Clinical Treatment
Evoke’s Clinical Approach
Evoke Therapy Programs seek to provide the best possible treatment for each client’s whole-health with comprehensive family support. Using our connection to the wilderness, we facilitate individual transformation that creates sustainable change. Many participants develop a strong affinity for nature during the course of their stay and attribute much of their progress to being in nature.
The beauty and tranquility of the natural elements provide a powerful metaphor and backdrop to addressing life’s difficulties. We teach participants how to feel by providing a “digital detox,” removing distractions and access to debilitating coping mechanisms.
While the natural setting is inspirational, many people are not aware that modern wilderness therapy combines the most trusted therapeutic approaches to facilitate change. Wilderness becomes the delivery method for traditional and evidence-based approaches. Evoke’s Intensives and Pursuits programs borrow from modern wilderness therapy, taking advantage of nature and its ability to inspire, heal, and create a platform for traditional therapeutic approaches.
Aspects of Our Clinical Approach
Each Evoke therapist brings his or her unique expertise to treat specific niches in mental health and addiction:
- Developmental Psychology provides a context for understanding how the history of each client affects current struggles and conflicts. Learning to understand the defenses that protect our unconscious shame, pain, and conflicts are accessed through a compassionate exploration of our past. Understanding brain development adds significant insight into the functioning and treatment of teens and young adults.
- Addiction, the effect of trauma, and the relationship between our emotions and our decision-making are all better understood with a more complete understanding of the brain. 12-Step Recovery is an essential aspect of treatment for those who identify themselves as addicts and has powerful applications to the entire family.
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is often used to address unhealthy thinking patterns or associations that are present with many mental health and addictive disorders.
- Principles from Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) help to address participants who struggle with self-harm, impulse control, or personality disorder traits.
- Understanding relationship roles, rules, and boundaries through Family Systems Theory allow our therapists to support and treat the entire system rather than just the identified patient.
- Attachment Theory helps our therapists to understand the quality of attachment and provide parents with tools and insights to improve the connection to their child.
- Groups utilize mindfulness practices through various meditative techniques improving awareness and working towards whole health.
- Play therapy also informs us as play provides us with a sense of healthy escape and play is often how our innermost feelings are accessed.
Joseph Campbell
The Work of Joseph Campbell is a powerful underpinning of the Evoke philosophy. A central aspect of our program is our use and understanding of metaphor.
Campbell identified core aspects of human existence by studying all the major religions of the world and all the great stories. He diagrammed a journey common to all of us. He taught us that our trials and challenges provided us with a perspective that could offer us strength. He invited us to discover the meaning and the lessons that our journey offers us.
By entering the wilderness, each participant is invited to face his or her fears and make peace with them. Helpers provide assistance and new doors open where once there were only walls. In the end, the traveler of the journey lets go of some parts of the old self and embraces some things of the new self. This transformation is central to the Evoke Therapy process.
