Because the students often perceive WinGate staff members as older peers, it enables them to circumvent this resistance. In fact, teens learn rather quickly that out in the wilderness, doing what staff members do makes their lives much easier—immediately. Few things are more motivating for problem teenagers than immediate satisfaction. (The lessons about working hard to accomplish a desired goal are also taught, in different ways.)
Our field staff is highly trained and experienced at wilderness living. By contrast, most teenagers have never spent more than a weekend “camping.” The WinGate wilderness experience involves far more than a weekend trip to a public campground or a couple of weeks at summer camp. As wilderness survival skills are put into action, teens learn to depend on field staff as well as the peers in their group because cooperation and hard work bring desired results. Out here, there are no short-cuts.
Brief changes in behavior vs. lasting internal change.
It doesn’t take much to change external behavior during the wilderness experience. Daily living in such an environment demands it. It is impossible, even for a defiant teenager, to break the laws of nature. But here at WinGate Wilderness Therapy, circumstantial changes in behavior are just the beginning. Our program is uniquely designed to help ensure that when our students return home, they don’t return to their old behaviors and old friendships that may have been contributing to the problem. It is deep, internal change that brings about permanent transformation.
In order to provide further reinforcement of internal change, WinGate staff and fellow students recognize and applaud personal progress—both verbally and symbolically through the awarding of WinGate Pendants. This positive reinforcement creates even greater motivation for students to continue changing and growing. This also marks the beginning of WinGate’s upward spiral.
Replacing the downward spiral with and upward spiral
Negative behaviors tend to beget more negative behaviors, and it’s easy for troubled teenagers to get caught in this downward spiral. Not only is this spiral problematic, but it can also become dangerous and out of control. Many parents of defiant, addictive, and/or anxiety-ridden adolescents describe the situation at home or the child’s behavior as “spiraling out of control.”
There are also positive, upward spirals. Here at WinGate Wilderness Therapy, we help students break their negative patterns and reverse direction in life. Other programs might manage to stop negative behaviors for the duration of treatment while they fill each day with entertaining activities. Unfortunately, those activities only last as long as the program. They may provide temporary distractions, but they are simply that—temporary distractions.
WinGate students become actively involved in healthy, challenging, and life-sustaining activities that require thought, skill, concentration and determination. As a result, teens become caught up in the upward spiral created by WinGate’s wilderness experience. And when they leave here, they take with them that same upward movement that can help propel them forward into a promising future.
The change in environment at WinGate Wilderness Therapy is critical. Students are removed from the people, places and things that may have been providing fuel for the downward spiral. Out in the wilderness, away from all of that, we’re able to help teens find positive meaning within themselves and their accomplishments. The development of primitive skills provides powerful methods of engaging interest and creating a sense of accomplishment. Whether it’s starting a fire with a bow–drill, playing melodious notes on a handmade primitive flute, or making a journal cover out of leather, students are drawn to the creative process and the upward spiral it creates. This evokes not only positive emotions in the moment, but it is self-reinforcing in a manner that adds to the momentum necessary for upward spirals to continue. In this manner, we facilitate authentic personal validation of the deepest kind. (From the Broaden and Build Theory, Fredrickson, 2002.)
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Effective treatment for a wide range of issues.
The WinGate approach is universal in its ability to help struggling teens and their families. Regardless of the negative feelings and behaviors, we effect change at the very core, addressing the root causes. The WinGate wilderness experience along with weekly professional therapy, individual as well as group, address the unique needs and challenges of each student.
We have vast experience helping troubled teens dealing with a variety of behavioral and emotional challenges. Issues we address most often here at WinGate include the following:
Download this brochure to learn more about our life-changing program.
“I was more unhappy than ever. Shayne helped me see who I really was.”
Why are we affordable? We work to keep costs low and standards high.
