Girls, Grime, and Relationships

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Girls, Grime, and Relationships


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• Eilean Mackenzie LCPC
• Clinical Director New Horizons for Young
  Women. Nhywcd_at_earthlink.net
• Deb Hibbard
• Program Director New Horizons for Young
  Women. Nhywpd_at_earthlink.net

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NHYW History

• Started 6/ 2001, Jackie RMA graduate vision to
  have a program that meets the needs of girls.
• Connection Philosophy is my concept that
  everything we do in life, positive or negative,
  connects or disconnects us with something else.
  An example of this is technology. The more
  connected we become through technology the more
  disconnected we become with our family. As a
  society we have replaced family dinners with
  electronic jewelry!
• Jacqueline Danforth Founder and Executive
  Director
• New Horizons For Young Women

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Girls, Grime, Relationship Workshop

• Our goal is to provide a review of literature
  that is specific to girls developmental issues
  and discuss how that plays out at NHYW. To
  provide participants with an opportunity to share
  experiences and talk about what they have found
  that works. Lastly, to present what we believe
  makes for best practice in working with teenage
  girls.

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Program Description

• Program Department
• Young Women Ages 13-18
• 6-9 Week Year-Round Program located in Maine
• Clinical Therapy integrated with Emotional
  Growth work
• Nature/Outdoor 5 day Expeditions, 3 day Base
  Camp Model
• Clinical Therapy Department
• Bio-Psycho-Social Model using cognitive
  behavioral, relational and family systems
  interventions
• Therapy is driven by an individualized
  treatment plan
• o    Individual Clinical Therapy (2) times per
  week/Group Clinical Therapy
• Weekly Clinical Family Support  
• Psychological/Psychiatric Assessments Offered
• o    Comprehensive discharge summary with
  progress on goals, accomplishments and
  recommendations 
• Field / Logistics Department
• Physically challenging, experienced focused,
  year-round expeditions
• Seasonal Physical Activity Averages
• Summer Canoeing/Backpacking Winter
  Camping/Snowshoeing 8 miles/day

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Program Description

• Medical / Nutrition Department
• On Site, Fully Equipped Infirmary staffed by
  state licensed medical personnel
• Weekly Wellness Check-Ups
• Medical and Medication Education
• Monitored Nutrition consisting of whole grains,
  protein, fruits and vegetables
• Admissions Department
• Enrollment Application Accessible on Website
• Educational Loans Offered, Maine scholarship
  fund
• Supportive Services
• Therapists involved in family aftercare
  planning
• Parent Representative available for support
• Human Resources Department
• Therapists Mental Health licensed in the State
  of Maine (Min. Masters)
• Annual training and/or certification in various
  disciplines Medical, Risk Management,
  De-escalation/Intervention Techniques, Client
  Rights, Confidentiality, Cultural Diversity,
  Workplace Conduct, and Seasonally Specific
  Outdoor Activities

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NHYW Mission

• INDIVIDUAL To support young women in better
  understanding themselves and what motivates their
  choices, relationships and behaviors.
• FAMILY To establish healthy connections between
  young women and their families.
• SOCIO-CULTURAL To empower young women in
  navigating society and culture.
• APPROACH To challenge young women with empathy,
  respect, truth and support on their journey of
  personal growth.

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NHYW Values

• New Horizons For Young Women provides the
  opportunity to reflect on past decisions and
  future choices. If participants choose to fully
  engage in the program they will learn the value
  of personal challenges, relationships and
  empowerment. We will encourage girls to embrace
  opportunities designed to enhance their personal
  strengths. New Horizons empowers young women to
  confidently meet the complex challenges in
  todays society.

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Licensing

• State of Maine DMH licensed as an outpatient
  mental health clinic for children and 18 year
  olds.
• State of Maine DHS licensed as an outdoor youth
  camp.
• CARF Commission on Accreditation of
  Rehabilitation Facilities, 3 year accreditation.
• MOFGA (Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners
  Association) Certified Gardens.

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YOQ Data 2006

• Table 1

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Table 2This table details baseline admissions
YOQ-SR 2.0 scores compared to baseline scores of
students in residential, outpatient, partial
hospital, and community settings.
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• Table 3
• This table is a comparison of 2005 and 2006 NHYW
  admission and discharge scores with Keith
  Russell's admission and discharge totals from
  research conducted in 2002.

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Teenage Developmental Issues

• Important to look at teenage developmental issues
  for both boys and girls. The study Raising
  teens A synthesis of Research and a Foundation
  for Action published by Harvard School of Public
  Health and edited by Rae Simpson 2001 outlines
  the 10 Tasks of Adolescence. This study pulled
  together much of the current research on
  adolescent development and put it into a format
  that is helpful for both parents and
  professionals alike.
• Adjust to Sexually Maturing Bodies and Feelings
• Develop and Apply Abstract Thinking Skills
• Develop and Apply a More Complex Level Of
  Perspective Taking
• Develop and Apply new Coping Skills in Areas such
  as Decision Making, Problem Solving, and Conflict
  Resolution
• Identify Meaningful Moral Standards, Values and
  Belief Systems
• Understand and Express more complex Emotional
  Experiences
• Form Friendships that are Mutually Close and
  Supportive
• Establish Key Aspects of Identity
• Meet the Demands of Increasingly Mature Roles and
  Responsibilities
• Renegotiate Relationships with Adults in
  Parenting Roles
• Young women attending our program readily
  address these developmental tasks and the
  combination of both outdoor, wilderness
  experiences and therapeutic interventions
  provides a framework to explore these issues.

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Young Women are different than Young men

• While research continues to confirm that there
  are similarities between genders, there are also
  issues unique to the process of development in
  teenage girls. I want to present a brief overview
  of literature that has spoken to these
  differences and why they are important.
• Jean Baker Miller Toward A New Psychology of
  Women (1976)
• In this groundbreaking book Dr Miller maintained
  that womens desire to connect with others and
  their emotional accessibility were strengths, not
  weaknesses as they were traditionally regarded.
  She created a framework for looking at girls and
  womens development within the context of
  relationships.

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• Carol Gilligan In a Different Voice
  Psychological Theory of Womens Development
  (1982)
• Gilligan asserted that women have differing
  moral and psychological tendencies than men.
  According to Gilligan, men think in terms of
  rules and justice and women are more inclined to
  think in terms of caring and relationships. She
  asks that Western society begin to value both
  equally. She outlines three stages of moral
  development progressing from selfish, to social
  or conventional morality, and finally to post
  conventional or principled morality. The
  developmental challenge for women is to learn to
  attend to both their own interests and to the
  interests of others.

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• Lyn Mikel Brown Carol Gilligan, Meeting at the
  Crossroads Womens Psychology and Girls
  Development (1992)
• Based on a 5 year study of girls going through
  middle to high school Brown Gilligan listen to
  the stories of girls as they negotiate their way
  through adolescence.
• We witness the struggle girls undergo as they
  enter adolescence only to find that what they
  think and feel can no longer be said directly.
  We see them at a cultural impasse, and listen as
  they make the painful, necessary adjustments,
  outspokenness giving way to circumspection,
  self-knowledge to uncertainty, authority to
  compliance. These changes mark the edge of
  adolescence as a watershed in womens
  psychological development, a time of wrenching
  disjunctions between body and psyche, voice and
  desire, self and relationship.
• For a brief period in early adolescence, usually
  about age 12 , girls appear to understand the
  centrality of relationships in their lives at
  the same time they are able to verbalize the
  frustrations they feel when faced with the
  conflict between maintaining themselves and their
  relationships with others.
• Their research suggests that adolescence is a
  time of disconnection, sometimes dissociation or
  repression of womens lives, so that women often
  do not remember tend to forget or to cover
  over- what as girls they have experienced and
  known.

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• Mary Pipher, Reviving Ophelia Saving the
  Selves of Adolescent Girls (1994)
• Pipher argues that we live in a look obsessed,
  media-saturated, girl poisoning culture. A
  culture that encourages girls to stifle their
  creative and natural impulses. Prior to age 12
  girls are often assertive, energetic and
  resilient, then with the transition to
  adolescence they become more deferential,
  self-critical and depressed.
• She names her book after the story of Ophelia in
  Shakespeares Hamlet. As a girl Ophelia is happy
  and free, but with adolescence loses herself.
  When she falls in love with Hamlet she lives only
  for his approval. Ophelia is torn by her efforts
  to please both Hamlet and her father. When Hamlet
  spurns her for being an obedient daughter, she
  goes mad with grief and drowns herself in a
  stream of flowers.
• Most girls chose to be socially accepted and
  split into two selves, one that is authentic and
  one that is culturally scripted. In public they
  become who they are supposed to be.

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• Sarah Shandler, Ophelia Speaks Adolescent Girls
  Write about Their Search for Self (1999)
• Inspired by reading Reviving Ophelia Sarah
  Shandler provides a forum for adolescent girls
  to tell the honest stories of their lives.
  Ophelia Speaks is a compilation of short essays
  and poetry on themes of body image, sexuality,
  friendship, self-identity, family relationships.
  Shandler notes in her editorial that many of the
  girls who wrote about dark problems were on the
  surface perfect girls smart, pretty and
  popular. She maintains that adolescent girls are
  caught in the crossfire between where we have
  been told we should be and where we really are.
• This is the first book we have students read at
  NHYW. Their assignment is to read the book, write
  about several stories they identify with and then
  run a group talking about why they chose the
  specific stories and how they relate to your
  life.

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• Rachel Simmons, Odd Girl Out The Hidden Culture
  of Aggression in Girls (2002)
• Building on the work of Gilligan and Brown
  Rachel Simmons used their Listening Guide to
  interview adolescent girls (10 14 years old) and
  explore the topic of bullying between girls. She
  notes that the importance of relationships and
  connection in girls lives, along with the fear
  of solitude, leads many of them to hold on to
  destructive friendships even at the expense of
  their emotional safety.
• She explores the dual role of both bully and
  being bullied and how girls are often both. She
  sees that particularly for white middle class
  girls the expression of anger and aggression is
  frowned upon. In attempts to be a good girl
  girls avoid openly expressing anger and instead
  it goes underground and is expressed through
  indirect acts of relational aggression.

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• Lyn Mikel Brown, Ed.D Girlfighting Betrayal and
  Rejection Among Girls ( 2003)
• Brown looks at girl fighting and relational
  aggression within the todays social context as
  a reaction to girls feeling powerless. Girls are
  discouraged from expressing strong feelings and
  are pressured to fulfill unrealistic
  expectations, to be popular, and struggle to find
  their way in a society that still reinforces
  gender stereotypes and places greater value on
  boys. Under such pressure, in their frustration
  and anger, girls (often unconsciously) find it
  less risky to take out their fears and anxieties
  on other girls instead of challenging the ways
  boys treat them, the way the media represents
  them, or the way the culture at large supports
  sexist practices.
• The answer to reducing girl fighting and girl
  bullying is less about tightening control over
  girls than about appreciating girls need to have
  control in their own lives, to feel important, to
  be visible, to be taken seriously, to have an
  effect.
• We need to work to replace old stories of girls
  and women as deceitful, backstabbing, nasty and
  mean with alternative realities of strong girls
  and women, girls as allies, and
  collation-building.

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• Lisa Machoian, The Disappearing Girl Learning
  the Language of Teen Depression (2005)
• Machoian argues that teenage girls begin to
  disappear when they feel disconnected from
  friends or family, and when the pressures of
  society to fit in or be a certain way become
  overwhelming.
• At age 12 years girls are no more likely than
  boys to be depressed by 18 years they are twice
  as likely to suffer from depression.
• Genes make some kids vulnerable to the stresses
  of adolescence. It is particularly difficult when
  girls are intelligent high intelligence
  increases girls risks for depression, but not
  for boys because brainy girls are rejected more.
• The more girls are concerned about
  relationships and pleasing people, the more prone
  she is to over think- to ruminate and worry.
  These over thinkers are most likely to become
  depressed.

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Issues we see at NHYW

• On entry I hate girls
• Importance of peers and being in peer group
• Acceptance by peers more important than self
  own needs
• Who am I, different personality with each
  subgroup
• Emotional reactivity/ regulation - do they like
  me etc
• Difficulty identify feelings
• Depression, lack of acceptance feeling
  different
• Anxiety fueled by peer group issues acceptance
• Self harming behaviors cutting, often triggered
  by conflict, feeling out of control
• Anger management stuffing or exploding
• Binge purging, feeling out of control in group,
  life
• Body image issues, comparisons jealousy
• Sexual behavior, the power of sexuality
• Substance use often for peer acceptance, managing
  social situations or managing feelings.
• Family conflict lack of relationship with dad,
  conflict with mom
• Academic difficulties, as struggle academically
  look for peer acceptance with lower functioning
  peers

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• Have participants break into small groups (approx
  6 people per group).
• Ask each group to do a group drawing or creative
  presentation that represents the issues they see
  teenage girls struggling with in their work.

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Research specific to Wilderness Programming and
Girls

• Whittington Anja, Challenging Girls Construction
  of Femininity in the Outdoors Journal of
  Experiential Education (2006)
• Qualitative study of teenage girls who
  participated in a 23 day wilderness canoe
  expedition. Found that girls challenged
  conventional notions of femininity in diverse
  ways
• Perseverance, strength determination
• Challenging assumptions about girls abilities
• Feelings of accomplishment and pride
• Questioning ideal images of beauty
• Increased ability to speak out and leadership
  skills
• Building significant relationships with other
  girls
• They were able to place themselves in two
  domains being in the wilderness and being a
  girl. The experience allowed them to challenge
  the assumption that the wilderness is a masculine
  sphere.

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• Caulkins, White Russell, The Role of Physical
  Exercise in Wilderness Therapy for troubled
  Adolescent Women Journal of Experiential
  Education (2006)
• Study explored the impact of backpacking in the
  therapeutic process for teenage girls revealed
  8 central impacts
• Reflection removed from every day experiences
  have time to reflect on themselves
• Perceived Competence increased physical strength
• Accomplishment feeling good about what they
  have done
• Self-Efficacy increased faith in their ability
  to influence their personal thoughts behaviors
• Awareness of surroundings, self others. With
  this an ability to take more responsibility for
  ones behavior
• Timelessness distraction free

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Recommendations for Successful Programming with
Young Women

• Regardless of gender the importance of good
  programming
• -State licensing standards, CARF/ JACO, AEE,
  NATSAP, NATWC
• - Standardized staff training, supervision, and
  continuing education.
• - Networking with other programs, sharing
  information.
• Wilderness outdoors has traditionally been
  viewed as a male environment.
• We know that empowerment self efficacy is
  important so how do we allow girls to be girls
  feel comfortable in the woods just because you
  carry a pink back-pack does it make it any
  easier?
• Using gender specific gear,
• Being aware of our language how it can be
  exclusive
• Brains vs. brawn
• Do we need to get to the top or is it about the
  journey?
• Balancing soft and hard skills
• What is a soft program?
• Being a girl, getting dirty, being playful,
  feeling strong challenges stereotypes of women
  girls as passive helpless.

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• Staff as role models
• All female staff vs. co-ed staff groups.
• 1. How girls respond react to all female staff
  teams anxiety, excitement, different
  conversations.
• 2. In co-ed staff teams it is important that all
  team members are aware of their roles, how they
  share power, decision making and resolve
  conflict.
• Sharing of hard and soft skills
• Male staff to be aware of sexual issues,
  boundaries, appropriate touch

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• Not just about the individual journey but about
  the group supporting one another, acknowledging
  when we need help. When one girl hurting it
  impacts them all. Honoring the role of caring and
  nurturing while balancing needs for self.
• Learning about co-operation and collaboration
• Being aware of in and out groups, sub cultures
  and covert communication
• Teaching respectful direct communication/
  assertiveness training/ role plays
• Focus on friends what are healthy friendships
• Leadership skills, decision making
  organizational skills
• Honoring different roles and skills within the
  group
• Importance of relationships with staff,
  collaboration
• Learning about differences girls often surprised
  about the friends they make which are girls they
  wouldnt usually talk to
• Finding their voice

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• Feelings, feelings, feelings..drama is the base
  line
• Regardless of different diagnosis (borderline
  personality disorder, bipolar, mood disorders)
  much of what we do is helping girls understand
  their feelings, label them and manage them.
  Emotional discharge for the sake of emotional
  expression is not enough and at times harmful.
  First girls need emotional regulation skills and
  then how to contain feelings.
• Teaching skills, learning about and identifying
  feelings
• Mindfulness awareness of and letting go of
  feelings vs. them controlling you
• Meditation skills guided meditations, walking
  meditation, relaxation skills, yoga
• Learning assertive communication
• Conflict resolution

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• Food issues
• Food as a source of strength, learning to eat 3
  meals a day healthy food.
• Wilderness cooking provides opportunities for
  building competency, pride, skills.
• Food as an issue of control, mindfulness
• Binging eating for comfort, developing
  mindfulness and awareness of being full
• Purging awareness of talking about emotionally
  charged issues during meals, 20 minute bathroom
  rule, feelings check ins, journaling
• Parent reunion, cooking a meal allows them to
  demonstrate skills give back. Welcoming parents
  into their hearth

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• Hygiene body image
• Learning self care skills
• Discussions about female bodies (hair, smells)
  what is normal
• Challenging conventional notions of beauty
• Pride in strength, stamina
• Using your body as a way to feel grounded

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• Trauma
• Being aware of when a student is triggered/
  dissociating and how her story is effecting
  others in the group
• Staff using grounding and containment vs. pushing
• Staff helping students with emotional regulation
  meditation, yoga, breathing exercises
• Boundaries and appropriate disclosures, not
  always appropriate to tell everything to everyone
• Physical boundaries, touch

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• Incorporating the cultural context
• Media images of girls, music, fashion, all
  appropriate conversations
• Societal double standards good girls, bad
  girls
• Class race differences
• Religious differences
• Looking at family culture

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• Use of ceremonies and female rights of
  passage
• Solos balance personal development and awareness
  with the group sharing in the experience
• Ceremonies help establish group norms, mark
  progress, provide a context and support for
  change. Traditional female rights of passage
  frequently center around puberty and the power of
  a womans sexuality and ability to give life.
  They often involve a girl entering into the world
  of women sharing stories, learning about healing,
  relationships and support. Girls today discover
  the power of their sexuality but may not have the
  support of other women to figure out how they can
  use it and respect their own bodies.
• Solo experiences are brought back and shared
  within the context of the group
• Group members giving words of advice and support
  before a student leaves for solo
• Challenge with encouragement, and modification of
  solos for younger girls