Therapy
in Nature
Life isn’t just about living. It’s about living well.
Likewise, therapy isn’t just about relieving symptoms of depression and anxiety, learning boundaries, and sorting through difficult times in your life. It’s about finding the tools you need to enjoy life, live with purpose, and be confident and in control of your life.
Therapy promotes healing, and so does being in nature.
Let’s put them together.
The Connection between Nature and Mental Health
Research shows that spending time in nature improves your mood, reduces stress and anger, and helps you to feel more relaxed and be more active.
You can also experience the healing benefits of nature. For example, being in nature lowers blood pressure, muscle tension, and the production of stress hormones.
It helps you cope with pain and discomfort.
Time in nature increases the ability to pay attention, helps us to feel calm and relaxed, and connects us and the larger world.
Wellness and Nature
Therapy
A treatment intended to relieve or heal a disorder.
Nature
Reduces symptoms of anxiety and depression
Increases physical activity and social contact
Improves confidence and self-esteem
Provides a range of opportunities for coping skills and grounding techniques
As a nature lover myself, I have found that the healing power of nature is not only helpful, it’s a fun experience.
How Do We Use Nature as a
Tool for Healing in Therapy?
Shortly after we begin working together, we will make goals to help empower you to live your life with purpose.
Using nature as a tool to help you work toward a goal can look like:
Processing through a breakup by having a therapy session watching the sunset on a quiet bench in Palm Beach.
During the session, we would relate your experience of loss to the sunset, exploring the similarities and grieving the loss together. The earth presents a unique representation of the loss that can be experienced with the senses but also verbally with me and seated safely in a supportive environment.
The following counseling session would be at the beach together watching the sunrise. During that session, we would process the similarities between the sun rising and the newness that comes from a fresh start.
Begin increasing confidence by spending 2-3 sessions at the beach learning to paddle board.
Here you can process through your anxiety and fear while learning something new. This can help us find personalized coping skills that work for you. Also, learning and practicing a new skill (paddle boarding, snorkeling, scuba diving) can be used long after your goals are met, and therapy ends.
Let’s say your goal is to decrease the stress and anxiety you have been feeling. In addition to therapeutic breathing and grounding techniques (skills I can teach you in session), we would incorporate snorkeling into your treatment as a tool.
Maybe we spend a session at the Blue Heron Bridge at high tide with masks, fins, and snorkels. Using beautiful South Florida natural resources in our session allows me to teach you grounding techniques that make you aware of living in the present moment. We practice them together as we immerse ourselves in nature which, studies show, naturally reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety.
Using nature as part of your work in therapy also helps with presence and awareness, learning and practicing gratitude, and experiencing awe and wonder.
We often live by the boundaries we create for ourselves, unaware that we were the creators. Not only do I want you to cope and heal, but I also want you to learn tools for living well. Ultimately, I want to help you take control of your life and become the author of your story.
What to Expect
Adding Therapy in Nature to the Counseling Process
Using nature can add a deeply meaningful and experiential aspect to the therapeutic experience. Therapy in Nature is an option for those of you who are digging it! Most of my clients meet in my Palm Beach Gardens, Florida office or from anywhere in Florida via online therapy. If you want to incorporate nature into your time with me in therapy— awesome! If not, no worries!
While I think adding nature into the therapeutic process gives therapy a total cool factor, there needs to be order and it must be carefully integrated into a treatment plan. All that work is done at the office or via online therapy where we can establish a good relationship, safety and trust. The specific intervention is personalized based on your unique needs and interests.
Below are examples of how incorporating nature as a therapeutic tool may look for you. I want you to notice that they each follow a plan:
You come in with a problem which we explore at the office or via online therapy in depth.
Together we come up with goals—what you want to be different in your life when you are finished with therapy.
Then we use a range of treatment tools tailored to your needs and personality.
Example 1
Let’s say you are struggling with insecurity and sadness which is causing you to avoid social interactions and leading you deeper into depression (presenting problem). We will meet together in the office to explore what’s happening and decide that your goal in therapy is to increase confidence. In addition to therapeutic techniques like CBT, Solution Focused Therapy, and Existential therapy that I use in your regular sessions, we could incorporate learning paddle boarding into your treatment as a tool.
Build Confidence and Work Through Difficult Emotions
We might schedule 3 sessions to be spent at the beach—you and me with paddleboards. We would use that experience to work through the struggle of trying something new (in this case paddle boarding—feeling through the self-doubt and frustration that comes with it together), learning coping skills that can be applied right away as you are learning and building confidence through the willingness to keep trying until you have it.
So we are learning a life lesson that confidence is the result of looking silly while learning but sticking with it anyway. Not only do we learn through that activity, but I am also teaching you a coping and social skill (paddle-boarding) that can be used long after therapy ends.
Example 2
Let’s say you are struggling with anxiety—constant intrusive thoughts that you can’t turn off, heart palpitations and general worry (presenting problem). As with example 1, we meet together in the office to explore what’s happening and decide that your goal in therapy is to decrease anxiety. In addition to therapeutic breathing and grounding techniques as well as maybe REBT, we could incorporate snorkeling into your treatment as a tool.
Learn to Cope and Be Present
Maybe we spend a session at Peanut Island and another at Ocean Reef Park on Singer Island with masks, fins, and snorkels. In these experiential activities, I am teaching you grounding techniques that make you aware of living in the present moment.
So what we are allowing is for therapy to be experienced outside of the office. Not only are you learning coping skills in your regular sessions, but we are also practicing them together in nature, modifying based on your individual needs and processing through what you are experiencing in the moment and making sense of it. I am also showing you how to access free resources (Peanut Island and Ocean Reef Park) that are available to practice learned coping skills on your own and long after therapy ends.
Example 3
Let’s say you are struggling with finding meaning and direction in your life– always comparing yourself to others on social media and it’s causing sadness, isolation, and criticism of self and others. You feel like others are living their best lives and your life is boring and purposeless (presenting problem). We meet together in the office to explore what’s happening and decide that your goal in therapy is to reduce sadness and increase autonomy and motivation– meaning that you are in control of your own life and can make lasting changes.
Discover Meaning and Control
In addition to existential and Reality therapies, we could incorporate Discover SCUBA into your treatment as a tool. I have a trusted partner in a local dive shop and together we could take a 2 hour Discover Scuba course. If you decide you like SCUBA you can take the full course to get certified, but we use that experiential activity to show you that focusing on what you can control– signing up for SCUBA or a cooking or dance class and less on what you can’t control increases motivation, autonomy, and social support.
So we are learning a life lesson that you are the author of your story. You are in control of what you do with your time and there are so many opportunities to live a life of adventure right here in our beautiful South Florida backyard!
Therapy can not only help you gain relief from your struggles, it can also teach you how to really live and experience your life.
How I Can Help
