Ciara Fanlo: Helping Teens Reclaim Their Lives

Have you ever found yourself at wit's end with a rebellious teen? You're not alone. Many parents turn to the troubled teen industry (TTI) for answers, hoping boarding schools and wilderness retreats will save the day. But guess what? Our guest, Ciara Fanlo, knows firsthand that these places often do more harm than good.

Drawing from her own journey, Ciara shares that she has been through it all – residential programs, boarding schools, wilderness retreats – you name it. But instead of being weighed down by these trials, she's flipped the script, using her platform, Homing Instinct, to turn her experiences into something positive.

In our conversation, Ciara breaks down the teenage psyche, giving us a peek into how they see the world and themselves. Plus,she’s got some valuable advice for parents struggling to connect with their teens. 

So, grab your notepad and get ready to soak in Ciara's wisdom. It's time to learn how to build stronger bonds with your teens and set them on the path to success.

BIO
Ciara Fanlo has described herself as a former “troubled teen”, who now dedicates her career to supporting struggling adolescents and their families. As a teen, she experienced depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicidal ideation. Her treatment included various medications, hospitalization, wilderness therapy and a therapeutic boarding school. Despite the efforts of doctors and practitioners, she felt that her treatments did not help her address the root cause of her suffering. She is a writer and founder of Homing Instinct, which provides targeted coaching and mentoring for teens and, importantly, parents. Through one on one sessions, workshops and education, she utilizes a broad collection of systems and practices she has learned in order to help teens. For parents, she helps obtain the insight they need so that their kids and their family can build trust, ease, and connection to improve and strengthen their relationships. 

RESOURCES/ REFERENCES:

Homing Instinct

Ciara's Article On Wilderness Camps

Netflix Documentary on TTI- The Program

Transcript

This Way Up - Episode 25 - Ciara-1

[00:00:00] What can be so confusing for the teenagers and children in these programs who are having abusive experiences is that it's happening under the guise of therapy and for parents who are being led to make harmful decisions. They are being advised to do so by people who are experts and professionals.

Welcome to This Way Up. We are bringing you engaging, informative, and inspiring conversations surrounding all aspects of mental health from the perspective of us as parents and caregivers. I'm Andrea Nenigian. And I'm Emmy Waters. When someone you care about is struggling with their mental health, this can be an incredibly stressful and challenging time, so we're here to provide valuable resources to support you as you navigate this journey.

Today's guest is Kira Fanlow, who is in Colorado currently working to support teens, young adults, and parents. as they navigate all different facets of a tricky mental health journey. Her real life experience and the way that she speaks to teenagers and parents bring such a different perspective. on mental health and what, and teen, just plain teenage challenges that kids face these days.

Because she's literally been there. She's been there. She's been there. Whether you are a parent or caregiver of a child or teen who's struggling with their mental health, or you are that person who may be struggling, you're Kira. Kira Fanlo supports struggling adolescents and their families. As a teen, she experienced depression, anxiety, self harm, and suicidal ideation.

Her years of treatment included various medications, hospitalization, wilderness therapy, and a therapeutic boarding school. Despite the efforts of doctors and practitioners, she felt that most treatments did not address the root cause of her suffering. She then founded Homing Instinct to provide personalized coaching and mentoring for teens and importantly parents as someone who has overcome these challenges herself.

Through one on one sessions, she helps teens rediscover resilience, confidence, and self worth. For parents, she helps them obtain the insight they need so that their kids and family can build trust, ease, and connection to improve and strengthen their relationships. Kira, thank you so much for taking time to join us today.

We're so excited to dive into your story and experience. Thank you so much to both of you. I'm delighted to be here. Thank you. Well, you, like we said earlier, before we got On this call, you are in a really unique position for Andrea and I to have an opportunity to talk to somebody who has both been a teen going through a lot of different challenges and to now come out on the other end as an adult who has so much insight and wisdom that both teens and parents now look to you for guidance and support.

What a special position you're in. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you saying that. And I do think what is helpful as well is the landscape for teenagers today is so different than how it was for many of their parents. I know my mom, for example, she grew up on a farm in Ireland and my dad grew up in the US, but he was growing up in a totally different time where there wasn't the internet or social media.

or so many of the different challenges that teenagers are dealing with today, just because of how much our world has changed. So even though I'm not a teenager now, I was a teenager in a more recent time than many parents today were. So I have a little bit more experience with what it's like to grow up and to become an adolescent in a more modern world.

Absolutely. Yeah. You have shared a lot about your experience through your writing, through other interviews and podcasts you've done. We'll definitely share that with our audience, but can you give us a little glimpse into what your teenage years looked like? Yes. So, I think being a teenager, probably for most of us, like when we think back to high school, was a tough time.

It's, I think it's a really tough time for many people. And it was certainly a very, very tough time for me. I was, I had struggles from the time I was quite young. I really struggled with feeling that I belonged places and my confidence and my self esteem and just feeling really, really sad and anxious from the time I was a child.

But it all came to a head when I was a teenager and I was really insecure, rebellious, sensitive, intense, and struggled with depression and anxiety and coped with cell harm and other really dangerous and risky behaviors. And my parents tried to help me with like every intervention that a parent could seek out for their kid.

Like first it was for most people, this is kind of the first line of attack talk therapy and medication. And I did that for a few years. And then I was in outpatient and trying loads of different types of therapies at home. And then I eventually went to an inpatient hospital and then wilderness therapy and then a therapeutic boarding school.

So Pretty much my entire, actually, yeah, like my entire adolescence, I was in some form of treatment for my challenges with mental health. So really though, like as a young, a young adult, when I recovered from those challenges and kind of was coming out the other side of, of just being a teenager, I just began reflecting on that stage of life for myself and like what had actually been going on.

Like, why was it so hard? Why? Did nothing seem to work that people tried? Why did it take so long for me to learn what I needed to learn to feel secure in the world? And that was what inspired me to do what I do now and try and use those experiences to offer people insight into their child. I'm curious as to what you do think now.

I mean, you had anxiety and depression, you said, but then you struggled with security issues, which a lot of kids do too. When you reflect back on that time, why do you think it was so chaotic for you? I think that there were some experiences in my early life that I didn't know how to separate myself from, and then I also didn't know how to correct.

what had happened with them. So my parents had got divorced when I was nine, and that was a really difficult experience for me in terms of feeling secure or feeling that I could depend on people. But as a child, I didn't know how to separate this happened with them. That has nothing to do with me. It was like, I deeply felt that something was wrong with me.

And that that was what I could expect from life moving forward. And because I didn't have that awareness, I just felt that way constantly and didn't know how to correct that belief and realize this isn't something to do with me. So I think having those feelings of instability and insecurity in the world were constantly leading me to things that would bring about short term relief, like self harm, for example.

But those things that would bring about short term relief would create long term dysfunction. So I was like always coping with, in ways that were just extending the dysfunction in my life, and it just became like a cycle. Hmm. Do you have siblings? I do. I have an older brother who is two years older than me and then I have a younger stepbrother.

Okay. Did they have any similar path as you? Um, no, they did not. I think it has to really do with, I mean, how you, how we perceive things. You know, we go back to that conversation we always have, Emmy, which is the perception. And as kids, Even as adults, we don't see things all that clearly, but as a child even more so, and probably you've got three different, very different personalities.

Yeah. Perceiving an issue in three very different ways. Right. So your parents were trying everything, and you were doing a lot of different things, and you started with talk therapy, which to me, I would think, Oh, well, they would get to some of these issues, and they would be able to work through those. But I wonder.

And now I'm just pontificating. I wonder if as a child's mind, you weren't, you weren't mature enough yet. to be able to go back there to work through those issues at that point in your life. It was just too early from a maturity level. And then when you were in your early 20s, you were, you had a better perspective on things and maybe the maturity level to look back and look at things a little bit from a broader lens.

I don't know. Yeah, I absolutely agree with what you said, Andrea. And I also, I didn't have that much insight at that young age. Not that I wasn't an insightful kid in general, but I didn't have the language to express to a therapist. This is what I'm experiencing. And I also didn't really trust them that much.

I, I didn't share that much with therapists. I would be very selective about what I would share with them. So they often didn't have the full picture of what was really going on to be [00:10:00] able to give me support. So Kira, from your experience, and you know, you now can look back and put those pieces together and see what was contributing to what you experienced later in your teens.

And now, as somebody who mentors other teens and even their parents, is there a possibility for a teen today to get those insights at their age, or are they just too young? Oh, I think there definitely is. I think today's teenagers are fluent. in the languages of emotional intelligence and mental health awareness in a way that I never was at my age.

Yeah, I agree. Yeah, absolutely. They'll say stuff where I'm like, how do you even know that term? Like they'll come on and they'll be talking about like triangulation in the family or talking about projecting. They're like, my mom is just projecting her insecurity on me. And I'm like, how do you even know the term projection?

So they absolutely, I think can, I think it's so much more in the culture now. And especially that generation. I think they're a lot more open to it. Like mental health was so stigmatized for generations before having struggles with mental health. And they are very insightful. A lot of the kids I work with, they can paint a picture of what's going on and use.

really accurate language and terminology. I think the challenge is, and this was the challenge for me with therapy as well, is that having the insight and the cognitive understanding is only one piece of it. You can say, Oh, this family member is projecting their insecurity on me, but that doesn't always help you process or release the feelings that come from it.

Um. That's a good point. I got step one. Right? I was like, wow. Yeah, that is a really good point. That's an excellent point. So, as a parent, you're trying to get your child to first talk about it. Right there. I mean, naturally, teenagers don't share a ton with their parents, right? If you're a parent that starts to see things that are maybe not lining up with what you're thinking is the best decisions, what do you do?

Do you try to talk to them? Would you suggest that you go straight to a therapist? I mean, I think that And what's the secret sauce to getting your child to talk to you with a little more honesty and openness to realize that there is a problem? Okay, so this is how would you approach a situation where you're noticing behavior changes or something concerning with your teen?

One thing I really try to express in my shares in my work is that Adolescence is by nature a tumultuous time and teenagers are experimenting and they're taking risks and they're often sad and confused and not sure where they fit in. So there's a degree to which all of those questions and struggles are totally developmentally appropriate.

And in a situation where a parent is concerned about their teenager's behavior, I think to first focus on building the relationship with your child before going the route of trying to get them to open up to you. A lot of times when a parent is concerned about their kid, They focus on the, like, the blinking hazard lights.

Like, oh my god, something's wrong. We need to fix this. How do I get them to stop? How do I get the answers of what's going on? And they get really worked up and anxious about it. And teenagers can feel when their parents feel that way. And if they are worried about how you're going to react to what they share, they oftentimes won't share it.

So the first step before you're trying to sit them down and talk to them is to just focus on building the relationship and focusing on who they are besides just whatever you're concerned about, like taking them for a drive to go get coffee somewhere, or watching a show that you both enjoy and just asking about what's going on, totally open ended with no agenda.

And And when you have that foundation of a close and open relationship, they'll be more likely to naturally share those concerns with you. And the way you can approach it is by sharing what you're noticing, but not diagnosing the situation or judging them. Like you're doing this, you know, you're smoking weed every day.

You're addicted. I've been noticing that you're spending a lot more time in your room alone and I'm worried that you're smoking. Can you share with me what you're feeling and what you're going through? Is this something that you're concerned about? How do you feel about what's happening? And going more from, coming more from a place of curiosity than you already know what's happening because there's oftentimes you said teenagers don't open up, you don't always know everything that's going on in their life and that will hopefully give them more permission to share those pieces of it as well.

That curiosity piece, that's just the perfect word too because we're not coming in accusing, um, being a know it all, not the fixer, it's It's giving space in the conversation. Totally. Yeah. I think also your recommendation that you have to build that relationship first, because you have to earn that trust to be able to have that conversation.

Just like we do with friends and spouses and everything else. It's no different just because they're your child doesn't mean that you've earned that right to go into that space if there's not that trust and relationship built. That was excellent advice. Excellent advice. Yeah. I really appreciate what both of you added about the curiosity giving them space to share.

And yes, if, if you can demonstrate to your child, I am a trustworthy person. That is how they will come to trust you. Yeah, what else? What else do you have for parents? Because that's one. And now if I'm a parent and my teenager is still suffering through, let's just call it depression. And I do feel like we have a good rapport and we do have trust.

I'm still really scared. Um, I don't know the landscape. I don't have therapists. And now there are all these things that we need to navigate. Yeah. What next? What would you tell your parents that you're mentoring? So, just I'm understanding, so this is a situation where a parent has gotten their child a therapist.

And they're struggling with now with their role is in the recovery process or just just in general. Yeah. How do you, how are you helping parents that come to you for extra guidance and support? I think, well, I think it's very specific. It's very, it changes a lot based on the family's situation and also probably what the parents parenting style is.

Is there some parents who. are very, very involved and take a huge, take on a huge amount of responsibility for their child's well being and their child's mental state. So my advice to a parent like that would be more along the lines of trusting their child's process and knowing that their child's struggle is not a signal that they're going to have challenges the entire rest of their life and they're never going to be able to be successful and to not catastrophize what's going on and to try and stay in the present moment.

I think a lot of parents I speak to tend to do that and there's Some, there's some truth to it. Like I am nowhere near the place that I was when I was a teenager, but that doesn't mean that I never have challenging times or still feel in a lot of pain at times. So I'm not at all trying to suggest that.

You're struggling and then you're no longer struggling and that's it. But some advice that I would give to parents is centered around that, that message that I'm sharing now, that we can take what your child is doing. And because they're all hypotheticals, it's something that hasn't happened yet. There's no limit to what you can imagine.

You can imagine the absolute worst case scenarios. And then you're feeling your body is reacting as if those things are true. So one piece of advice is keeping it focused on the here and now. That is hard to do. We were just talking last week and remember you said, if somebody would have told me 10 years ago where my kids are today, I would have loved to have that information.

Yeah, it's true because I was probably like that parent she's describing. Yeah. I was scared. Yeah, I was scared. Yeah, Kira, Andrew, and I had been talking because my daughter went through some really challenging times when she was a teen and there were moments where I, yeah, I was just so scared for her safety.

Um, I think that more than anything. Yeah. Yeah. And clearly, yeah. As a result, her future and, you know, she's come out just recently as, um, just recently she's told us of her successes in graduate school. So I said to Andra, well, holy crap, if I would have known she's going to be fine, happy and persevering, someone would have told me in 2017, I was going to have that conversation with my daughter.

That would have changed everything because I was, I was so scared. Well, and what you've said, Kira, earlier is that our kids can feel when we're anxious. Yeah. I remember at one point going through something, my daughter, she was probably, it was, it was just a few years ago and something triggered me [00:20:00] back to kind of when her whole process started.

And she said to me, Mom, I don't know why you're anxious. I'm not the same person I was. I'm not going to make that mistake. Mistake again. And I was like, I've grown. And I was like, of course you have. Of course you have. You still always be my little girl, but you have grown and grown tremendously. And so I think you brought up some great points.

Excellent point. That is huge. Yeah. We shouldn't as parents add to Yeah, but it is hard. It's hard to keep ourselves in check. I don't know what the right answer is there. I mean, I think it's, I think there's a huge element to this journey. That's like a spiritual practice because you can take the same struggle for so many things in life.

Like I had a friend who was really anxious about getting a job. And she just couldn't find some ease around the situation. I said to her, if you knew you were going to get a job in two weeks, how would you feel? And she'd be like, Oh, I wouldn't be worried at all. But she didn't know that. Like I couldn't, I'm not telling her that as some psychic who's seen the future.

You just have to have the faith that it's going to happen. Eventually, but I completely understand why that's so hard if you're in a situation where you're scared for someone's safety, you're scared for their future, and you have no evidence in the here and now that it would be okay, and you're going off of what's happening to predict what's going to happen, of course, you're going to be anxious and worried.

It takes a huge degree of of faith to be able to imagine that your child is going to make it through these things. Okay. And that one day you're going to be in both of your situation where you realize, Oh, wow, my child is actually in a totally different place. I was just going to interject a personal thing that I probably shouldn't interject, but I'm going to is that when my son was like two and a half months old, he wasn't sleeping through the night.

And he's my, he's my oldest. And I remember I was going back to work at four months and when he was four months, excuse me, and I remember just. being petrified. I remember crying. Oh my gosh, how are we ever going to do this? And my husband came home from work some one day and he was talking to one of his co workers who had like, I don't know, a six month old.

And he's like, Oh, you're going to be fine. Two and a half months. They're gonna be fine. And then by, by the time four, four months came along, he was a different person. He was like, he was sleeping through the night. Then he was getting up, you know, like five in the morning. And I think we forget as adults.

Because we don't change that quickly. How much children actually change and develop and grow. Yeah, that's true. And what I was picking up that you said, Andrew, was that you had a support network. You had other friends that could speak to, I've been there. I've been in your shoes. Just hang on. It gets better or it changes.

And obviously Kira, that's why, you know, we are doing this podcast to begin with. But Andrew and I, when we connected over a year ago, we're like, Oh my gosh, you, you went through that too? You, you went through that with your kids? Had I known, if Andrea and I could have called each other and share what was going on, that would have been a huge help.

So maybe a lot of it too for parents is that there isn't a what to expect when you're expecting version book to say what to expect when your child is struggling mentally or, um, we don't have those, but, or maybe we do have those now, but I just remember it being scary because no one else was in that situation.

Or if they were, nobody was talking about it. So you couldn't identify them. Yeah, so support systems are so important and as parents sometimes We think that we don't want our kids being supported by Their peers because we get frightened of that. What's the advice that their peers are going to to give them?

but earlier You had said how different kids are these days and that teenagers really have a different view and language around feelings and emotions. Um, what do you think about kids having peer to peer support for mental health challenges? I think it's fantastic. I think peer to peer support is a wonderful thing.

I have some thoughts about it or some concerns about it, but what you both shared I think illustrates the beauty and the benefit for people of when they can relate to someone else having the same struggle, and how it normalizes it for them, it relieves their sense of aloneness, It helps them feel hope that they're, it's going to be different for them, that they're not the only one going through it.

So for a teenager to have that, like someone else under my own age understands what I'm going through can be really helpful for them. I think my concern comes from when that becomes how teenagers bond. When I was in different programs and and probably more outpatient programs where we were all still living at home But we went to group therapy together.

All of us were there because we were having struggles so we would kind of connect through those struggles and bond through those struggles and it became the glue of our relationships, so It's really wonderful and I think peer to peer support also should be supplemented with a support of teenagers also getting from adults who are not in that place where they're bonding through the struggle.

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Along the line talking about the parents that are listening to this and questions that they might have, you have a lot of experience going through different programs, even residential treatment, wilderness therapy, So I know you can speak from intimate experience there and you've written extensively about the wilderness therapy, which is very interesting.

As a parent that is relying on a host of experts to guide them and make recommendations, how would you advise a parent to evaluate programs, please? therapies because as again, as you've experienced, you know, maybe it looks like it's going to be one thing in it. I know you've said there were some amazing aspects of wilderness therapy and then maybe some less so.

And um, I'd love for you to speak to maybe your experience, but also how parents can. make an informed decision because it's also a very emotional one. That is a fantastic question and I'm really glad that you asked it because what can be so confusing for the teenagers and children in these programs who are having abusive experiences is that it's happening under the guise of therapy.

And for parents who are being led to make harmful decisions, they are being advised to do so by people who are experts and professionals. So it is a really valid question. How does someone navigate working with profession professionals when they can't always be a hundred percent sure that their family's best interest is actually.

being kept to heart. So one thing I would say for parents who are considering sending their children away. I have very complicated feelings about residential treatment programs and I can acknowledge the benefits of a residential program. Sometimes a change in environment can be really helpful for a teenager who can't seem to get out of a cycle and being away from, you know, they can't stop arguing with their parents.

So sometimes the distance is helpful for them, the teenager, to just get like a break from all of the chaos. So I understand there are situations where parents feel that that is their only option. Things that a parent should really keep in mind is what is their contact with their child like when the child is in the program.

A lot of programs monitor communication. The child does not get to speak privately to their parents. They sometimes, oftentimes don't, are not even allowed to contact their parents until they have been in the program for a period of time. So there will be like weeks before they can talk to their family.

So that is something I would really, really watch out for because they basically your child doesn't have an opportunity to share with you if things are really not going well there. Right. So from your experience, you're saying no contact is never okay. Yeah. I don't think that's ever okay. Okay. Yeah. Or if the contact is like monitored because Sometimes the child, and this was the case of the boarding school I was in, I was in a really abusive boarding school.

And when I was finally allowed to call home, there was another person listening in on my phone call. And I kind of told my parents not in not super explicitly, but I was hinting, I [00:30:00] would really like you to pick me up. This place is really scary. And the next day in group, the kid brought it up to everyone.

And I was just, I was punished for sharing that with my parents. So if the child is going to be in a situation like that, where they don't have the freedom to actually communicate with their family, that's a red flag. Absolutely. Right. Was this boarding school specific to Kids who had a mental health challenge or other struggle.

It wasn't just straight up boarding school. Yeah here. Okay. Yeah It was it was first kids who had yeah, exactly. Oh my gosh. So curious has that school since been it's closed closed. Okay Yeah, it's closed. Yeah, I wonder what Because I've heard of that a few times right of these facilities that are that have you know, basically abusing those kids But I wonder what's in You what safety precautions are put into place now so that parents don't fear for that type of counseling or therapy.

You know, I mean, I would, I understand that oftentimes we as parents might inadvertently be exasperating a situation because of the way that we are communicating with our child or that relationship has been built or whatever. So things have to change. So that's why. Oftentimes therapists are involved.

But, I mean, so I would think that if I was hearing something that a therapist was doing, I might become frightened because I would be thinking, well, that's not the way I would do it. So I would have these, these fears. So what precautions are in place so that you're not, you're not being that worried parent, but at the same time, you're putting them into a place that's safe for them.

Well, what I hear from your question is it's natural for parents to feel maybe confused by an approach that's being taken for sure. And so how, how are they able to be like, okay, maybe that's not how I would do it, but I'm trusting this professional to do it their way versus this is really, really damaging my kid.

I mean, I think there are some things that are just. Black and white not okay. That do still happen in programs like sleep deprivation, depriving children of food. What? No sleep or food? That's happening right now? Yeah. Okay. Sleep is like the foundation of mental health. I can't believe that anybody would think that not having sleep would be okay to do to somebody who is already struggling.

Yeah, what is the theory behind that, do you think? I'm gonna actually zoom out a little bit because there was another thing I was going to mention, uh, for the question about what are some things parents should watch out for to just give some background on the troubled teen industry. Okay, we'll back off.

So that will, that will just explain, no, it will just, it will, let's just, yeah, we'll just bring it back real quick because it will, it will give some context to these shocking details I have just shared with you. Okay. So the troubled teen industry, um, actually has quite sinister origins. The industry is essentially an offspring of a cult that existed in the 1960s called Synanon.

It's S Y N A N O N I'm spelling it out because sometimes when I say that people think I say cinnamon and the cold is not called cinnamon. It's Synanon. So I don't need to go into too much background about the cold, but they basically, um, they were, it was like a drug rehabilitation cult that created attack therapy and they popularized the tough love approach for treatment.

So they would in their group therapy sessions, and I keep using these quotes because it's not therapy at all, but they would have people sit in a circle and the group would be focused on someone and they would verbally abuse them and degrade them and scream at them. to try and break this person down.

Exactly. Hazing and just tearing them down to shreds and deprive them of sleep, humiliate them by making them wear like degrading cardboard signs around their neck or sleeping on the floor or having to shave their heads. And all of these tactics were kind of coming with this, you know, idea that the person could be shamed and destroyed into healing, that they could just completely break them down so that they could then be rebuilt anew.

And a former member of this cult founded CEDU, which was a company that created different boarding schools and behavior modifications programs. using Synanon's techniques. They basically copy pasted what happened at Synanon, this extremely dangerous cult, and thought, let's use this with teenagers. What do you think the timeline is there, roughly?

Synanon existed in the 60s, and I would say CEDU, I want to say, sprang up in the 80s. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. It's been going on a while. The TTI, I mean, like, I guess it's not really that, I don't think it existed in the sixties, but I think it was around the, I would say probably the eighties, but I can check that after this.

TTI is troubled teen industry? Teen industry. Yeah. I've actually never heard that before. Have you Andrea? I had neither. No, that's why I was just going to ask for that too. Yeah. Yeah. The troubled teen industry. Wow. So that's for profit industry. It's a for profit industry. And so what you, you both appropriately had a reaction of shock and things like that happen all the time in these programs because they are trying to just strip the child down to nothing, take away every comfort you have, every security blanket, anything that would be, basically enable you to fight back against the program in any way so that you are just completely helpless and you will conform to whatever they're asking of you.

Wow. Do you think parents know that going into it? Um, no, I don't think so. Are there kids that are coming out of this? I mean, it's gone on now for Too many years. Um, like what, 40, 60 years, something like that? How many years? I don't remember. It doesn't matter. Are there, are there success stories that are coming out of this?

Where are they getting that they validate and they're not changing their processes? Well, okay, so the statistics are really bleak for a lot of these programs. I can't recall any off the top of my head, but most kids who come out of these programs continue to struggle. I said in my article, I went in my wilderness therapy program.

Four of the kids that I knew are dead now. Oh my gosh. I don't think that there is a lot of success, but that's another thing that I don't think parents really ask about what are the statistics that you have on the results of people after they leave these programs. And another thing that I think parents should really watch out for is a program's insistence that their approach is the answer.

Because that is very cult like. We know the way. This is the only way your kid is going to be okay. You have to send them to us instead of really thoughtfully evaluating what is your child struggling with, what are we equipped to support them with, but pressuring them to just sign on and send their kid away.

And I don't know if any programs do this now, but I don't believe any do. They don't talk to the kid before they end up there. And that to me is also very concerning because if you're taking someone into the program and you're taking away from home, yes, you're hearing from the parents and their therapist and psychiatrist and whoever they're working with at home, but wouldn't you want to talk to the kid themselves and get their insight and their perspective on things?

And the fact that these programs will just take anyone and there's no. They turn people away for certain cases. For example, if someone is, has a history of violence and they think that that person might be a threat to other people, that would be a reason they turn them away. But they would never say, Oh, your kid got a C minus in algebra and you caught them smoking a cigarette once.

I don't know if this is really necessary. It's like a wallet check. They're like, can you afford to send them here? Okay, like send them our way. They're not taking that step to actually evaluate if it's in the child's best interest to be in the program. Yeah. Are these all out of pocket? Are any of them covered by any type of insurance?

Or do you know? I would say all like out of pocket. I mean, I think there are like occasional instances where someone is able to get a portion reimbursed by insurance, but the vast majority, it's completely out of pocket. And they're extremely expensive. Like at my boring school, there were kids whose parents took out like second mortgages on their houses to try and get their kids to go there.

Sure. Cause they think it's, it's their last hope. They think it's going to save their kid's life. Yeah. So what we're hearing you say for parents when they're considering these is to look out whether there's an intake process that they're going to meet the child in advance. Yeah. What is the contact you're going to have and knowing that your child can have private conversation with you once they're enrolled?

What was the other thing you said? Um, knowing the success rates. Yeah. What are the success rates? Like what are you actually seeing with people who graduate from the program? And then as well asking what do consequences and punishments I said punishments. What do consequences look like? Are there ever cases, yeah, where a child is being deprived of sleep?

What did you say, Andrea? Did you have another one? She had also said if they were the end all be all, this is the only way. How they market themselves. Exactly. That's important. You know, from your writings, you also speak about the beautiful things of the program, which we're hearing is so good for mental health these days.

Be out, be outside. Oh, the wilderness therapy. Take notice of the small things on the wilderness therapy. Sorry. Yeah. On the wilderness therapy. So there's kind of this push and pull, right? Like you're like, gosh, that sounds phenomenal. Like, I would love to have my kid be outside all day. They'd be go back to being, you know, I'd go, you know, but it would be very scary unless you know what those consequences are that or what their treatments look like for the kids because it sounds kind of [00:40:00] grueling.

Yeah, I think wilderness therapy. I mean, my boarding school was absolutely horrific. There's like really nothing positive about that place, but wilderness therapy, while imperfect, obviously it had many flaws to how it was run. I think that idea of bringing kids into wilderness as a setting to learn skills and build resilience and confidence.

It's a great idea. So I agree with you. Like there's so much, there's so many benefits to spending time in nature for your mental health. And I hope there will be more opportunities for teenagers now and in the future where they can get those benefits without it having to be done in a program like Those were pretty long programs too, if I remember right?

Like how much time I spent in them. Yeah. Like in the Wilderness Pro wasn't, I think that would probably be, yeah. How long was wilderness therapy for you? I was there 12 weeks, which is pretty typical. Most kids are there eight to 12 weeks in a tent. Eight to 10? I'd say eight to 10. Um, we didn't have tents.

I had a tarp. Oh, just a tarp. Yeah. Was it cold? I was there in the summer, so it was a little chilly at night, but kids get sent there in the winter. I don't know how they do it. I don't think I would've felt quite as. positive as I did at the end if I had been there in the winter. I think it would have been pretty angry if I'd been there in the snow.

Wow. And how many kids were there when you were there? It varied because people would come at different times and then leave at different times. So it ranged from eight to 12 kids in a group about. Oh, okay. Small. Yeah. And how many adults were there? Three to four. What would you say was the biggest takeaway that you got from that?

What did you learn from that 12 weeks? Wilderness was, I think it was a break from, this is going to say about the change in environment was helpful. Like, at home, I was so entrenched in these cycles of, you know, beating myself up all the time and always running and trying to numb and escape. And when I was in the wilderness, I had no way to escape.

Like I had absolutely nothing and there was nowhere I could go. And I was away from social media and my family and my friends and every creature comfort and everything that I knew. And it was the first time I really felt in touch with my own inner voice. because I just had a chance to listen for the first time.

And it also gave me an opportunity to build counter evidence to the beliefs that I had about myself about not being able to do anything difficult or feeling like I'm a weak person and I'm worthless and I can't do anything right. Like I was making fire with just sticks and rocks and you know, climbing up mountains and doing really difficult things.

And so I started to actually feel a sense of confidence in myself, like I can actually do difficult things. And that was really, really powerful. So to me, what you're saying is it was your chance to get so quiet, your environmental, the stimulation around you changed because you're in the wilderness. Yeah.

And that ultimately gave you the ability to change or to challenge the thoughts you had, the negative thoughts, that negative self talk and to evolve into new thinking patterns. Right? Yeah. Exactly. I mean, you reflected that perfectly. That's exactly what it was. Yeah. Well, Andrew and I talk about this all the time, but the thought, I think it, it really comes down as individuals understanding the thoughts that we have.

And it's hard to talk to young people about that because we're just, we are our thoughts, our thoughts, our thoughts are us. We don't know any difference. Like we just breathe in, we breathe out. So I think that that's a really, it's, I think it's a compelling piece. You were alone with your thoughts. We recorded a guest a few like last week I think it was he's a 17 year old 18 year old who took himself off of social media and had this pyramid of basically Stimulation and he said the happier you are the happiest you will be or the most content is when you're at the bottom of the pyramid Doing the things that are the least stimulating, you know, is it just, uh, and then he said, you can't get rid of all of it.

You shouldn't get rid of all of it. You know, the top stuff, the concerts and the skydiving, he said was exciting and it's fun. But so many teenagers these days are living in that top half of the pyramid and not allowing themselves to come down in that stimulation and be in their own thoughts. So their thoughts are scary to them.

Their thoughts are scary. Yeah, I've heard so many teens say that, that they always have something going, whether they're listening to music or a podcast or TikTok, they are never alone with their own thoughts. And I think people can approach life from that place or healing from that place of needing to take everything in all at once and fix it all at once.

And a lot of healing, I think, happens more slowly. And I love what this person was sharing. When you're the least stimulated is when you might feel the happiest. Yeah, young people are getting wiser and wiser. They certainly are. They really are. Yeah. Kara, when, if you're looking back on your journey and you could knit an ideal path, yeah, what would have been?

The right journey for you to get you to where you are, which is also probably a dumb question because you are here because you did exactly all those things, but there are no dumb questions at me. Yeah. Let me think about that for a second because I am grateful for where I am now. And also there are a lot of things I went through that I think I would have liked to have just had a normal high school experience.

I don't know if I would have opted into some of those things that I went through, but I don't regret them because they happened in the way that they needed to. And I'm where I need to be because of them. So, I don't know, I don't know like what treatment really would have prevented. Another way to think about it is, what do you think was most impactful to your healing?

I think what was most impactful for my healing was some of the experiences that I did have in wilderness that I already spoke about, like realizing the capacity that I had to influence My own life. For example, there was there was one night in when I was in wilderness where I told you we had tarp shelters and monsoon season happens in the summer.

So I built my shelter and it got flooded basically and I woke up in the middle of the night and I was you know, like submerged in water. And I just started laughing because I was like, this is so bad. This is so awful that it's actually kind of funny. Like this is like a funny moment to me because this just is so horrible.

But that was how I would cope with a lot of really uncomfortable experiences that were physically very uncomfortable, like just being rained on or held on. I would think like, I can choose how I feel about this right now, and that doesn't always mean that I would laugh about it. Sometimes I would be extremely pissed off and angry.

I could see the, that the power lay within me about how I would feel about a situation. Things are gonna happen, like it's gonna rain, and I can laugh about it or I can cry about it. Or I can cry about it and then laugh about it, or laugh about it and then cry about it. And I think as well, like just finding, finding my way, honestly, after treatment, like wilderness did have some healing elements, but I can't really say, I won't say there's like nothing positive I could say, but I don't think that I gained anything deeply meaningful about, from my experience in the hospital or the boarding school that I was in.

Like my healing really happened afterwards. And it came kind of from realizing like, My life doesn't have to look like what I thought it would look like, and maybe what everyone else's around me looks like. Like, it's okay that I don't love crowds. And it seems that like everyone else my age, like loves crowds and, you know, going to like big things.

Like that's just not my thing. And I keep pretending that that's my thing and it's not for me. And maybe everyone else has this path for their education and mine's going to go this way. And that's okay. It's okay that my life looks a little bit different. So finding acceptance for my path and my life.

You know, being the way that was authentic to me and supportive for me, and then finding mentors and people that inspired me and that I felt connected to and admiration for that a huge, a huge impact on me, and that just helped me feel. a sense of hope about my future and motivation, the same kind of motivation I'm describing about like, Oh, there's so many ways to have like a happy and successful life.

And I get to create that for myself. It's okay that I'm, it's not going to look like maybe what I thought it would look like. Yeah. Andrew, when just listening to Kira, I mean, we as adults, our age old people, we are still slowly realizing things too, day by day. Right? It doesn't ever change. It's always the same.

The next hurdle or the next level of accepting where we're at or ourselves and aging, right? That's where we're, Andrea and I are at. Okay. I shouldn't say Andrea, but me. It's like, [00:50:00] how do you accept where you're at at any stage in life? But I think also from a parent standpoint is one we've talked about this in other podcasts is not having the expectations of your kids of what you expect their life to be like, yeah, and then supporting them when they're questioning you.

Whether or not they're normal or they're expressing some sort of a insecurity about not fitting in and, and then encouraging the uniqueness and the ability to be authentic to yourself. It's probably very healing for a child. Yeah, I think teenagers have such a drive to fit in with their peers. Peer acceptance is so important to them.

And they often are seeing You know, one model of what a good life is and thinking that if they can't match that or mirror that, then they're doomed. And, you know, there's nothing good about them or nothing worthwhile. And then we were talking about the thoughts earlier, then the thoughts become so focused on what they're not and what's wrong, instead of focusing on what do I love, what lights me up, what do I want to create.

And focusing on that. So that's really, I think, what was, um, underlying, like, what was healing. It was like accepting that things aren't going to be perfect. And can that be okay? And then can I focus instead on what I do want to create in my life? instead of like lamenting what it's not. How can you help facilitate these conversations with a young person who is in the thick of it?

How do you help them see these new ideals or new ways to think? Like I, I think teenagers naturally have a sense of what they care about and what lights them up. And in the foundation of the work that I do with teenagers, even though, yes, there are different tools and practices that I can share with them.

And one of them, I guess this is an example I will give one practice where one exercise I take teenagers through is thinking about what their values are. What do you value? What do you care about? What is important to you? And asking them to reflect on why and then asking them, if someone was watching you live, what would they think your values are?

That's great. Because so often our own values are like a compass or like a litmus test for us because they can reveal to us like, okay, I'm feeling a sense of disease or I'm feeling down or I'm feeling, insecure or not proud of myself in some way and that can be very revealing to think about where am I not living into my own values because everyone has that center for themselves of how their life can be lived through integrity.

Um, so that's a valuable exercise that I do with teenagers because Yeah, as I was saying, so much of the relationship is listening to them and then it just so naturally happens that as they express and they talk and there's someone there, me being the someone or whoever else is in their con this conversation with them to bring them back to their center and to their own instinct and their own beliefs.

And I really reflect back to them. what I see in them that they value. So one teen that I've worked with for quite a while now, she really loves writing poetry. And it started as something that she kind of offhand mentioned. And then I said, Oh, I'd love to hear a poem. Like, if you want to share, then she share a poem.

And I asked her questions about it and we used it as kind of, uh, like a portal into doing some, some processing. And then I was like, could I send you a prompt and maybe you could write a poem about that. And so she kind of just gave me like a tiny little, She just mentioned it like so casually, but I could feel that it was important to her.

And so I consciously was like, let me reflect back to you that you have a gift in this, and that this is something that will be valuable to other people who read your poems. And this is a powerful way for you to process your own emotional experiences. And you're just really good at it. So a lot of what I think I or anyone working with teenagers do is reflecting back their, their skills and their talents and their inherent capacity to, to heal and to be whole beings in the world.

And then that will naturally orient them towards that process of like, let me focus on what actually lights me up. No, you're meeting them where they are, you're curious and yeah, staying right with them. Well, and I think that you're also validating them, whereas in, you know, you're in high school. A lot of times it's scary to show your peers that you're interested in something, especially when it's not mainstream.

You know, if you start saying, Hey, I really like to write poetry. And then all of a sudden everybody around you like poetry, you're like, yeah. And us as adults. Loser. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. And. We see it as like, I mean, that's such a huge form of communication. It's so intelligent to be able to do that.

But as a teenager, it's not mainstream. So yeah, validating is along the line parallel with being seen and being seen is very linked to feeling accepted. Yeah, absolutely. It's like someone sees me. Yeah. And then acknowledges this, yeah, this gift that I have or this skill that I'm working on and like witnesses me in that.

Yeah, I love that. So your name of your company is Homing Instinct, is that right? That is right, yes. Tell us a little bit about what it is that you do with parents and teenagers. You kind of touched on this and then um, how it kind of came about, what drove you to decide that you wanted to actually take your experience and give it back.

So it happened very organically. I mean, now, obviously I'm very open online about what I went through, but when I initially came out of it, You know, when I was, I came out, I was like a senior in high school, but I kind of like when I came home, no one really knew about it, but some of my parents, friends knew about it because obviously they would ask like, Hey, Kira hasn't been home in like many, many months.

Like, where is she? So some, some family friends. kids who are going through similar things. And they got my name from these family friends of mine and I would talk to their kid on the phone or I would talk to the parents and they would often express just, I think like this relief, like, Oh my God, you get it.

Or, Oh my God, do you like actually understand? And so I kind of did that, like not, really that frequently, but I would do that. And then people would share my name and I would talk to people who I didn't know, but they were, you know, like five degrees connected. And then a few years ago, I joined some parent support groups on Facebook because I was wanting to understand more of the parent's point of view because I do understand the kids.

And then I have, I had worked with teenagers in different settings, but I'm not a parent yet. And so I don't fully, I can't fully empathize with that role in all of this. And I started sharing in those groups and, you know, answering people's questions and stuff. And then people would inbox me and say, can I talk to you?

Can you talk to my kid? Oh, that's so cool. Can we talk to you? And I was doing that for a very, very long time. And then one day a woman asked me what I charge and I was like, I don't charge anything. And then I thought about it afterwards and I was like, huh. Maybe I could like really focus on building this and creating a body of work around this and giving this experience, this insight that I have in a more structured way through a business.

So that's how it started. Incredible. Wow. Yeah. And how cool that you turn your curiosity to studying us. Studying you. Like, let me take some notes. Those parents. Yeah. Those parents. That is so cool.

Oh, we need a lot of work. We need a lot of help. Oh my God. But don't we all? Like, please. Same. Always and forever. We'll probably be 90 years old and hopefully still changing and growing and, you know, Getting better. Where did you come up with the name Homing Instinct? What does it mean? So I am, uh, obviously I had such a positive experience.

my time in wilderness. I'm a deep believer in the teachings of nature. I think there are so many metaphors in nature that are like these symbolic processes, like the caterpillar becoming the butterfly reveals something fundamental about life, about ourselves. And I remember that many animals bears, birds, salmon, to name a few, have an inborn ability to return home after traveling great distances.

Their homing instinct. And when I think of healing, there is a lot of learning or unlearning and then relearning, but I believe a lot of it is remembering. And I think many of my early attempts, especially when I was in the TTI and then even after that, some of my attempts at therapy and whatnot were coming from this place of like I just felt like I'd been born wrong and there was something wrong about me and if I could only find like the right tool or the right therapy then one day I would finally feel okay and I think the real healing is from remembering that you are already enough and like you always were and so I think homing instinct captured that that belief about people having the ability and the knowing.

Yeah, that's great. Thanks for explaining that. Yeah, and I didn't know all those animals fall in line with those patterns. Yeah, it's really cool. I often think about animals, like, how did they just [01:00:00] know what to do? Like, they just know to, like, it's just wild. Like, they just know what to do. Especially the maternal kind of instincts.

Yes. Because they don't have what to expect when you're expecting. No, they don't have a book. Well, and how did they go so far away? And then come back to the exact place. Like turtles will swim great distances and then come back to the exact same place. How do they not make a wrong turn? I can barely get out of my neighborhood.

I know. And we have Google Maps. Like, it's crazy. Yeah. I want to make one clarification because I think I might have confused something early on. Was that the TTI was the boarding school, which was traumatic, was that piece of it. Yeah. But the um, wilderness piece of it was healing. You might change a few things in it, but it wasn't as harming as the boarding school and residential treatments.

Yes, so wilderness is within the TTI. Like the, the TTI is wilderness programs, it's residential treatment centers, it's hospitals, it's boarding schools. So the wilderness therapy was within the TTI. And I think that I, uh, I always want to say like, I think I'm unique in that I had a healing experience. I think there are a lot of people who have extremely negative experiences.

I mean, there are people who've been sexually and physically abused in those programs, and who have even died in those programs. So my experience in wilderness was healing, I think, primarily because of the nature. It was because I was in the woods for 12 weeks. Okay. And that was healing. So yes, you absolutely are correct in that my experience and my reflections on wilderness were that it was healing for me, but I just want to offer that because I don't want to act as a stand in or that I can speak for everyone who's been to wilderness.

Yeah. No, thanks for saying that. And your parents probably still have to have the same precautions that they would even with, with anything else. Absolutely. Okay. Karen, what's your favorite book to recommend to teens that might be healing or helpful? My favorite book is probably Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.

And what's your biggest takeaway there, if you were just to give it like a one sentence? pitch. So Viktor Frankl, for those who are not familiar, he is the founder of Logotherapy, which I think it's, so logo is like from the Greek word for, oh my god, logo Greek word, sorry guys. I love that we can hear you typing.

It's like good side effects, sound effects, I mean. Okay, it's reason, yes, because it's like logos, pathos, ethos, right? And so he founded Logotherapy, which is. an approach that focuses on finding meaning in life. And he is also a holocaust survivor. So he basically writes that someone who has a why can survive any circumstance.

And that if you can find a purpose and a meaning, that will be, be scaffolding against like the challenges of life. Mm. Love that. I think that is a perfect way to sum this whole conversation up. Yeah. Is that you found your why, and now you're passing it along. Yeah. That's beautiful. It's been such a pleasure to talk to you.

You're interesting. Oh, likewise. Thank you both so much. Yeah, thank you so much.

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