Transcripts from Episode 114: Jessica Dallman, Natural Wisdom Counseling

Will White: Welcome to another intro to Stories from the Field, Demystifying Wilderness Therapy. Thank you for spending your time. Listening and learning from all the storytellers that are featured in these episodes. I'm so grateful for the many individuals who have been willing to share their stories about their experiences in the field to you and me. It's mid-winter in Northern New Hampshire and I spend a fair amount of time outdoors in the back country skiing. And because it is a darker time of year, I tend to read more than usual, and I read a great deal. I just finished up a book titled “Think Again” by Adam Grant. And it truly reinforced. I believe that one shouldn't believe everything. They think the more I learned, the more people I talk to, the more I realize how truly little I know this episode is another example, as I've released over 112 episodes.

And yet I have not released one episode that is accessible to a large segment of the population the deaf and hard of hearing are not being served by this podcast. And it wasn't until I talk with my next guest, Jessica Dallman that I realized I need to change it. Thankfully with the assistance of my new sponsor White Mountain Adventure Institute, they're going to fund this episode and all future episodes to be released in transcribed form on the Stories from the Field website. Now we're looking at ways to convert all the previous episodes into written format in the future. If you are so many, you know, wants to help fund the conversion of all the previous episodes, please contact me at will@storiesfromthefield.com, but without further ado, please listen and learn.

 Welcome to another episode of Stories from the Field Demystifying wilderness therapy. I'm so grateful to have my guests, Jessica Dallman from Natural Wisdom Counseling and Wisconsin.  Jessica. Thank you so much for being on stories from the field and sharing your story.

Jessica Dallman: Of course. Yeah. I'm happy to be here. Thank you for the invitation.

Will White: Well, tell us your journey. How did you even get into the field or become interested in the field of wilderness therapy?

Jessica Dallman: Such a long question for me. And in many ways, I, I feel like my journey start probably started in utero or has some version of an intergenerational beginning. Both of my parents are veterinarians and I grew up rurally helping at the vet clinic. You know, some of my earliest memories are of the life death illness cycle in, in the natural world. And I think my, my earliest memories are literally of, of newborn calves with gum and placenta all over them and, and actually resuscitating newborn puppies, uh, who, I, I don't know if anybody knows this, but when a C-section is done on, on dogs, some of the anesthetic goes into the puppies. And so they have to be resuscitated in order for them to survive a C-section experience. So, yeah, nature was just embedded in my life and the, the rhythms of nature and hunting and hiking and skiing. And it was just a very early part of the rhythms of my family system.

Will:  Where, where were you raised?

Jessica: I was raised in South Dakota and North Dakota and, uh, my South Dakota upbringing was in between the pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations. And so that also really influenced my experience in wilderness therapy. I think there's a lot of stories about wilderness therapy and there's a lot of concepts about wilderness therapy as a newer or alternative model. And it's really just a newer marketed model that has really ancient roots. Um, and so growing up with indigenous influences and  the ways that the land more or less raised me as well, that really influences my lens on wilderness therapy.

Will: So you were raised there and raised with this very unique upbringing. How did it bring you into your educational path?

Jessica: Yeah, so that's the more direct route, right? In the more direct conversation. Yeah. So my path into the educational process and the professional process of wilderness therapy began when I went on, uh, an elective outward bound trip. Um, the summer before my senior year in high school, my parents approached me and said, you know, usually you go to volleyball camps and you go to other camps and you do all of these other things. And this is part of that intergenerational story too. My mom said, I, as a kid, I always wanted to go on, on an outward bound trip. And some of my peers qualified for the scholarships, because she grew up on different reservations as well. And, but she never qualified for a scholarship. And so she never got to go. And, and so my parents had decided that if I wanted to do an outward bound trip, I could choose any of them.

Jessica: I could choose from any of that Outward Bound trips. And that, that just meant that I wouldn't be able to do the other programs that I would typically do over the summer. And at first I was a little bit confused. Like, what is this, why are you offering this to me? And then I realized, wait a minute, I can do any of these. I can do whatever adventure I want. And so I picked a 30 day backpacking trip, a multi-sport backpacking trip. And yeah, that really started my journey. I had that experience. It was quite transformational. I w I had a number of people on the trip who were elective students, as well as the number of students who were not elective students and got to experience the psychological and mental health and leadership impacts of that mixed group. And then I came back and had a sequence of events that kind of just kept outward bound in the back of my mind for a long time, because I came back and my brother went into his first, really severe mental health crisis.

Jessica: And then my mom's dad passed away and he was like my spiritual mentor. He was a really strong elder in my life. And I started, I did AP psychology and sociology. So I was, I had a, a class that was helping me make sense of the stressors in my world that so abruptly came into my life shortly after this really magical backpacking experience where I, you know, ha had the realization that all I really needed was what I could carry on in my pack. And a crew of good people who are willing to distribute the labor with me that life really could be that simple and satisfying. And, and so then I got really clear that I wanted to pursue psychology or some version of mental health counseling. I ended up going to the University of Montana in Missoula, because they had some reciprocity with North Dakota and I, and it was much more affordable than other nature immersed universities around the country, so I could afford it and went there and was, got really involved in different aspects of the, both the mental health world. I, you know, I worked for the peer substance abuse program where I did work with peers who had gotten in trouble for drinking on campus, or was involved in the environmental ed. stuff and started working wilderness therapy programs over the summers while I was doing my psychology undergrad.

Will: Did you work at some of the wilderness programs that have been mentioned on the podcast?

Jessica: I haven't had the, the benefit of listening to a lot of the episodes on, on the series. So I can't say for sure, but so one, one was actually through campus crusade, I was very involved with my spiritual life when I was younger and in college. And, and so that was more of a summer camp experience, but anybody who's worked at summer camp experience knows that you're doing some version of wilderness therapy or adventure therapy, whether you know, it or not.

And then another program, the other program that I was quite involved in and, and miss dearly, because it really influenced a lot of my experience as a professional now was through Boys and Girls Town in Missouri. So it's actually a residential placement program for kids who mostly kids who are forcibly removed from their homes or, um, have had really severe interactions with the law or are in between foster placements. And they're, they have a branch of that residential treatment program that does wilderness and adventure therapy programming. So they have a high ropes course and we take them canoeing and we do backpacking trips and biking trips and all sorts of different things. They're in Missouri for this really high, high risk population.

Jessica: I just started looking at job postings through the AEE you know, as a college student looking for educational opportunities that might have a therapeutic or mental health lense. And I found that program. And it was interesting because I had a number of insights while I was there. One of which was at one point, I really thought I might go into youth ministry. And when I was in high school and that I cared that I knew I had the relational capacity to make an impact on people. But at that point, I really thought it was because of spiritual needs or spiritual gifts. And so my experience at the Merrimack Venture Learning Ranch was that that relationship is relationship regardless, regardless of the context. And that it helped me put some of the pieces together about why outward bound was so impactful for me, especially now that I had more training in psychology.

And the second piece was that I had never wanted to have my own kids largely. Um, actually because of my experience with my brother, I thought that it was irresponsible to, for me to bring life into the world that might, I experience the world as traumatic as my brother did that. You know, if, and there were plenty, there's plenty of people out there who need relationship and support and love. And so I didn't need to be a person bringing life into the world. But my experience there with these kids who by every definition of the system were broken and unlovable and problematic, whatever negative label you want to put on them. A lot of them came terrified of the dark terrified of heights, whatever their different stuff was. And we had these really connected experiences and connected relationships. And so I had a moment where I went, wait a minute, these are the kids that everybody says aren't worth anything, and then fallen through all of these cracks. And like what's going on in this context, doing adventure therapy, doing wilderness therapy that they're able to engage in meaningful relationship. It made me more curious. It made me want to lean in and study more, but I wasn't really sure what direction I wanted to take yet at that point and how I was going to make that happen.

Will: So you ended up going to Naropa University for a master's degree.

Jessica: Yeah. I ended up at Naropa actually because of my experience at teach for America. So I taught for two years after I graduated and I taught deaf and hard of hearing students on the Navajo reservation on the dinner reservation in New Mexico. For those of you, who've not spent much time in New Mexico or don't know much about it because of the poverty in that area. It's actually one of the darkest, it is the darkest place in the lower 48 darker than many wilderness areas.

Will: Literally you're meaning like it's dark, there's no sunlight?

Jessica: no dark, like there's no light pollution. Even though people live there over 50% of, of the students in that area don't have running water or electricity. And so there's just not the light pollution. So the observatory in Chaco Canyon, which is a nature based reference point for you ha is one of the best observatories, partly because of where it's located, but partly because there's just no light pollution out there. And so, you know, teaching under the circumstances of what would be considered pretty extreme poverty within the United States, and then also teaching kids who were deaf and hard of hearing, mostly using American sign language, who some of them, I was the only person in their entire community that could clearly communicate with them and having to navigate all of the emotional difficulties, all of the emotional trauma of that kind of linguistic isolation, uh, and have, you know, been in this highest stakes position with teach for America where like we're expected to produce results.

And I like, I was just doing emotional first aid and getting approval to take kids outside, to do experiments, to engage them in like curiosity with the natural world and like just doing everything outside of the box. And to the point that I got, I got really frustrated and was like, I know mental health, I know psychology. I need access to people and families sooner. I need to work with younger people. I need to have influence in a different way that influence the educational system was not going to work for me as a professional. And so then I was looking at graduate programs and had to make the decision between either going to Gallaudet University for counseling or going to Naropa, um, because I really believed in the power of nature and Gallaudet University for, for people who don't know, it's the only deaf, primarily ASL using university in the world.

And it's located in Washington DC. And what I ended up doing actually was going to Naropa and at the same time doing a graduate certificate in early intervention with deaf and hard of hearing infants, toddlers, and families at Gallaudet, so that I could do the best of both worlds because I wanted to make sure that my skill in American Sign Language, as well as my interest in that population was appropriately supported knowing that specialized demographics aren't usually effectively addressed in mainstream programs. Yeah. So I'm a little bit of a weirdo. Well, I've been a lot of different places.

I did my wilderness therapy program at Naropa. I graduated in 2015 from that program,

Will: Why Naropa? You had a very eclectic educational background. What drew you to Naropa specifically?

Jessica: I wanted to go to Naropa because I didn't actually, because of my experience in the education system and how much of a disservice it was to the students that I was teaching, I did not want to do any of the dual master's programs that had like experiential education as the dual master's with social work, for example, that I didn't want to be in the educational system. I didn't want to be in that setting. Um, even in non-traditional contexts that it just, the, the majority of people are going to mainstream schools, public schools, living with their families and struggling with figuring out life in that context. And so I wanted to be more accessible from a, a therapy mental health professional point of view. And Naropa is as far as I know, still the only university that has a wilderness therapy program, that's a single master's, um, where it's just one program that you do. And actually the interview process was what sold me that experiential interview process that they did was what convinced me that that's where I needed to be the interview process at Naropa.

Will: I'm not familiar of how Naropa does an interview can you tell us about it?

Jessica: Yeah. Well, I don't want to give away any trade secrets,

Will: But you don't have to be too specific that you can just think, what did they ask you?

Jessica: What I remember, I remember three parts. I remember there being a one-on-one interview process with, uh, somebody who either was a graduate of the program or a professor in the program. And I got to ask that person, lots of questions about their experience. And there was a time to socialize and meet current students that gave us opportunities to ask questions and get to know what, what the pros and cons were, what people were experiencing as far as the rigor of the academics, as far as the value of the experiential components. And then, um, I think about half of a day of it was experiential, like team building type activities, like building a mandala together or having different prompts and doing partnered or team activities to that. I think from neuromas perspective, got to see how we would work in a cohort model, whether we were going to function in the cohort model and for anybody who does cohort model work, um, it's difficult. It's difficult for people to manage personalities in a long-term intimate context like that. Um, but also really gave me a sense of the creativity and the role that nature could really play in the work. And I want, and I wanted more of that

Will: And you must have made a pretty big influence on people at Naropa because one of colleagues emailed me and said, you have to have Jessica Dallman on your podcast because she is doing amazing work. So sharing that with you in case you didn't really know that before.

Jessica: Yeah. And I am flattered by that and I feel touched by that and have glimpses of how that that's probably true. I had a graduate assistantship with the eco-psychology department. I was quite involved with the community of color and allies group. I was involved to, to whatever degree I could. I actually made pretty strong friendships with a lot of people in the dance movement therapy program. And I think that the typical wilderness therapy experiences that you only have time to be friends with other wilderness therapy students. So I, again, I'm a little bit of a weirdo. I break outside of the box and, you know, I worked, I worked for wind, uh, community services while I was a student. And so that also broke me into the contemplative psychotherapy realm and just gave me a lot more eclectic and diverse therapeutic skill sets as well as relational influence in my work.

Will: So Jessica, you're the first who has ever been on the podcast who worked at Windhorse. I know of the model having the lived in Boulder for many years and studied some at Naropa. Can you explain to the listeners what wind horses all about? Cause I think it's fascinating.

Jessica: Sure. Yeah, I'll do my best. So wind horse is an intensive, an intensive therapeutic program that comes from a contemplative psychotherapy, mindfulness, Buddhist inspired mental health perspective that primarily serves people who are, who have had experience of multiple inpatient hospitalizations, but aren't necessarily benefiting from that medical model of psychiatry. And so Windhorse instead of waiting to help people hit a crisis where they have to be hospitalized again, they have an intensive model where people get in-home support. They have multiple roles that do that in a very innovative and personalized way. So the program for each client is a little bit different. So for example, if somebody is really struggling with PTSD and has various components around their PTSD experience, they might qualify for having a housemate. I worked as a housemate, so I lived with a client and my job as a housemate was to participate in the team meetings, be part of the therapeutic planning, um, but really to just be a calm and regulated, regulated, and supportive, um, environment that was available on a predictable rhythm and on a predictable manner.

So making sure that there was healthy food, um, and helping with cooking so that, that was taken care of supporting independence and like sharing, being really communicative. A lot of regular housemates really struggle with communication, for example. So in a therapeutic environment, there's very clear communication. Might've been be facilitated by one of the other house. One of the other wind horse staff around what's the chore schedule, who's responsible for what so that there is more predictability and support and, um, quote unquote sense space for sanity in that client's life, despite whatever's going on in the rest of their relationships or in their mental sphere. Other roles include basic tenders, which are people who have therapeutic training might even be licensed. Clinicians who have scheduled maybe twice a week, maybe three times a week sessions with the client where they plan therapeutic outings. Like maybe they get, if somebody has a agoraphobia, then a basic attender might take them shopping to help make sure that they have help in doing, taking care of their basic needs and interacting with the community. Maybe somebody will take them out for coffee. Maybe somebody will take them hiking. Um, and so nature based and even wilderness based things come into play there. I, I took my house mate on, uh, two or three days, excuse me, on a two or three-day ski trip. So there's, there's lots of ways where there's space for nature based and wilderness based therapeutic interventions inside that much.

Will: Well done. That's a great summary of it. The founder of Naropa University was also the one who strongly influenced the Windhorse model, Trungpa Rinpoche, I remember him one time doing a lecture on Windhorse when I was there in Boulder, in the eighties, early eighties. And him talking about at Windhorse was about creating an environment of sanity and that when you're really struggling with your mind, the first thing you should do is clean your room. I was like, wow,  that's a good recommendation for all of us. And you've had such an interesting career and, and you are now, you're the founder and you have been running Natural Wisdom Counseling and now Wisconsin. So tell us about that. And how did you end up in Wisconsin after being in Boulder for those many years?

Jessica: Great question. So I founded Natural Wisdom Counseling in Colorado, and I'm actually still licensed in Colorado, even though I've been, yeah, I'm dually licensed still. Um, I attempted to just bring that business here to Wisconsin with relative efficacy. So in Colorado I founded my own private practice.  I already mentioned that I use American Sign Language with clients. Um, I also speak Spanish. I minored in Spanish in college actually. And I work with the LGBTQ population. I'm a member of that community. So I, I wanted to be able to work with the populations that I wanted to work with, but I also wanted to use the modality is that I wanted to work with. And I, as far as getting hired as a recent, those things, didn't coexist. Like I could go work for a deaf and hard of count deaf and hard of hearing counseling program, but the likelihood that I would ever be able to use any of my nature based skills or wilderness skills was basically none.

. And I could go work for a wilderness therapy program, but the likelihood that I would get to work with LGBTQ clients or deaf and hard of hearing clients or Spanish speaking clients was also really unlikely. So I, in order for me to be who I am, I needed to create a space for myself. So that's why I founded it. And I found that it had in Colorado quite honestly, because I didn't know where else I was going to be or where I wanted to be. And because I had really good relationships with elder counselors that I respected and then I wanted to have access to that. I needed, I needed mentorship early on. So I was doing that work in Colorado. I have a little bit of a unique business model where I do private practice work, but then I also have taken it upon myself to co-write grants with nonprofits.

So I didn't, I knew I didn't want to be a nonprofit that that was going to be too much paperwork and not really accessible for me, but I would co-write grants with organizations like deaf overcoming violence to empowerment, which is a deaf, a deaf domestic violence, nonprofit in Denver, or with other specialty groups to make a case for equine therapy and or nature-based therapeutic opportunities. And so then they would kind of run the funding and contract me through those co-written grants for programming. I ended up in Wisconsin though, because I have this other really unique specialty of early intervention. So in the deaf and hard of hearing world kids who are identity, there's an early identification system set up where, you know, unlike an identity like LGBTQ deaf and hard of hearing people who are born deaf or hard of hearing, they're screened at birth now, and that's a, a relatively two decades old system, but still relatively new system as far as systems go.

So those kids qualify for early intervention very early on, immediately through part C of ID. I don't remember. I get confused about some of the law. And as far as that goes, I, I used to be clear with it, but I haven't been doing much advocacy work around that. But so I was going to national conferences for that specialty because I am very passionate about the experience of deaf and hard of hearing people growing up because over 90% of those kids who are diagnosed before the age of three are born to hearing parents, most of whom have no experience with a deaf or hard of hearing person. And so the deaf and hard of hearing population tends to have higher rates of substance abuse, suicide risk, domestic violence, sexual assault, lots of the negative outcomes, right? And front from a mental health perspective, I was like, why that this is, this is like one of the only populations that has mandated screening and then access to early intervention from birth. Like this is a ripe opportunity for actually setting people up for success. And so I wanted to bring a mental health lens to that field. And so I was going to the national comp, the national conference that was taking place every year and met someone who was trying to talk about trauma and relationships and doing a good job. And we started working together and we fell in love. And so I moved to Wisconsin for love. That's the short answer there.

Will: So you moved for love. Why is it that a higher percentage of people who are deaf and hard of hearing have mental health issues, trauma related issue. Is it the trauma because they're being raised by parents who don't communicate with them?

 Jessica: So that's a really complex question. Are you familiar with the field of infant mental health?

Will: I am vaguely familiar with it, but not enough to even speak about, so educate us.

Jessica: Sure. So I feel really lucky that at Naropa with the mentorship and teaching that I have from wilderness therapy and equine therapy, that I have a very strong attachment focused lens. Um, and then I also have a very strong social justice lens and, and awareness of the way that oppression and diversity plays a role in mental health as well. So I ended up getting additional training in infant mental health, which is it's its own sub field now, but that, that really focuses on Mary Main's work and like the adult attachment interview and trauma and attachment and the relational aspects of early child hood development. And so one of the things that getting additional training in infant mental health gave me was a little bit more language for that. Why I think I understood it pretty well from my experience as a wilderness therapist, as a neuropath grad, as somebody who works with horses, but I would break it down to three reasons.

One has to do with implicit bias, uh, that implicit bias from the system, but also implicit bias from providers or from parents. Sorry that if a hearing provider from a medical system who views hearing loss as a deficit, whether they consciously believe that or not comes in and says, well, you like here are your options for helping your kid speak and listen, Oh, and ASL is an option too, right? Like already just in the order and the energy of how the options are presented, there is a bias that one is superior to the other. The other aspect of it that, that has been explored as, as this field has tried to interrupt that bias is by putting the power in the parent's hands. But what we know about human psychology is that we have, we tend to have a preference for what is similar to us, right?

So if you go to a hearing parent who doesn't have experience with deafness, and you say, well, what's important to you, is it important to your, to you that your child speak and talk like you? Or does that not matter what, again, that sort of question sets us up for implicit bias and for us to behave out of our own preferences rather than a tuning to the child and going well, let's see how my child responds. Right? Like, let's see how my child demonstrates an interest in listening. Let's see how much my kid is relying on visual cues to listen. How do we use sight as a benefit? How do we, like, what are our actual options here? Um, so there's, there's just a lot of ways that implicit bias plays a role from a historical medical model, oppressive system, whether it's intentional or not.

And just, just like other areas of oppression. There's a really rich history around that. If you've never watched the PBS documentary “Through Deaf Eyes,” that's a good introduction. It's an old, it's an older documentary, but it's a good introduction to how preference or a elitism or something around the ability to hear and speak is a pretty pervasive paradigm in our, in our society. And, and one that, unfortunately, even in the context of talking about oppression, talking about justice is often left out work. We talk about gender justice. We talk about racial justice. We talk, but rarely is the experience of deaf and hard of hearing people and accessibility and elevation of those voices. And people included in that conversation.

Will: And I am part of that. And when we were going back and forth like this podcast, um, how can deaf and hard of hearing be able to access this? And I said, well, I will make sure it's going to go up on the website Storiesfromthefield.com. Uh, I am going to have this, all of this conversation and in a written form. And so just listening to you, I, I mean, I could go on and on with questions, because this is a fascinating challenge that so many people are dealing with. I wasn't even hardly aware of. Yeah.

 And Jess, I have to be transparent. I have been losing my hearing for the last decade five years ago, I started wearing hearing ais and when I don't wear them, it's noticeable. And it's interesting how many things I miss in how people think I am not paying attention to them because I can't hear how one loses their hearing is it's. Um, and you can talk more about it, but you lose it in different segments. It's not all your hearing. It's certain things I can hear and certain things I can't hear at all. So,

Jessica: Well, I just, I just so appreciate that, that vulnerability and that connection. And I imagine that there's a number of ways that you're noticing that you're being treated differently because of it, especially when you're not using your hearing aids.

Will: I really can't hear much at all if I don't wear my hearing aids and it happened, uh, my, both my father and grandmother, when they got older, lost her hearing, I added to the speed of it because I went to a lot of rock concerts when I was in the seventies, in the eighties.

Jessica: Yeah, so there's a, there's an even bigger number of people who lose their hearing later in life, that, that aren't caught by that early detection system, that early hearing detection and intervention system. Like you're saying that, like I notice people think I'm not paying attention or, um, I know a lot of people talk about how impatient people are, how people don't want to repeat, how people don't, aren't mindful about the value of looking at somebody when they're talking to them and an access to, to reading lips. A lot of people think that reading lips is theoretically easy. It's one of the first questions that people are asked if they're deaf or hard of hearing, you might not know this well, but only 25% of the English language is visible on the lips. So even the best lip readers are guessing 75% of what you're saying.

And the other piece about it that might be helpful for the listeners to understand here, like you said, there's, there's different pitches that are lost. There's different decibels that are lost. There's, there's all sorts of complexity into what a person can or cannot hear, but there's also this other really fascinating part of it referred to as listening fatigue and, and COVID has actually really amplified that and put a big spotlight on the toll that listening takes on people. So for, for the average hearing person, uh, you can listen and listen, and then you might get bored. You might, you know, get a little bit sensory overloaded, but it doesn't take a significant amount of effort to listen to your environment or to the speech sounds around you for anybody, even with a mild hearing loss, somebody who then still has access theoretically to speech sounds, it's like the volume gets turned down or like any background noise, um, that you hear better than speech sounds really, really interrupts that.

And so the effort to listen with any degree of hearing loss can totally white people out. So what we're seeing with the online schooling system for deaf and hard of hearing kids, or for professionals who are deaf and hard of hearing who are relying on speech is that they're exhausted. They're so exhausted. And they might act out at home. They might, they might act out at peers. They might be having relational struggles as adults because there's so much more exhaustion and not necessarily meaningful accommodations to address how much more difficult it is to listen with a mask on interrupting speech sounds or over the internet. Yeah.

Will: So, and, and I think part of the genesis of the podcast was time was always wanting to interview people at conferences because I can't be in a big room with tons of people talking until I moved to the hearing aids, which helped a bit, uh, I couldn't differentiate who was talking to whom a lot of times, and the noise is so overwhelming and exhausts. And so I relate to your too many of the people you work with and the challenges of, and the challenges, the people who never had hearing to begin with. And this is a large population in this country and you don't, there's not a lot of conversations about it, right? At least you see signing events most COVID like when the governor talks about COVID in my state, you always, there's always someone signing.

Jessica: Yeah. And that there was actually some legal cases at the beginning of COVID, you know, here's this pandemic, this rapid spread disease and information access is, needs to be more timely in a lot of the initial broadcasts. And the initial information spread was not accessed. And so even blend media and people like a lot of the accommodations that are available, people have been fighting for them because again, one of those implicit bias thing is the definition of privilege is not having to think about it. Right? Like, so, so if I, if I, as a hearing Pearson, I don't have to think about it. Why would I, why would I think to hire an interpreter for the broadcast, right. If I have no reference point and, and as a business owner, I don't want any more expenses, right? Like there's all, there's also layers there.

Will: Can you share with us a story about a client?

Jessica: So I do, I do equine therapy. I was trained through the Gestalt Equine Institute of the Rockies. And the way that I engage with equine therapy really takes in the whole field. So a session might be just as much engaged with the hock on the, on the fence post as with horses per se, or, or it might include a walk through the woods or doing other nature based interventions. So one of the experiences that I come across quite a bit in my work, whether that's with the LGBTQ population or whether that's what the deaf and hard of hearing population I'll stay with the deaf and hard of hearing population, one of the experiences is of being in between worlds and and like, I'm not quite hearing enough to, even for people who use hearing AIDS and are, and are able to function very well in the hearing world.

A lot of them will say, I'm not hearing enough to like really enjoy hearing environments or typical hearing environments, but I'm not, if I don't sign, I'm not deaf enough to be part of this rich deaf culture. And so I feel this like in-between experience, or just really struggling with the way that communication plays a role in the development of meaningful relationships. So now in the work that I do, I talk quite a bit about how communication develops in the context of relationship that, and that's the third piece that I never actually got to say about, you know, why, why are these kids not doing well emotionally? And, and I, I refer to that as diagnostic trauma. It's a, it's a developmental attachment trauma that can happen. Doesn't always happen, but can happen when a hearing parent has essentially an attachment rupture with a newborn as a result of the diagnosis.

And, um, my colleague Elizabeth Carlson actually coined that, but I use it a lot, a lot in my work because there's unfortunately a lot of conflict within the field about what is best for kids. And that can be really confusing for parents and interrupt their sense of competency as a parent and competency, your ability to trust yourself in relationship, to adapt to your child and pay attention to your child is one of the biggest predictors for positive outcomes, especially emotional outcomes for kids. And so that, that diagnostic trauma process can be really problematic. So, so we have these people coming in who have really bad experiences with communication, access, and communication, being a portal into knowing someone well, right? Like, and I can get all nerdy linguistics with you, but I'm not going to go down that road. So with horses, but also with nature, there's these profound opportunities to go, okay, well, you will never share a language with this horse, or you will never share language with this tree, but how can we explore consent?

How can we explore touch? How can we explore knowing each other and paying attention to, to nuance of other types of communication as we develop relationship. And that can open a lot of doors, both into grief of, of what people did not have access to. And you know, why, why haven't people given me this opportunity. Um, but it, it can also open pathways into realizing where people have tried to meet them there, and it can open compassion for the efforts that family members have made. It can also open a whole different portal of doors into competency and empowerment, as far as being, being able to read body language more effectively so that people can make healthier choices and around the people that they let into their lives. Right? If you feel like you don't get enough meaningful access from a lot of people, you might just jump at the first opportunity for somebody who shows you some access, but that might not be an opportunity that is actually healthy. So how do we discern healthy relationship opportunities through other types of body-based body aware interactions, and then that can be translated to almost any other traumatized population as well. I just want to name that there's a lot of parallel skills here, but, uh, the nuance of it is a little bit different when working with deaf and hard of hearing people. Does that give you a sense?

Will: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So what, what is, what is happening right now in the field and where you're working? Are you seeing an increase? What what's going on?

Jessica: Yeah, so, I mean, I'm sure there has been an increase in need since the pandemic started. So I have, in particular, there has been an increased in hard of hearing. People are hard of hearing adults who many of whom have not had counseling services before, or like have had minimal mental health needs who have been so affected by the, the listening fatigue and the way that employers are not offering adequate accommodations, uh, ADA accommodations that would actually address listening fatigue under the circumstances of COVID, um, and the stress and the burnout and the self-judgment that comes from having been able to just work through it, their whole lives. And now all of a sudden, not being able to work through it, let there has been an increase in need there, for sure. There's, there's been a general increase in need for any population that has some relative isolation though, right?

Like many people have increased, have a increased or amplified experience of isolation since the pandemic where I am in Wisconsin. You and I talked about this a little bit before we started recording. It's, it's different than Colorado. There aren't a lot of wilderness therapists. There's not a lot of nature based therapists. There's not a lot of equine therapists out of, you know, typical like Colorado or Vermont or Washington and Oregon, Oregon. Like there, there, there's not a lot out here, so I'm still kind of in the buy-in process. So I get a lot of questions about how it's evidence-based. So it's been a slow build out here, but I just, you know, I know that movement is good for mental health and physical health. I know that fresh air and the, and the science around dirt and fresh air and sunlight is good for physical health and mental health.

So I've been very consistent about offering outdoor sessions throughout the pandemic because people's nervous systems and with increased fear, whether that is fear because of risk of illness for self or other, whether that is because of the political context that we've been going through more intensely in the last year, that people's nervous systems with all of the unrest and unknown are just jacked people. Aren't sleeping well, people aren't eating well, people aren't exercising well. And so the need is just showing up differently because people's nervous systems are discombobulated and disoriented, and the horses and nature are a reference point, regardless of all of these other things that help people come back to the rhythms that can help them function.

Will: Thank you so much for sharing your story on stories from the field.

Jessica: Thanks for having me here. I have so much more information.

Will: So how do people get in touch with you? Because I, it certainly opened up a lot of doors of thought for me, and I'm sure other people will have those questions. So how do people get in touch with you?

Jessica: Yeah, you can get in touch with me through my website, Natural Wisdom Counseling.com. If you're interested in the work that I do as a trainer for trauma informed care and how nature based and wilderness based principles can be incorporated into wilderness or into informed care, you can visit another website that I created. It's called the Wisconsin Hawthorne project. And that's https://www.wihawthornproject.com/. And that was, um, a project that the department of children and families here in Wisconsin hired me to do. So the first two years that I was here, I was developing a trauma informed care curriculum that incorporated horses and nature for any agency in the state that works with children and families. So big, big vision, and then, um, a free curriculum and perspective that's available out there as well.

Will: Well, thank you so for being on the stories from the field and for all that you are doing for all the populations you work for.

Jessica: Again, thanks for having me. And I'm sure we could talk for much more time, but if anybody has additional questions, okay,