Trails Carolina is an innovative wilderness therapy program that provides adolescents with a transformative and unique experience. While often criticized for lacking transparency and safety concerns as well as high costs, many families have reported positive outcomes following their child’s completion of Trails Carolina.
Trails Carolina emphasizes family involvement throughout the transition process. This helps parents understand their child’s journey while working to build a solid base for long-term recovery.
Confidence and Resilience
Trails Carolina “Investigation” provides students with opportunities to build confidence and resilience through wilderness expeditions, camping skills, and other experiential activities. These experiences help counteract low self-esteem that many teens struggle with and create an outlook on life that supports healthy mental regulation and coping skills.
Students are placed into age-appropriate, single-gender groups tailored to meet their developmental, emotional, and mental health needs. Away from distractions, they gain personal insight and boost self-esteem while building essential academic skills necessary for returning successfully to school.
Trails Carolina’s program model puts family involvement at the core, with therapists offering family sessions both onsite and remotely via phone or video conference. Our comprehensive approach also features mid-point parent workshops and optional Common Ground experiences designed to strengthen relationships at home, as well as transition support resources after finishing wilderness therapy programs – essential elements that contribute to students’ long-term success and wellbeing.
Time in Nature
Cultivating a positive relationship with nature has become a priority for many young people. According to Children & Nature Network, forest school enrollment has increased five-fold within just five years alone.
Studies are increasingly showing the many health advantages associated with spending time outdoors – even just enjoying small pockets of green – including reduced stress levels, improved concentration and overall feelings of wellbeing.
Trails Carolina’s wilderness therapy program brings participants into diverse natural environments, providing safe physical challenges. By working as teams to overcome them, kids and teens develop emotional resilience enabling them to face future obstacles with confidence and optimism.
Mindfulness
Research increasingly indicates that mindfulness, or paying intentional attention to the present moment, can improve health and well-being. Commonly associated with meditation or therapies geared at helping reduce stress levels, mindfulness has also been found to reduce harmful ruminating that leads to depression or anxiety.
Mindfulness is a skill that must be developed over time through practice and patience. It’s easy to become distracted in today’s fast-paced environment where youth are exposed to electronics, news sources, influencers and social media all day long – but cultivating mindfulness takes dedication, practice and persistence to gain mastery over its practice.
Trails Carolina helps youth unplug from technology and find peace in nature through guided breathing exercises, nature journaling and daily yoga sessions. Students also learn how to observe emotions without assigning negative meaning or assigning blame; gain understanding why their emotions occur in such ways; these skills provide essential grounding in emotional stability for life ahead.
Social Media
Teenagers today often feel pressure to live up to the unrealistic standards set by celebrities and social media influencers, leading them to experience anxiety and depression.
Trails Carolina can help adolescents evade these negative consequences with its wilderness therapy program, Trails Carolina. Our staff’s focus lies on building long-term friendships while teaching students more about themselves through adventure travel.
This program helps students learn to cope with stress and anxiety through tools they gain in the wilderness, such as meditation and mindfulness practices. Furthermore, they discover ways to build resilience through challenging themselves and working alongside their peers.
Trails Carolina staff has extensive training and are committed to attaining CARF accreditation, but beyond this are also dedicated to supporting families as they prepare for their children’s return home, including family workshops and weekly phone calls with primary therapists to address challenges that may arise during program participation.
