The Wellness Connection - November 2022

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W ELLN E SS N WELLNESS CONNECTION CONNECTION November 2022 August 2022 Issue One Four Issue

RAINBOW’S END CHRISTOPHER’S STORY THE CRISIS HOTLINE MEN’S SECOND CHANCE LIVING JENNA’S STORY

R E C OV E RY THERE IS HOPE

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HIGHER GROUND

igher Ground was established as a 501(c)(3) in emotional and physical reactions.

1999 with headquarters in Sun Valley, Idaho, and Higher Ground’s proven approach to treating PTSD marries programs taking place nationally. Higher Ground (HG) recreational therapy with the powers of the great outdoors to enhances the quality of life for people with disabilities achieve something we call whole-life healing. We encourage. through therapeutic recreation and education. Our programs We empower. And we give people the tools they need to strategically combine outdoor recreation activities with achieve the highest levels of independence. We make people therapeutic processes to help all participants confront current feel like themselves again. struggles and develop skills to find success in daily life.

Some of the results we have seen with recreational therapy With eleven recreation therapists on staff, we use Recreation on our programs for people with PTSD: Therapy throughout all our programs. HG runs programs for • Increased sense of camaraderie Welcome to the premier issue of Wellness Connection, a collaboration people of all abilities providing therapeutic activities and • Improved attentiveness and sleep quality of Rainbow’s Recovery Centerwith andcognitive the Crisis Hotline. goal confidence camps for children, teens,End adults, and veterans • Our Increased is to provide timely information on mental health issues, such as addiction, and physical disabilities. Higher Ground offers year-round • Decreased depression and anxiety depression, and trauma.

Wegolf, hoperock to shed light on and encourage programming such asgrief, mountain biking, disc climbing, There is no other program in the country that offers the discussion of mental illness, addiction, andsurfing, recovery.

We will present storieshealing of hopethat andwe do at Higher Ground. We are the golfing, standup paddleboarding, archery, rafting, whole-life encouragement as well as essays on related topics.

This is just a start.

We welcome your skiing and much more. only program that invites the spouse or other support person feedback and will be seeking submissions from our readers: wellness23@gmail.com Back in 1999 we were really good at one thing–teaching to be part of the journey. Together, the pair forms a new locals with disabilities to use adaptive skis. It took special community with other veterans and supporters. They take on equipment, compassion, and remarkable coaches. Today new challenges. They talk. They listen. They feel heard. They ainbow’s End Recovery set out staffed by good-hearted souls with little we still take to the mountain with the locals, but our feel hope. to be different than the traditional or no experience so there were some special equipment and coaches transform lives across the But the real healing begins when they head home. Higher substance use disorder treatment facility New bumps along the way.

Each stay client had in a different story, used a country, from the hiking trails of western York, toand the crashes Ground guarantees the veterans active recreation my friends and family had attended.

A The clinical director and one full-time butWe in the mountaintops of Idaho, to the surf of Los Angeles. We are by providing equipment anddifferent finances drug, needed. alsoend, each was substance abuse counselor and an energy counselor bore the burden of treating the a person in need of unconditional deploying the nation’s top recreational therapists and mental commit to three years of follow-up support. We check in, we love healer about thetopotential of the clients, but because we were new, and care. Once healthraved professionals give people of all abilities, especially our encourage, and there we help them remember thatthey theyrealized are notthey were property in Challis on the Salmon River as was only a handful a time. a wholetoperson and no veterans, the emotional and social tools they need to feel they at alone.

In addition, HG is nowaccepted taking itsasprogram veterans’ the perfect place for people to heal.

So it longer identified by their drug belong. communities across the country, providing equipment and use, they Going forward, we were able to recruit began. could begin to heal.the They would open Many of our participants, especially the veterans, suffer instructors. This allows the veteran to continue recreational more and more qualified staff. We from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This is a mental therapy near his home. up to each other, counselors, and group The easy part was converting thedifficulty bed-andworked on honing the Our curriculum and and their families also tell us how much disorder in which a person has recovering after participants members realizing they were not unique breakfast facility into client rooms.

The schedule to accommodate the needs experiencing or witnessing a terrifying event. Triggers often Higher Ground has helped them communicate. We couldn’t be or alone. hard part was the bureaucratic hoops. of the bring back memories of the trauma accompanied by clients intenseand the requirements of Continued: Next Page The hardest part was finding employees. accrediting agencies. We saw more clients We provided community experiences, and were building a reputation for quality such as the Fourth of July celebrations, When we opened our doors, we were care.

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prouder of that. Because when people can talk to each other, they feel understood. When you feel understood, you feel like you belong.

Higher Ground’s local adaptive programs provide a great therapeutic and social atmosphere for the children, teens, and adults that are involved. HG, with the leadership of Cara Barrett, began working with special education teachers back in 2002 and encouraged them to bring their students to the mountain for the school ski days and let HG instructors work one-on-one with them. These students are now adults that continue to participate in our year-round activities. Some of these individuals have been in the program for 15 years!

As we come into the winter season, we are counting down the days until November 24 when the mountain opens! We run our adaptive snow sports lessons every day of the week. For our local children and adults, HG offers our HG Green Team and our HG Black Team. These groups meet weekly on Dollar and Bald Mountain. Every Saturday, starting in January, we offer a snowshoe and Nordic program located at Quigley in Hailey.

Here is a list of our Veteran Camps offered this winter!

December 11-16 Sun Valley, ID Snow Sports January 8-13 Sun Valley, ID Snow Sports January 25-31 Keene, NY (Trail’s End Inn)

Ice Climbing February 5-10 Sun Valley, ID Snow Sports February 20-25 MT- Quiet Waters Ranch

Ice Climbing Feb 26-Mar 3 Mammoth, CA Snow Sports March 19-24 Sun Valley, ID Snow Sports Other programs are still being added to our winter calendar, so refer to our website for the most up-to-date calendar information https://highergroundusa.org/programs/#calendar If you are interested in donating to Higher Ground or volunteering, please contact: www.highergroundusa.org or call 208-726-9298.

TESTIMONIALS Every day we get to see people accomplish things they never thought possible. A woman paraplegia bikes down a mountain. A child with autism forms a lifelong friendship.

A military veteran learns how to connect with his wife again. Their stories are powerful. Here are a few of our favorites: Lupita Hernandez, past program participant and a retired U.S. Marine, started a PTSD awareness run after attending our Higher Ground Ranch Rodeo program. She started running to improve her mental health to fight her depression and PTSD, but what grew from it was “Run for Their Lives,” a yearly ultra-marathon for PTSD awareness.

“As a healthcare worker and first responder, giving excellent care and being ready to serve others is the top priority. I truly did not realize how draining that work can be and how the associated traumas, physically, mentally, and spiritually, changed me. This camp helped me realize that I am not alone in my struggles and that being strong can mean being vulnerable. Our river journey was lifeaffirming on many levels. The river offers lessons in life: you tackle the waves, paddle like hell when needed and you’re richly rewarded with smooth waters and beauty on every side. I truly learned that resiliency is not not falling apart, but my ability to pivot and adjust as needed to life’s challenges.”

“I was in a dark hole before coming. During the Higher Ground program, I was able to pull myself out. Thank you.”

“HG really ignited a desire in me to search out new friends and encouraged me to be open in broadening my circle of friends. It has helped me to knock down the walls I have put up. I have met people in this HG group that I will continue to keep in contact with and most likely see in the future.”

GRATITUDE Higher Ground saved my little friend Conrad’s life.

Conrad was born with intellectual disabilities and has faced many challenges in his young life. As a dear friend of his loving parents, I have known Conrad since he came into the world. To add to his many challenges, his father Winston Barrie sadly and suddenly passed away when Conrad was only 14 years old.

Winston’s family has had a residence here in the Valley for 30 years. It was Conrad’s second home, where the German shepherds followed him wherever he wandered, like Great Pyrenees guarding their sheep, fishing in the river, hunting for morels in the woods, hiking and camping out in his teepee under the stars, hanging out with his adoring cousins, and skiing with his dad at Higher Ground.

Following his father’s untimely passing, his mother Terra made the difficult and brave decision to relocate from Los Angeles to Sun Valley. One of her major motivations was Conrad’s love of Higher Ground.

Conrad found another home at Higher Ground. His mentor, Mose Duchano, became a father figure, best buddy, and trusted friend. Conrad made new friends at Higher Ground and overcame his painful shyness. He was never judged for his intellectual disabilities and was welcomed in the community with open arms. Higher Ground gave him a safe place to thrive. It opened his world to friendships, independence, self-confidence and a true sense of belonging, There is no greater gift.

The Conrad I know today is no longer ‘my little friend Conrad.’ He has grown into a tall, handsome, brilliant, confident, and compassionate young man with an inimitable zest for life. Conrad is a true testimonial to the devotion and commitment Higher Ground brings to our community.

On behalf of my dear friends Winston Barrie, his mother Terra Park and the entire extended love of the Barrie family, I want to thank you for giving Conrad his bright, enriching life and future.

Special thanks to Cara Barrett and Mose Duchano. There are no better angels.

In gratitude, Claudia Cabot Mohr

HIGHER GROUND

ON THE WATER, IN THE MOMENT Recovery and therapeutic fly fishing

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By Patrick M. Scanlon

ob, a recovering alcoholic, describes the healing effects of fly fishing this way: The therapeutic aspects of fly fishing are that it is an absolutely wonderful sport into which you can lose yourself completely, and it takes the place of addiction in so many different ways. You don’t miss the ritual of drinking. It occupies your time, your mind. It stimulates the pleasure side of your brain. It’s by its very nature therapeutic. Being outdoors and noticing the world around you is something addicts don’t do very much…. There’s nothing else where you’re so much in the moment.

In the moment. This, the very present-ness of fly fishing in a stunning natural setting, has been central to its adoption by numerous therapeutic programs in the United States and elsewhere. These include, for cancer survivors: Casting for Recovery, Casting for Hope, Hope on the Rise, and Reel Recovery; for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and physical disabilities: Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing and Rivers of Recovery; and for recovering addicts, Four Circles Recovery Center (Horse Shoe, North Carolina) and Rainbow’s End Recovery Center (Challis, Idaho).

To learn firsthand about how therapeutic fly fishing is employed in treatment for drug and alcohol abuse, I visited Rainbow’s End. The compound sits in a lovely, high-desert setting next to a watercourse, the Salmon River, which is full of rainbow trout. Rainbow’s End highlights therapeutic fly fishing in its promotional literature and on its website as central to the Center’s experience. The Salmon River is the “perfect atmosphere for healing and recovery from drug and alcohol addiction.” Fly fishing “requires timing, patience and discipline, all skills which help in a person’s recovery from drug and alcohol addiction.” It is a “contemplative activity” and “comparable to meditation.” “When standing in the river, one concentrates on nature, fly fishing and playing the fish.

Your mind shifts into a lower gear; the rhythm of the river and casting help reduce anxiety and tension.”

Studies in complementary medicine have confirmed that fly fishing can offer a sense of well-being as well as numerous other benefits. These include exercise in calm-inducing surroundings, focus that offers troubled minds a respite from anxiety, self-assurance that comes with mastering a difficult task, and a sense of camaraderie and common purpose among people in similar circumstances.

At Rainbow’s End, I spoke with counselors who incorporated therapeutic fly fishing in treatment, and listened to recovering addicts like Bob, above, speak of their journey toward sobriety.

A counselor, echoing others elsewhere, spoke of fly fishing as a kind of moving meditation, a path to mindfulness: It teaches people how to live in the now. Keep their head out of the past. Keep their head out of the future. Helps them to be present in the moment right now, to connect with the world around them. Brings them back and grounds people. . . in the moment….: the water, the fish, the air.

We talk a lot about mindfulness around here. We teach them how to breathe, get that nice breathing going. Then we teach them to cast and get a rhythm with the breathing and the casting. And they forget about the past and stop worrying about the future.

When you’re totally in the moment and you’re fly fishing, your mind is on the motion of the fly rod and the rhythm of the cast. Emotions just disappear, and you become one with what’s around you. Like I said, you’re not in the past, you’re not in the future, you’re not living off an emotion unless it’s the excitement of fishing. It’s about letting go. This is how simple

it is to let go. You get mindful and into the moment. Packing these problems around does not solve them. Staying upset and worried does not fix anything. To let it go is key to everything.

For many of the clients who are struggling to adjust to sobriety, finding harmony and calm can be a challenge. This is especially the case for those who are not yet committed to changing their lives. Some residents have trouble just sitting still. For the counselors at Rainbow’s End, the moving meditation of fly fishing offers an avenue to mindfulness that is itself a pleasurable physical outlet and stress reliever, a way to discharge dark psychic energy.

A recovering alcoholic at the center speaks of how fly fishing has been a source of “rejuvenation” and reconnection with himself.

“There’s a centeredness about fly fishing,” he says. “It forces you to think without distraction. It forces you to explore your internal ‘me.’”

In addition, a growing body of research has confirmed that time in nature calms and comforts stressed human beings. One study concludes that contact with any green space “can lower stress levels, restore powers of concentration, and alleviate irritability.” More to the point, research has shown that we are least stressed when in a place that in our long history as a species would offer safety, particularly where there are visible horizons and moving water–that is, in places where we go fly fishing. Places like Rainbow’s End. “When you bring somebody into the present moment, that’s what it’s all about,” a counselor at Rainbow’s End says. “Fly fishing is a present-moment thing. They’re fly fishing. They’re not thinking about the past, and they’re not thinking about the future. They’re right there in the moment. You bring them into the present moment of fly fishing, and you tell them, ‘Look at what you’re doing right now.’”

Therapeutic fly fishing is a fairly recent addition to the complementary medicine toolkit (although the term appears so often in the literature that it has earned an abbreviation: TFF).

Already, however, it has shown promise as a means of bringing peace, calm, and clarity to those in recovery.

Patrick M. Scanlon is the author of Casting and Mending: How therapeutic fly fishing heals shattered minds and bodies, RIT Press, 2022.

POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER

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ost-traumatic stress disorder, commonly referred to as PTSD, is a mental health condition that develops because of a traumatizing event in which the person continues to have intrusive memories, flashbacks, avoidance, negative alterations in cognition and mood, and continued or increased levels of anxiety and/or depression. Combat veterans are a unique population who are often diagnosed with PTSD due to traumatic events from deployment. These events are often things that civilians cannot comprehend experiencing, so veterans can feel shameful about their experiences. The struggle with transitioning from a military lifestyle to a civilian life is also difficult because they don’t want to be seen as weak or less than, so they tend to act like nothing happened and try to push forward. This compensation of avoiding memories of the trauma does not allow for them to process what the experience was like for them, which adds to the shame, and can create barriers in treating PTSD. Part of treating PTSD is understanding it is not a personal weakness but a problem in recovery– something got in the way of the natural process. This could be due to any number of reasons but comes down to the disconnect between the conscious and unconscious brain. When a traumatic event happens, there is a primitive/natural response that happens called fight-or-flight. This unconscious act is in the part of the brain devoted to survival and because this is an unconscious act, the conscious brain is not able to process the denial of the event or the emotions related to the event. This is specifically difficult for veterans because it goes against their training, so they tend to act like nothing happened and try to move on. However, trauma leaves traces on the mind and body, and when triggered the body will react without thought.

PTSD can be treated using several therapeutic modalities like equine therapy, cognitive processing therapy, EMDR (eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing), or ART (accelerated resolution therapy), among others. Other interventions that can be used to decrease the symptoms related to PTSD are activities that connect the mind and Jenna the body, such as yoga, grounding, meditation, mindfulness, and bilateral stimulation.

These activities are an essential part in being able to be grounded in the moment and not getting lost in the past. A priority in treatment should be finding a therapist who can provide an empathetic space because empathy drives connection and pray connection that I never forget how I felt in the picture on the left. eighteen months ago, I was hopeless and felt just as worthless. counteracts isolation, feeling alone and shame.

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I prayed that I wouldn't have to wake up to live another day. My unresolved trauma throughout my life had become too much. I was at the height of my alcoholism, drinking a fifth a day and in so much emotional and spiritual pain.

Chelsey Winkle, LCSW Chelsey is a trauma-certified therapist

I was given a choice and an opportunity eighteen months ago, and hoping it was a way out. I left for rehab at Rainbows End Recovery Center in Idaho. thirty four days later and the journey had only just begun. The last year and a half has been the hardest, most beautiful, most rewarding, and most peaceful of my life.

I have gained a love and an understanding for not only myself, but for those around me as well. I am blessed in my professional and personal life to help those still suffering today with their addiction. I have meaningful and honest connections with the Colletti,people Executive Director, Rainbow’s End of Recovery around me today.

I am capable handlingCenter even the worst Claudia Mohr, situation withCabot more love andMFA more grace today. I am a work in progress, with the hope every day to be a better me than I was Contact us at RERCjournal@gmail.com the day before. I have a beautiful and ever growing and changing relationship with a higher power of my own design and I have Resources more blessings and more hope than I could have ever dreamed, even on my best day 18 months ago.

MISSION STATEMENT The Wellness Connection was developed to provide timely information on mental health issues, such as addiction, depression, grief and trauma, and showcase the community nonprofit services. We will highlight the services of a different nonprofit organization each month to give the community a better understanding of the broad scope of services offered.

We will present stories of hope and encouragement as well as essays on related topics. We welcome your comments and contributions.

Nancy Del

Rainbow’s End Recovery Center I wish I could give even just a glimpse of|the hope 879-2267 and love I have www.rainbowsendrecoverycenter.com 208 discovered on this journey. I continue to do the next right thing,

go of things I cannot control, and exist for just |one day at481-0182 a Men’s Second Chance let Living www.msclhouse.org 208 time. Thankful every day for the opportunity to have lived this life.

Higher Ground www.higherground.org | 208-726-9298 Jenna H.

12 Step Group Meetings, Mental Health Group Meetings Resources The Sun Club www.sunclub.org Rainbow's End Recovery Center | 208 879-2267

NAMI www.nami-wrv.com | 208 481-0686 www.rainbowsendrecoverycenter.com

Men’s Second Chance Living www.msclhouse.org | 208 481-0182

The Advocates For Survivors ofThe Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault Crisis Hotline www.thecrisishotline.org | 208 788-3596 www.theadvocates.org | 208 788-4191 12 Step Group Meetings, Mental Health Group Meetings The Sun Club www.sunclub.org

St. Lukes Mental Health Services www.stlukesonline.org NAMI www.nami-wrv.com | 208 481-0686 208 788-2134 Advocates For Survivors of Domestic Abuse www.theadvocates.org | 208 788-4191

St. Lukes Mental Health Services www.stlukesonline.org The Suicide Hotline | DIAL 988 208 788-2134

The Suicide Hotline | DIAL 988

Publisher Nancy Del Colletti, Executive Director, Rainbow’s End Recovery Center

Our Sponsors

Our Sponsors

Editor In Chief Claudia Cabot Mohr, MFA Creative Direction Encore Design + Consulting

Publisher Nancy Colletti, Executive Director, Rainbow’s End Recovery Center

Editor In Chief Claudia Mohr, Manager, The Crisis Hotline