Yellowstone Boys and Girls Ranch’s Experiential Therapy Program provides youth and families with an atmosphere conducive to restoring relationships and enhancing personal growth.
The program facilitates therapeutic condition for the participants to address emotions and trust not easily accessed in traditional therapeutic environments. It is designed to empower participants to increase trust, problem-solving skills and an awareness of responsibility and safety. It is experiential in nature, meaning we address the above issues through activities that may physically, mentally and emotionally challenge each participant. Our program is utilized not only by our clients, but also by our client’s families and our staff. In addition, various outside groups, including youth groups, service organizations, businesses, schools and universities access our program, which is designed with content to meet the specific needs of the clients.
Goal: To provide and facilitate a physically and emotionally safe environment that promotes growth, understanding, responsibility, and, ultimately, empowers the client within a group setting.
Belief: That everyone is capable of change, growth and care.
Philosophy: Responsibility leads to empowerment, which leads to an increase in choices, which ultimately, leads to success.
Empowerment: The ability and willingness to take responsibility for beliefs, thoughts, behaviors and choices, and the results that occur from them in life. It means going beyond present conditions and perceived limiting factors, making a change that will enhance life experiences, and will increase the capacity to perform at higher levels of potential.
Empowerment is reached through structured exercises that dynamically produce and display thoughts and/or behaviors, which by exposing or revealing them through various activities, may show themselves to be counterproductive to reaching maximum life potential. These structured exercises, and the processing that goes with them, are parts of the discipline defined as experiential therapy.
Experiential therapy can be defined as the therapeutic approach that presents and experience to a person or a group. It then enables that person or group to become aware of thoughts, beliefs or behaviors that occurred as a result of the experience, affected some part of that experience or created similar experience in a previous situation. At some point processing usually occurs around the thoughts, feelings and/or concerns surrounding those behaviors.
YBGR’s experiential facilities, course elements, and equipment are constantly monitored and regularly inspected. The facilities, allowing for high, low and ground initiatives, foster teamwork, communication, self-reliance and personal achievement. Safety is the number one priority in each activity. Trust, growth and risk taking will not occur unless a person feels emotionally and physically safe. Safety is a shared responsibility between the facilitator and group members.
