June 30, 2025 • 43 mins
What happens when young people grow up deprived of essential experiences that previous generations took for granted? Dr. Danny Recio, TedX Pura Vida Speaker, Co-Founder of New Summit Academy, Program Director for The Bridge Young Adult Gap Program, and Co-Founder of the Supportive Immersion Institute in Costa Rica, introduces us to the concept of "experiential deprivation" and its profound impact on mental health.
Our brains evolved to learn through direct experience—the more enriching the experience, the more neural connections form. Yet many young adults today struggle with anxiety and insecurity because they've missed crucial developmental experiences that once came naturally.
Through his work with cross-cultural immersion programs, Danny has developed a powerful approach called "supportive immersion". When young adults enter an entirely new cultural context like Costa Rica, they discover that "not knowing" becomes acceptable, even expected. This creates a liberating environment for growth, where contribution to community replaces the American fixation on independence. One student powerfully described the program as "based on failure, and that's a good thing," highlighting how safe exploration builds resilience.
Want to learn more about addressing experiential deprivation through supportive immersion? Visit bridgecostarica.com to explore Dr. Recio's innovative approach to mental health and development through cross-cultural learning.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello folks, thanks for joining us on Head Side
Mental Health, featuringconversations about mental
health and substance usetreatment, with experts,
advocates and professionals fromacross the country sharing
their thoughts and insights onthe world of behavioral health
care.
Broadcasting on WPBM 1037, thevoice of Asheville independent
commercial free radio, I'm ToddWeatherly, your host,
(00:21):
therapeutic consultant,behavioral health expert.
My guest today comes to us fromacross the continent and over
the water a bit there in CostaRica, dr Danny Resio, co-founder
of New Summit Academy, atherapeutic boarding school for
adolescent boys aged 14 to 18,and program director for the
(00:41):
Supportive Immersion Instituteand the Bridge Costa Rica, a
supportive gap year communityfor young adult men and women.
Danny has his master's degreein clinical psychology from the
University of West Georgia andhis PhD in integrated ecology.
I think I see a theme here.
He is a published journal authorand a speaker, including the
(01:01):
TEDx Pura Vida, educatingparents, professionals and
communities on topics frommental fitness to cross-cultural
transformative experientiallearning.
His work centers on guidingyoung adults through experiences
of transformative experientiallearning, a process he and his
team call supportive immersion.
This approach is at the heartof the Supportive Immersion
(01:22):
Institute, which involvesdesigning experiences that help
individuals gradually expandtheir abilities and
understanding.
Participants in these programsexplore and discover their
optimal learning zone and how tocontribute to their own
well-being as well as that ofothers.
Danny's inspiration stems fromhis own gap year in South Africa
, where he developed a passionfor understanding people's
(01:43):
cultural and psychologicalworlds and recognized the growth
potential of traveling abroadto build adaptability for
self-awareness.
Danny, welcome to the show.
Something that you and I havebeen kind of chatting about, and
when I had the privilege ofcoming and visiting your program
and seeing you there in CostaRica which was fantastic really,
(02:05):
and I think I have a picture onthe screensaver that's one of
the views that I took from yourcampus for the bridge Just a
fantastic place, and at the timewe just got our version of the
cicada.
We were there when the cicadawere going as well, that's true
Costa Rica itself as a countryand as a culture, not to say
(02:29):
that we don't have it here inthe States, but you're very rich
in mountain, rich in coast,rich in environment, rich in
fruit.
You know there's just so muchthat's there to be involved in
and I think you can probablyspeak to this better than I can.
You've got a culture there thatembraces the connection of
community.
(02:49):
It seems to me people reallyrely on community in ways I
think we have lost to a lot, toa large extent in the United
States, um, in the continentalUnited States a lot.
And the thing that you and Iwere talking about, which I love
this term and I want to, I wantus to explore it a little bit.
I'd like to see more of it outthere so people understand it.
(03:10):
But is this this idea ofexperiential deprivation?
We know we have, we haveexperiential education right,
and we see that very prominentlyin the treatment world and a
lot in kind of the camp worldsand ancillary worlds to
education.
But as a person who came out ofa graduate, you know my
(03:32):
graduate degree being in OutdoorEducation Administration.
Walking up to the schoolsystems, going, hey, where's all
the experiential?
You guys are just sitting thesekids down in chairs.
No wonder you're havingbehavioral problems and
education problems and academicstruggles and all the other
things.
You're leaving out 20, you'releaving out 70 to 75 percent of
the learners in the room andthey're just frustrated and
(03:54):
anxious about the fact thatthey're not picking anything up.
You talked about this in yourTEDx.
Tell me what your definition isof experiential deprivation.
Like, what does it mean to you?
How are you trying to fight itin the world?
Like, tell me a little bit moreabout this concept and your
exploration of it.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Yeah, well, yeah, I'm going to try to narrow it down
as much as possible, right,because I could talk about it
for hours, but I'm so what'scoming to mind right now and
I'll land at a definitionshorter here.
But one of the issues withexperience is that it's almost
(04:36):
hard to say what is not anexperience because we are so
immersed in.
It is the water we swim in.
It's like asking a fish todescribe the oceans, like
everything that happens to us.
In some ways it is anexperience, right.
And so to say that you'reexperientially deprived is to
say that the quality of yourexperience is below the
(04:59):
threshold of what's good for you, right, because if you're awake
, if you're not in a coma, thenyou're having some kind of an
experience.
But it turns out and this issomewhat obvious, but people
know, if you know a little bitabout how the brain learns is
that it learns throughexperience, and so the more
(05:21):
enriching the experience is, themore the brain learns.
And so, if you think about the,you know the power that
something like you know, I don'tknow, tinkering with some
neurons in the brain, versus thelearning that can happen if
(05:42):
you're, I don't know, grasping acup or something like that, the
wiring of neurons is way morepowerful.
If you're grasping the neuronsI mean, sorry, the cup instead
of you know some kind of youknow, you know, tinkering of the
neurons.
And what I'm saying throughthat is that the brain requires
(06:03):
experience to adjust and learnand so on and so forth, because
evolutionarily, that's the waythat we develop, especially
human brains, because we're notborn like a little zebra that,
just you know, starts walking onlike the first hour of being
born.
Our brains are designed toattach to particular experiences
(06:25):
so that it can actually performin a world that is quite varied
, especially for us humansbecause we inhabit all these
landscapes.
And so I guess what I'm sayingyeah, and so the big advantage
that we have as humans is thatwe have this malleable brain
(06:49):
that can learn and this, goingback to the conversation, we're
having at nervous system, a bodyof the adequate experiences to
navigate the world insecure,that feels anxious, that feels,
I don't know, timid when itcomes to navigating the world.
(07:31):
And so the issue that the reasonI think about experiential
deprivation so much is becausethere's, it doesn't make that
much sense sometimes to speakabout, you know, how the old
generations were better and thekids now and so on and so forth.
(07:52):
There's a, there's a part of itthat is just not as important.
But it is important in thesense of looking at the factors,
uh, the environmental factors,the social factors that younger
generations are encountering,and what's helping and not
helping.
And I think that experientialeducation is much more important
(08:16):
now because people are nothaving many experiences that
were completely natural before.
Before we got on, we weretalking about how people didn't
used to think it was importantto go to the gym.
The gym was a ridiculousconcept way back when you lived
(08:36):
all day right?
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Yeah, exactly, why would you go to the?
Speaker 2 (08:39):
gym, but now you actually have to intentionally
get up and go to the gym.
And likewise, I think thatyoung people are growing up in a
world where certain experiencesthat were just the natural way
in which you learned they'rejust not existent anymore and so
you have to be intentionalabout it.
(09:02):
And there's other examples,like food, for example.
Right, Like you know, we talkabout organic food now because
some food is not, but when itwas all organic, it was kind of
silly to say that food.
You know, I got to eat organicfoods Like that's all there was.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Yeah, like it was organic, we call it food.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
And so now you know, if we land at the concept of
experiential deprivations, likeyou know, it used to be silly to
say you know that you'redeprived of experience, until
now that we live in such highlytechnology mediated worlds where
there's so much that you'remissing and that people then
(09:43):
used to think was important.
Like people thought, oh, you gotto go to school to learn your
math and your science and so onand so forth.
And now we're realizing, well,but it turns out that it was
really important that youactually bike to school and that
you walk to school and all thethings that happened in between
going to school and gettingthere.
That is also really important.
(10:06):
So people call this life skillsor soft skills or whatever the
case may be.
But the point is that now Ithink we need to look very
closely at those things thatwere natural at some point and
that are not anymore, and that Ithink, or at least partially,
explain the reason why youngergenerations are more anxious,
(10:30):
more insecure and, let's call it, less resilient, which means
that they feel less equipped todeal with the challenges of life
.
And so the challenges of life,one can say that are higher or
lower, I don't know, but I thinkwithout enough experiential
nourishment then people aregoing to feel less equipped to
deal with whatever life throwsat you, because you need those
(10:53):
neurons to wire to the actualexperiences and challenges that
you go through as you're growingup.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Yeah, well, and they're also just to your point.
There's so much out in theworld that still needs to be
done and I think one goodexample that I've heard from my
kids, their peers, parents oftheir friends, is that kids
(11:19):
don't want to drive.
It's overwhelming that you knowit.
It's.
It's overwhelming, it's.
You have to be responsible forthis, this thing.
You know 203 000 pounds worthof metal.
You know, careening through theworld.
Uh, yeah, it, it is.
It is scary, it is a bigresponsibility and it's also
(11:40):
something that people just doevery day.
But a lot of the and and then Ihave two children, one's almost
19 and the other one's almost 22.
So the 22-year-old, you know,he's got friends that have kind
of gone over the hurdle wherethey went ahead and learned how
to drive.
But when they drive, they feelincredibly anxious, like they
(12:02):
try to drive in such a way sothey don't have to change lanes.
They, they, you know they dothings to really try and limit
their experience, and it makesthem ill-equipped when they're
suddenly, you know, in the faceof something that is difficult
to navigate or manage.
Um and and and then they gethigh anxiety responses and those
kinds of things and I, you knowI don't know how it is in Costa
(12:25):
Rica, but the, the driver'straining which we used to have
in school and it was just a partof the curriculum and you were
required to take it and it wasjust there and it was expected
that you were going to at theappropriate age and and and
grade you would be takingdriver's ed.
Nowadays you have to scheduleit, you have to go find it.
(12:47):
It's limited and short.
There's a lot less experienceactually doing driving.
They resolve it in the testareas.
They try to put it on theparents to say, hey, you take
them out and give them enoughhours.
We know how that works and soyou're getting the results of
that in the world and I thinkthat you know that's just a
(13:10):
small example, a microcosm kindof example, of what we're seeing
in the larger world where itcomes to education, where we've
got a lot of screens, we've gota lot of interactions that are
not rooted in experience.
They're just, you know, handingdown information and hoping
people pick it up.
I mean, I think that that'sbeen a problem for a long time.
But you mentioned somethingelse and I'd like to hear your
(13:33):
thoughts about this.
But it's almost.
It's not just the way that we'regetting our information, and
that's important.
We've got this experientialdeprivation Our information is
coming to us without experience.
We've got this experientialdeprivation Our information is
coming to us without experience.
We're watching it, we'rewitnessing it.
In your talk you did the.
I was really hoping you wouldpull the handkerchief, watch the
(13:58):
guy two or three times and seeif you can pull the tablecloth
out from underneath the glasses.
But at any rate, it's also thekind of information that people
are getting.
They're getting information inmuch tinier chunks and so
there's less to kind of grabonto.
(14:20):
So not only are they getting itin a deprived environment,
they're getting a deprivedcontent as well.
When you aim because you've gotNew Summit Academy, you've got
the bridge, both there in CostaRica when you have students
coming to your program and yousee all this having taken its
(14:40):
effect and they're coming awaywith behavioral problems and
anxiety, everything else, wheredo you start to work with them
in reconciling some of thesethings?
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Yeah, so, um, there's a lot to say that I think that,
um, two, two places to go withyour question is that, um, I'm
going to, I'm going to, I'mgoing to kind of jump right to
the heart of methodology.
You know we were talking aboutsupportive immersion and your
(15:12):
introduction, and so, yeah, wepeople know this from sort of
popular culture that you know.
People say life begins at theedge of your comfort zone, right
?
Or something like that, right?
right um and um learning does aswell.
(15:32):
And so where?
Where you begin is right at theedge of where someone is
capable, and the course, theenvironment that we provide is
very enriching, not just in thesenses that you were talking
about, but just in all kinds ofways, right, different language,
(15:55):
different traditions, and interms of the landscapes it
affords and the culture and soon.
But what you have to do isprovide people with the very
next level of supportiveimmersion that we call
connecting, which is very commonin all of psychology, but it's
(16:26):
the sense of understanding theworld of the person and
understanding where they're at.
What are they capable of?
What are they interested in?
What moves their dopamine?
I guess, what will get themgoing?
Just to have this, uh, what, um, what, uh?
James clear called the entrypoint, right, when you try to
build habits like what's thissort of minimal level of
(16:47):
challenge that you can take up?
That's going to get the wheelsturning.
And then, of course, you wantto scale up from there and in a
way where it's almost like I'mgoing to use a surfing analogy
just because I like surfing andthis may be just completely
(17:08):
foreign to most people, but whenyou're riding a wave, it's not
going to work as well of stay inone place.
You kind of have to go up anddown and take advantage of the
slope that the wave is providingso that you can kind of catch
some speed.
And then, you know, go up andget more and come down and so on
(17:31):
and so forth.
And so when you're in alearning process like this, you
want to tap into that zone ofoptimal learning where you're
challenged in a way that'senough for your skill level, and
then you want to up thechallenge and then lower it and
kind of dance that way.
But your question was aboutwhere to start, and you
definitely want to start at aplace where it's doable, I guess
(17:58):
, for the person.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
Right.
It's doable, I guess, for theperson Right At the edge of
their already existingcompetence and to a certain
extent competence, and then givethem experiences, obviously
where they can push thatenvelope just a little bit.
But I think that also kind oftakes us to this other piece,
because you know, as a personwho's got a lot of training in
(18:21):
experiential education, you knowthe experiential cycle.
You have an experience, youreflect on it, you try to
generalize and then you go applyit in the real world.
There's this cycle of learningthat happens for a person when
they engage in real experience.
But one of the things that Ithought that I think is just
super cool first of all is thiscross-cultural experiential
(18:47):
learning component that you'vegot.
And you know, I think that youknow, in treatment, regardless
of where you are in treatment,you could be in adult addictions
treatment or primary mentalhealth care or in boarding
school.
You know therapeutic boardingschool community, we know is a
huge piece and that includes,you know, people having
(19:08):
community of folks that they'rein, they might be in treatment
with or they're in school withor what have you.
But you've taken that to a nextlevel.
You've really, I mean, youreally have.
You know I I would say that yousee a lot of, you see a lot of
programs doing things likeservice projects.
Okay sure, and that's reallygood.
I encourage a bunch of thatactivity, but you guys have
(19:29):
really gone out connected tolocal community, having a
cross-cultural experience andit's causing, you know, one of
the things I got to listen to acouple of the guys talk about
their experience and one of themsaid something that was pretty
profound.
He said that he, you know allthe other environments.
(19:52):
He was kind of surrounded bypeople who already knew what
they were doing and he came intothis environment and it was the
first time he had something togive and it was profound for him
.
Like you know, he could walkout and he knew how to do
something and that was somethingthat somebody else needed, that
they didn't know how to do, andit was the first time in his
(20:14):
life, in his early twenties,that he'd ever had an experience
like that.
And it's one of these kinds ofmagic gems that occurs out of
this aspect and specifically,the location and the nature of
the environment that you're in,this cross-cultural experiential
learning that's happening, thisecosystem that you've immersed
(20:35):
them in, that's part of whatyour degree is in, that's part
of the thing that you'repassionate about.
Tell me about, like, where'sthe design, where's the?
Where's the?
Where's the, the stuff that youstarted with, and how did it
grow into what it is today like?
Speaker 2 (20:50):
tell us a little bit about that journey god, you ask
great questions, stans, butthey're so hard to I'm making
you don all the work, for sureyou know.
All right, so yeah, so there's acouple of pieces there.
One is that, generally speaking, of course, there's a couple of
(21:15):
mistakes from my perspectivethat are made in some of the way
that we conceptualizepsychological healing, and one
is that we tend to think thatwhen someone is hurting, they
need attention, they need tofocus on themselves, and there's
(21:38):
plenty of literature that tellsyou that when you're hurting
and you feel down about yourself, you don't need more attention
on you, you actually need toturn the eyes out to the world,
and so for us it's reallyimportant, not just in the sense
(21:59):
of becoming a contributingmember of society, but to also
realize that there's a wholeworld out there.
And that leads me to the secondpiece, which is that when
people sort of a trademark ofpsychopathology, people sort of
(22:47):
a trademark of psychopathologyis some kind of behaviors and so
part of engaging people.
So one of the things that Ithink about and sometimes this
happens right Like the peoplethat are referred to us will say
, oh no, you know Costa Rica,that'd be too much.
Or like, why costa rica ifthey're going to live in the
united states?
And I think to myself well, I,it's not the point, like we're
(23:09):
not turning people into costaricans, it's just that we're
we're providing them withnourishment of the kind that
they need to um, to kind ofloosen up some of these patterns
and to see, like, oh, I thoughtthe world was such and such,
(23:30):
but it turns out it's not,there's other worlds.
Oh, I thought I was this person.
But I guess that's also aconstruction, because here, in
this environment, I, you know,I'm this different person, and
so dislodging people, I guess,from this sort of diet of them
(23:52):
and their environment, actuallyallows for new ways of seeing
themselves and seeing the worldthat are, I think, are super
useful, because then people canjust choose Okay, so how, how do
I want to be then?
What is the person that that Iwant to become, and so on and so
forth, and it provides thissort of opening landscape.
(24:15):
And then the other, the othertwo pieces there are, that that
a crucial concept for us is theconcept of mattering, which I'm
just going to use Prelatensky'sdefinition because it's the
simplest one, the one I like themost.
He says mattering is defined byfeeling valued and adding value
(24:36):
, and I feel, like I was sayingbefore, that in the world of
psychology we tend to focus alot on okay, let's value you and
not so much in adding value.
And so we try to focus a lot onthis side of mattering.
And I tell my students and Iteach a class on young adult
wellbeing at a universitylocally and the students take my
(24:59):
class and so one of the thingsI said to them is hey, what do
you think, how do you definebeing an adult?
And so people say these kindsof things like oh well, you have
to be financially independentand make your own decision and
live on your own, and so on andso forth.
And I say that's true, andthat's a very sort of Western
way of looking at things andthat's you're going to find that
(25:30):
definition quite a bit.
But there's other places, um,and we support this one where,
when you become and this is notlike one day you wake up and
you're this way.
But the degree to which youbecome a contributor is really
sort of, uh, one of the bigger,um, I guess, needles that you
move when it comes to becomingan adult.
And that's kind of thechallenge where the, the, the
goal is how much more can Icontribute to the world around
me?
How much can I prepareinternally so that I have
something to contribute and andthere's a um, a huge source of,
(25:54):
of, of uh, motivation andwellbeing that that comes from
that Um.
So those are some piecesthere's not those pieces of how
culture is important to what wedo, but certainly it comes from
this concept that to be healthy,to exercise well-being, a sort
(26:22):
of a balancing act of what'shappening in an environment, in
your environment, as it's comingup well, phone, and how you act
, and so it's this sort of dancebetween the environment and you
, in a way that it's inseparable, and I think that's an
(26:44):
important, crucial piece of theecological way in which we look
at well-being.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Well, if you think about this kind of and you
stated it well an independencemodel that we have here in the
States, which is I have my own,this, I have my own, that I can
take care of my own, I can do myown, and it's almost the
antithesis of contribution youknow what I mean Like it's, like
there's nothing about that.
There's nothing about thatparticular model that's given to
(27:12):
young adults here.
That includes and how much canI help my community or my
grandmother or my family, andand be a member and be a part of
what's supportive and I, to ourdetriment, we're also I mean,
you see it in other culturesaround the country, and I ran
into a friend of mine who andhe's like you know, we, we grew
(27:35):
up in the first thing.
The first thing that you do whenyou graduate from high school
is that you, you serve two yearsin the military and a lot of
that is service projects andcommunity projects.
It's not battle, we're not atwar, so, but they're, they're
going out and doing a lot ofservice work.
So the first two years of yourlife out of school is service
work and it's required ofeverybody.
I'm like we need to do that.
(27:57):
You know what I mean at.
You know what I mean.
I don't know if it needs to bedriven by the military, but some
form of service work where youfeel part of something, that's
your ability to contribute, isreally important.
The other thing that I don'tknow if this was a component
that you spent a lot of timenaming, but it was in there and
(28:19):
something that one of yourstudents reflected on in his
experience which he came to anenvironment where, um, he was
coming from an environment whereyou knowing things was valued,
so he didn't know anything andhe walked into a group of
friends or a situation and he'ssupposed to know something.
(28:40):
It feels embarrassing not toknow something.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
And and then you know he's got to either be quiet or
find a way to hide or find a wayto not show that he doesn't
actually know.
And of course, I see that allthe time People are talking
about things and everybody actslike you know what you're
talking about, but I have noidea what we were just talking
about actually, right, impostersyndrome, right, well, but we
(29:07):
don't, we don't know.
You know, it's not okay to notknow, even though somebody,
nobody's ever told you what thisis or how you should act or
what it's about or any of thoseother things you're not supposed
to not know, because you shouldhave been told and you should
be ashamed for not having beentold.
That's kind of the thing, andwhat he said about his
experience and coming over therewas that none of us know
(29:30):
anything.
It's a brand new culture.
It's totally okay for me to notknow something for the first
time.
Um, and there was this reliefand I thought that was.
You know, I got chillslistening to him talk about that
(29:51):
.
It was so cool and I think thatyou know there's a we could
spend a lot of time talkingabout.
You know the, the, the conceptof, and the use of risk.
You were talking about comfortzones, the use of risk and
experiential education.
You know it's like you want tothrow somebody into the red, but
(30:11):
you know taking risk promoteslearning and but if you are so
afraid to take any risk at all,you're gonna find yourself
stunted in your learning and ina experiential deprivation state
Because you're not seekinganything, you're not going after
(30:33):
things, you're avoiding things.
This isolation which is at theroot of much of the mental
illness our young adultsexperience is rooted in
isolation, rooted inexperiential deprivation.
And so is that something thatyou thought of intentionally?
Is that something that youthought of intentionally?
(30:53):
Like, how do we, in forming theprogram, in looking at
environments, in studyingecology in the degree and
teaching at the university, didit occur to you as a component?
It's like, how do I make peoplenot afraid to take risks?
Again, like, did that live inthere somewhere or did it emerge
in the program?
And how and where?
What are the other cool storiesthat you have for where you're
(31:16):
seeing this show up?
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Yeah, no, that's crucial.
And you know, again, going backto supportive immersion, that's
the supportive part of thewhole thing, right, it's like
50%, right I?
You know, sometimes whenstudents I'm interviewing
students that want to come tothe program and and I tell them
that, um, we take turns cookingand students cook for everybody
(31:39):
in the house, and they're like,okay, am I gonna?
So I'm cooking for 13 people,uh, and they're like I've never
done that.
And I said you, you don't haveto know how to do that, you just
show us what you can do.
And if you can do 5% of themeal, we'll do the other 95%.
But guess what you're doingnext time you cook, you're doing
(32:01):
six or 7% and then we'll takecare of the rest.
And what this does is it justallows people to actually have
an experience of the maximumlevel of contribution possible
for them, um, without the fullexpectation that they have to go
from zero to 100.
(32:22):
And you know that I feel likethe issue with young adults a
lot of times is that adolescentscan be pretty devoid of these
kinds of contributions orindependent life skill kind of
activities, and then all of asudden, there's this expectation
that you're going to do that asa young adult, in the United
(32:43):
States in particular, move out,go to college and figure it out
on your own, and then this hugedisparity leads to a lot of
anxiety and a lot of people, youknow, failing out of college
and so on and so forth.
And they maybe not.
They don't leave because theydon't know how to do the math
work.
They don't leave because, oncethey leave the classroom, they
don't know what to do withthemselves.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
you know they leave, because they don't know how to
leave the room.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Right, exactly, yeah, and so um, so, yes, in the
design.
This piece about um providingas much support as the person's
capable of is really important.
(33:28):
But then there's another piece.
There's two other pieces thatare really important, and one is
that I think you have to bebrave in the design of
programming.
That involves theseexperiential elements, in the
sense that you have to budget inthe mistakes and the failures
(33:52):
and see them as as part of thelearning experience.
And the more the world becomessort of uh because it's not just
young people, it's just a wholesociety that becomes more
anxiety driven and more controldriven, and so the more we have
access to these technologies,the more we feel like we need to
control everything.
And so you have to be a littlebit brave to say you know, allow
(34:16):
someone to catch a public busin Costa Rica and teach them how
to do that, and so on and soforth.
But the opposite is more of arisk.
Right, well, what if you don't?
You know, and this is the riskthat people are running into is
like, well, okay, so you're safe, but you're not.
You don't, you know, and thisis the risk that people are
running into.
It's like, well, okay, soyou're safe, but you don't know
(34:37):
how to navigate the world, andso that's pretty risky.
And so I think that people feelthis sense that it's not just
that you're in a country wherenobody knows how to navigate the
area, it's not just that CostaRicans see you and they don't
(34:58):
expect for you to know becauseyou're from somewhere else, but
it's also that we're designing aprogram that is looking, that
the goal is the experiment, islooking, that the goal is the
experiment, and so we're.
You know, if we use the analogyof climbing a mountain, like we
(35:18):
may or may not get to the top ofthe mountain, what we want to
know is how we hike, what kindof hiker am I?
Is ultimately the question.
You know not if we reach thetop of the mountain, or who got
there first, or whatever thecase may be.
And in that, in order to knowthese kinds of things, we just
have to explore.
And sometimes, you know, we'llkind of find the wrong alley or
(35:40):
find ourselves I don't know at ariver that we can't cross and
we have to backtrack, and youknow.
But like it doesn't matter,because all of it, the process
of it, is what's teaching us.
So if you're paying attentionto the learning that's happening
while you're doing all of that,then you're actually getting
somewhere, and so you take thepressure off of these
(36:02):
result-based, theseoutcome-based types of
therapeutic processes where like, oh, now you've reached, you
know, this particular, I don'tknow milestone, or whatever the
case may be.
And so for us, it's much moreimportant that people understand
themselves and how theyfunction in this very sort of
visceral, applied way, like thisis how I navigate the world for
(36:24):
real, and I have experience, Iknow it and I can speak about it
, but, more than anything, Ihave proof that that's something
I can do.
And then I would add anotherlayer which is important to the
Costa Rican culture inparticular, which is that I mean
, this would be a longdiscussion about how the country
is set up in comparison to, say, costa Rica continues to be a
(36:51):
country that, um, thatprioritizes community, and, and
so what you're going to find ifyou come to Costa Rica is that
people want to talk to you,people want to engage in a
relationship with you, and soit's not as important who you
are or like your accolades orwhatever the case may be,
because ultimately they justwant to connect with you, and so
(37:12):
that is somewhat secondary, andso I think our students start
feeling like there's this sortof inherent, unconditional
positive regards, I guess, touse Bergerian language to just
who they are as people, versusfeeling like you know.
They need to kind of come withsome kind of label that
(37:35):
validates them as people likeyou know, what are you doing,
are you going to college?
You know, what have youaccomplished, are you summa cum
laude Like, or whatever the casemay be, versus you know, I
don't really care, you're just aperson.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
Who are you?
Speaker 2 (37:49):
You're a person let's hard to kind of create a sense
(38:19):
of community when people aremoving around so much, and Costa
Rica because it's smaller andthe economy just kind of is kept
to a particular area, then thatjust makes it a little bit
easier for people to stickaround and so that helps
perpetuate the sense ofcommunity.
So there's a few factors therethat contribute to people
(38:41):
feeling the sense that I cangive things a try and it's okay.
There's a student who recentlysaid I don't know if you met him
because I think he had left bythe time you came, but he said
to me in a short interview I didwith him he said you know, I
would say that the bridge isbased on failure and that's a
(39:02):
good thing.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
So, wow, that's one of the biggest compliments I've
ever gotten.
That's great.
Yeah, well, you know the safeexploration of failure.
I mean, that's you're notlearning if you don't fail.
The thing that, the thing thatoccurs to me a little bit about
(39:25):
the cultural aspect of it issomething that Dave Bone talks
about.
You know, in dialogue, whereyou know the purpose of dialogue
is dialogue If you're, ifyou're, you know you can make it
the person of your dialogue tolike, get something or earn
something or establish, you know, a path for success for
yourself or what have you.
It's very difficult to build atrusting or even effective
performative relationship, onewhere you can get things done,
because you haven't, you haven'tdone the basics of just getting
to know each other.
Yet you see a little bit, yousee it.
(39:48):
You see that in culturalaspects, certainly in Costa Rica
and other areas, areas I thinkthat you used to see it a lot
more in the south.
You know you talk about theweather first before you, before
you talk about anything else,and we're losing a bit of that,
and part of the cost of that isthe is the fear of connecting,
and then, without connecting,you end up once again here, we
(40:10):
circle back around to a deprivedexperiential environment.
Well, I tell you, danny.
I was grateful to have theprivilege of visiting your
program and hear some of thesestories and see some of the
interviews with the students.
I'm so glad that you're outthere doing what is ultimately
(40:31):
with experiential educationbeing unique and, of itself, a
version of it.
That is kind of taking thingsto the next level and using
cross-cultural experiences tobring experiential work into a
new place, and hopefully we canfigure out how to bring more of
that back to the States.
But thanks so much for being onthe show today.
I really appreciate the workthat you're doing and I hope
(40:53):
that what we get to do is talkabout it again sometime.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Yeah, well, we could do like 10 of those in a row.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
I'm sure we could just keep going for sure.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Well, we'll do this again and I hope to have you on
and maybe you bring some of yourteam, but this has been Head
Inside Mental Health with ToddWeatherly, Dr Danny Arisio my
guest today with the Bridge andthe Supported Immersion
Institute.
What a cool name.
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
We'll see you again next time.
Outro Music.
I found the illegal illegalillegal illegal illegal illegal,
illegal, illegal, illegal,illegal, illegal, illegal,
illegal, illegal, illegal,illegal, illegal, illegal,
illegal, illegal, illegal,illegal, illegal, illegal,
illegal, illegal, illegal,illegal, illegal, illegal,
(42:51):
illegal, illegal, illegal,illegal, illegal, illegal,
illegal, illegal, illegal,illegal, illegal, illegal,
illegal, illegal, illegal,illegal, illegal, illegal,
illegal, illegal, illegal,illegal, illegal, illegal,
illegal, illegal, illegal,illegal, illegal, illegal,
illegal, illegal.
Thank you, I'm so lonely andlost in here.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
Bye I feel so lonely and lost in here.
I need to find my way home.
I feel so lonely and lost inhere.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
I need to find my way home.
Find my way home.
Hello folks, thanks for joining us on Head Side
Mental Health, featuringconversations about mental
health and substance usetreatment, with experts,
advocates and professionals fromacross the country sharing
their thoughts and insights onthe world of behavioral health
care.
Broadcasting on WPBM 1037, thevoice of Asheville independent
commercial free radio, I'm ToddWeatherly, your host,
(00:21):
therapeutic consultant,behavioral health expert.
My guest today comes to us fromacross the continent and over
the water a bit there in CostaRica, dr Danny Resio, co-founder
of New Summit Academy, atherapeutic boarding school for
adolescent boys aged 14 to 18,and program director for the
(00:41):
Supportive Immersion Instituteand the Bridge Costa Rica, a
supportive gap year communityfor young adult men and women.
Danny has his master's degreein clinical psychology from the
University of West Georgia andhis PhD in integrated ecology.
I think I see a theme here.
He is a published journal authorand a speaker, including the
(01:01):
TEDx Pura Vida, educatingparents, professionals and
communities on topics frommental fitness to cross-cultural
transformative experientiallearning.
His work centers on guidingyoung adults through experiences
of transformative experientiallearning, a process he and his
team call supportive immersion.
This approach is at the heartof the Supportive Immersion
(01:22):
Institute, which involvesdesigning experiences that help
individuals gradually expandtheir abilities and
understanding.
Participants in these programsexplore and discover their
optimal learning zone and how tocontribute to their own
well-being as well as that ofothers.
Danny's inspiration stems fromhis own gap year in South Africa
, where he developed a passionfor understanding people's
(01:43):
cultural and psychologicalworlds and recognized the growth
potential of traveling abroadto build adaptability for
self-awareness.
Danny, welcome to the show.
Something that you and I havebeen kind of chatting about, and
when I had the privilege ofcoming and visiting your program
and seeing you there in CostaRica which was fantastic really,
(02:05):
and I think I have a picture onthe screensaver that's one of
the views that I took from yourcampus for the bridge Just a
fantastic place, and at the timewe just got our version of the
cicada.
We were there when the cicadawere going as well, that's true
Costa Rica itself as a countryand as a culture, not to say
(02:29):
that we don't have it here inthe States, but you're very rich
in mountain, rich in coast,rich in environment, rich in
fruit.
You know there's just so muchthat's there to be involved in
and I think you can probablyspeak to this better than I can.
You've got a culture there thatembraces the connection of
community.
(02:49):
It seems to me people reallyrely on community in ways I
think we have lost to a lot, toa large extent in the United
States, um, in the continentalUnited States a lot.
And the thing that you and Iwere talking about, which I love
this term and I want to, I wantus to explore it a little bit.
I'd like to see more of it outthere so people understand it.
(03:10):
But is this this idea ofexperiential deprivation?
We know we have, we haveexperiential education right,
and we see that very prominentlyin the treatment world and a
lot in kind of the camp worldsand ancillary worlds to
education.
But as a person who came out ofa graduate, you know my
(03:32):
graduate degree being in OutdoorEducation Administration.
Walking up to the schoolsystems, going, hey, where's all
the experiential?
You guys are just sitting thesekids down in chairs.
No wonder you're havingbehavioral problems and
education problems and academicstruggles and all the other
things.
You're leaving out 20, you'releaving out 70 to 75 percent of
the learners in the room andthey're just frustrated and
(03:54):
anxious about the fact thatthey're not picking anything up.
You talked about this in yourTEDx.
Tell me what your definition isof experiential deprivation.
Like, what does it mean to you?
How are you trying to fight itin the world?
Like, tell me a little bit moreabout this concept and your
exploration of it.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Yeah, well, yeah, I'm going to try to narrow it down
as much as possible, right,because I could talk about it
for hours, but I'm so what'scoming to mind right now and
I'll land at a definitionshorter here.
But one of the issues withexperience is that it's almost
(04:36):
hard to say what is not anexperience because we are so
immersed in.
It is the water we swim in.
It's like asking a fish todescribe the oceans, like
everything that happens to us.
In some ways it is anexperience, right.
And so to say that you'reexperientially deprived is to
say that the quality of yourexperience is below the
(04:59):
threshold of what's good for you, right, because if you're awake
, if you're not in a coma, thenyou're having some kind of an
experience.
But it turns out and this issomewhat obvious, but people
know, if you know a little bitabout how the brain learns is
that it learns throughexperience, and so the more
(05:21):
enriching the experience is, themore the brain learns.
And so, if you think about the,you know the power that
something like you know, I don'tknow, tinkering with some
neurons in the brain, versus thelearning that can happen if
(05:42):
you're, I don't know, grasping acup or something like that, the
wiring of neurons is way morepowerful.
If you're grasping the neuronsI mean, sorry, the cup instead
of you know some kind of youknow, you know, tinkering of the
neurons.
And what I'm saying throughthat is that the brain requires
(06:03):
experience to adjust and learnand so on and so forth, because
evolutionarily, that's the waythat we develop, especially
human brains, because we're notborn like a little zebra that,
just you know, starts walking onlike the first hour of being
born.
Our brains are designed toattach to particular experiences
(06:25):
so that it can actually performin a world that is quite varied
, especially for us humansbecause we inhabit all these
landscapes.
And so I guess what I'm sayingyeah, and so the big advantage
that we have as humans is thatwe have this malleable brain
(06:49):
that can learn and this, goingback to the conversation, we're
having at nervous system, a bodyof the adequate experiences to
navigate the world insecure,that feels anxious, that feels,
I don't know, timid when itcomes to navigating the world.
(07:31):
And so the issue that the reasonI think about experiential
deprivation so much is becausethere's, it doesn't make that
much sense sometimes to speakabout, you know, how the old
generations were better and thekids now and so on and so forth.
(07:52):
There's a, there's a part of itthat is just not as important.
But it is important in thesense of looking at the factors,
uh, the environmental factors,the social factors that younger
generations are encountering,and what's helping and not
helping.
And I think that experientialeducation is much more important
(08:16):
now because people are nothaving many experiences that
were completely natural before.
Before we got on, we weretalking about how people didn't
used to think it was importantto go to the gym.
The gym was a ridiculousconcept way back when you lived
(08:36):
all day right?
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Yeah, exactly, why would you go to the?
Speaker 2 (08:39):
gym, but now you actually have to intentionally
get up and go to the gym.
And likewise, I think thatyoung people are growing up in a
world where certain experiencesthat were just the natural way
in which you learned they'rejust not existent anymore and so
you have to be intentionalabout it.
(09:02):
And there's other examples,like food, for example.
Right, Like you know, we talkabout organic food now because
some food is not, but when itwas all organic, it was kind of
silly to say that food.
You know, I got to eat organicfoods Like that's all there was.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Yeah, like it was organic, we call it food.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
And so now you know, if we land at the concept of
experiential deprivations, likeyou know, it used to be silly to
say you know that you'redeprived of experience, until
now that we live in such highlytechnology mediated worlds where
there's so much that you'remissing and that people then
(09:43):
used to think was important.
Like people thought, oh, you gotto go to school to learn your
math and your science and so onand so forth.
And now we're realizing, well,but it turns out that it was
really important that youactually bike to school and that
you walk to school and all thethings that happened in between
going to school and gettingthere.
That is also really important.
(10:06):
So people call this life skillsor soft skills or whatever the
case may be.
But the point is that now Ithink we need to look very
closely at those things thatwere natural at some point and
that are not anymore, and that Ithink, or at least partially,
explain the reason why youngergenerations are more anxious,
(10:30):
more insecure and, let's call it, less resilient, which means
that they feel less equipped todeal with the challenges of life
.
And so the challenges of life,one can say that are higher or
lower, I don't know, but I thinkwithout enough experiential
nourishment then people aregoing to feel less equipped to
deal with whatever life throwsat you, because you need those
(10:53):
neurons to wire to the actualexperiences and challenges that
you go through as you're growingup.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Yeah, well, and they're also just to your point.
There's so much out in theworld that still needs to be
done and I think one goodexample that I've heard from my
kids, their peers, parents oftheir friends, is that kids
(11:19):
don't want to drive.
It's overwhelming that you knowit.
It's.
It's overwhelming, it's.
You have to be responsible forthis, this thing.
You know 203 000 pounds worthof metal.
You know, careening through theworld.
Uh, yeah, it, it is.
It is scary, it is a bigresponsibility and it's also
(11:40):
something that people just doevery day.
But a lot of the and and then Ihave two children, one's almost
19 and the other one's almost 22.
So the 22-year-old, you know,he's got friends that have kind
of gone over the hurdle wherethey went ahead and learned how
to drive.
But when they drive, they feelincredibly anxious, like they
(12:02):
try to drive in such a way sothey don't have to change lanes.
They, they, you know they dothings to really try and limit
their experience, and it makesthem ill-equipped when they're
suddenly, you know, in the faceof something that is difficult
to navigate or manage.
Um and and and then they gethigh anxiety responses and those
kinds of things and I, you knowI don't know how it is in Costa
(12:25):
Rica, but the, the driver'straining which we used to have
in school and it was just a partof the curriculum and you were
required to take it and it wasjust there and it was expected
that you were going to at theappropriate age and and and
grade you would be takingdriver's ed.
Nowadays you have to scheduleit, you have to go find it.
(12:47):
It's limited and short.
There's a lot less experienceactually doing driving.
They resolve it in the testareas.
They try to put it on theparents to say, hey, you take
them out and give them enoughhours.
We know how that works and soyou're getting the results of
that in the world and I thinkthat you know that's just a
(13:10):
small example, a microcosm kindof example, of what we're seeing
in the larger world where itcomes to education, where we've
got a lot of screens, we've gota lot of interactions that are
not rooted in experience.
They're just, you know, handingdown information and hoping
people pick it up.
I mean, I think that that'sbeen a problem for a long time.
But you mentioned somethingelse and I'd like to hear your
(13:33):
thoughts about this.
But it's almost.
It's not just the way that we'regetting our information, and
that's important.
We've got this experientialdeprivation Our information is
coming to us without experience.
We've got this experientialdeprivation Our information is
coming to us without experience.
We're watching it, we'rewitnessing it.
In your talk you did the.
I was really hoping you wouldpull the handkerchief, watch the
(13:58):
guy two or three times and seeif you can pull the tablecloth
out from underneath the glasses.
But at any rate, it's also thekind of information that people
are getting.
They're getting information inmuch tinier chunks and so
there's less to kind of grabonto.
(14:20):
So not only are they getting itin a deprived environment,
they're getting a deprivedcontent as well.
When you aim because you've gotNew Summit Academy, you've got
the bridge, both there in CostaRica when you have students
coming to your program and yousee all this having taken its
(14:40):
effect and they're coming awaywith behavioral problems and
anxiety, everything else, wheredo you start to work with them
in reconciling some of thesethings?
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Yeah, so, um, there's a lot to say that I think that,
um, two, two places to go withyour question is that, um, I'm
going to, I'm going to, I'mgoing to kind of jump right to
the heart of methodology.
You know we were talking aboutsupportive immersion and your
(15:12):
introduction, and so, yeah, wepeople know this from sort of
popular culture that you know.
People say life begins at theedge of your comfort zone, right
?
Or something like that, right?
right um and um learning does aswell.
(15:32):
And so where?
Where you begin is right at theedge of where someone is
capable, and the course, theenvironment that we provide is
very enriching, not just in thesenses that you were talking
about, but just in all kinds ofways, right, different language,
(15:55):
different traditions, and interms of the landscapes it
affords and the culture and soon.
But what you have to do isprovide people with the very
next level of supportiveimmersion that we call
connecting, which is very commonin all of psychology, but it's
(16:26):
the sense of understanding theworld of the person and
understanding where they're at.
What are they capable of?
What are they interested in?
What moves their dopamine?
I guess, what will get themgoing?
Just to have this, uh, what, um, what, uh?
James clear called the entrypoint, right, when you try to
build habits like what's thissort of minimal level of
(16:47):
challenge that you can take up?
That's going to get the wheelsturning.
And then, of course, you wantto scale up from there and in a
way where it's almost like I'mgoing to use a surfing analogy
just because I like surfing andthis may be just completely
(17:08):
foreign to most people, but whenyou're riding a wave, it's not
going to work as well of stay inone place.
You kind of have to go up anddown and take advantage of the
slope that the wave is providingso that you can kind of catch
some speed.
And then, you know, go up andget more and come down and so on
(17:31):
and so forth.
And so when you're in alearning process like this, you
want to tap into that zone ofoptimal learning where you're
challenged in a way that'senough for your skill level, and
then you want to up thechallenge and then lower it and
kind of dance that way.
But your question was aboutwhere to start, and you
definitely want to start at aplace where it's doable, I guess
(17:58):
, for the person.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
Right.
It's doable, I guess, for theperson Right At the edge of
their already existingcompetence and to a certain
extent competence, and then givethem experiences, obviously
where they can push thatenvelope just a little bit.
But I think that also kind oftakes us to this other piece,
because you know, as a personwho's got a lot of training in
(18:21):
experiential education, you knowthe experiential cycle.
You have an experience, youreflect on it, you try to
generalize and then you go applyit in the real world.
There's this cycle of learningthat happens for a person when
they engage in real experience.
But one of the things that Ithought that I think is just
super cool first of all is thiscross-cultural experiential
(18:47):
learning component that you'vegot.
And you know, I think that youknow, in treatment, regardless
of where you are in treatment,you could be in adult addictions
treatment or primary mentalhealth care or in boarding
school.
You know therapeutic boardingschool community, we know is a
huge piece and that includes,you know, people having
(19:08):
community of folks that they'rein, they might be in treatment
with or they're in school withor what have you.
But you've taken that to a nextlevel.
You've really, I mean, youreally have.
You know I I would say that yousee a lot of, you see a lot of
programs doing things likeservice projects.
Okay sure, and that's reallygood.
I encourage a bunch of thatactivity, but you guys have
(19:29):
really gone out connected tolocal community, having a
cross-cultural experience andit's causing, you know, one of
the things I got to listen to acouple of the guys talk about
their experience and one of themsaid something that was pretty
profound.
He said that he, you know allthe other environments.
(19:52):
He was kind of surrounded bypeople who already knew what
they were doing and he came intothis environment and it was the
first time he had something togive and it was profound for him
.
Like you know, he could walkout and he knew how to do
something and that was somethingthat somebody else needed, that
they didn't know how to do, andit was the first time in his
(20:14):
life, in his early twenties,that he'd ever had an experience
like that.
And it's one of these kinds ofmagic gems that occurs out of
this aspect and specifically,the location and the nature of
the environment that you're in,this cross-cultural experiential
learning that's happening, thisecosystem that you've immersed
(20:35):
them in, that's part of whatyour degree is in, that's part
of the thing that you'repassionate about.
Tell me about, like, where'sthe design, where's the?
Where's the?
Where's the, the stuff that youstarted with, and how did it
grow into what it is today like?
Speaker 2 (20:50):
tell us a little bit about that journey god, you ask
great questions, stans, butthey're so hard to I'm making
you don all the work, for sureyou know.
All right, so yeah, so there's acouple of pieces there.
One is that, generally speaking, of course, there's a couple of
(21:15):
mistakes from my perspectivethat are made in some of the way
that we conceptualizepsychological healing, and one
is that we tend to think thatwhen someone is hurting, they
need attention, they need tofocus on themselves, and there's
(21:38):
plenty of literature that tellsyou that when you're hurting
and you feel down about yourself, you don't need more attention
on you, you actually need toturn the eyes out to the world,
and so for us it's reallyimportant, not just in the sense
(21:59):
of becoming a contributingmember of society, but to also
realize that there's a wholeworld out there.
And that leads me to the secondpiece, which is that when
people sort of a trademark ofpsychopathology, people sort of
(22:47):
a trademark of psychopathologyis some kind of behaviors and so
part of engaging people.
So one of the things that Ithink about and sometimes this
happens right Like the peoplethat are referred to us will say
, oh no, you know Costa Rica,that'd be too much.
Or like, why costa rica ifthey're going to live in the
united states?
And I think to myself well, I,it's not the point, like we're
(23:09):
not turning people into costaricans, it's just that we're
we're providing them withnourishment of the kind that
they need to um, to kind ofloosen up some of these patterns
and to see, like, oh, I thoughtthe world was such and such,
(23:30):
but it turns out it's not,there's other worlds.
Oh, I thought I was this person.
But I guess that's also aconstruction, because here, in
this environment, I, you know,I'm this different person, and
so dislodging people, I guess,from this sort of diet of them
(23:52):
and their environment, actuallyallows for new ways of seeing
themselves and seeing the worldthat are, I think, are super
useful, because then people canjust choose Okay, so how, how do
I want to be then?
What is the person that that Iwant to become, and so on and so
forth, and it provides thissort of opening landscape.
(24:15):
And then the other, the othertwo pieces there are, that that
a crucial concept for us is theconcept of mattering, which I'm
just going to use Prelatensky'sdefinition because it's the
simplest one, the one I like themost.
He says mattering is defined byfeeling valued and adding value
(24:36):
, and I feel, like I was sayingbefore, that in the world of
psychology we tend to focus alot on okay, let's value you and
not so much in adding value.
And so we try to focus a lot onthis side of mattering.
And I tell my students and Iteach a class on young adult
wellbeing at a universitylocally and the students take my
(24:59):
class and so one of the thingsI said to them is hey, what do
you think, how do you definebeing an adult?
And so people say these kindsof things like oh well, you have
to be financially independentand make your own decision and
live on your own, and so on andso forth.
And I say that's true, andthat's a very sort of Western
way of looking at things andthat's you're going to find that
(25:30):
definition quite a bit.
But there's other places, um,and we support this one where,
when you become and this is notlike one day you wake up and
you're this way.
But the degree to which youbecome a contributor is really
sort of, uh, one of the bigger,um, I guess, needles that you
move when it comes to becomingan adult.
And that's kind of thechallenge where the, the, the
goal is how much more can Icontribute to the world around
me?
How much can I prepareinternally so that I have
something to contribute and andthere's a um, a huge source of,
(25:54):
of, of uh, motivation andwellbeing that that comes from
that Um.
So those are some piecesthere's not those pieces of how
culture is important to what wedo, but certainly it comes from
this concept that to be healthy,to exercise well-being, a sort
(26:22):
of a balancing act of what'shappening in an environment, in
your environment, as it's comingup well, phone, and how you act
, and so it's this sort of dancebetween the environment and you
, in a way that it's inseparable, and I think that's an
(26:44):
important, crucial piece of theecological way in which we look
at well-being.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Well, if you think about this kind of and you
stated it well an independencemodel that we have here in the
States, which is I have my own,this, I have my own, that I can
take care of my own, I can do myown, and it's almost the
antithesis of contribution youknow what I mean Like it's, like
there's nothing about that.
There's nothing about thatparticular model that's given to
(27:12):
young adults here.
That includes and how much canI help my community or my
grandmother or my family, andand be a member and be a part of
what's supportive and I, to ourdetriment, we're also I mean,
you see it in other culturesaround the country, and I ran
into a friend of mine who andhe's like you know, we, we grew
(27:35):
up in the first thing.
The first thing that you do whenyou graduate from high school
is that you, you serve two yearsin the military and a lot of
that is service projects andcommunity projects.
It's not battle, we're not atwar, so, but they're, they're
going out and doing a lot ofservice work.
So the first two years of yourlife out of school is service
work and it's required ofeverybody.
I'm like we need to do that.
(27:57):
You know what I mean at.
You know what I mean.
I don't know if it needs to bedriven by the military, but some
form of service work where youfeel part of something, that's
your ability to contribute, isreally important.
The other thing that I don'tknow if this was a component
that you spent a lot of timenaming, but it was in there and
(28:19):
something that one of yourstudents reflected on in his
experience which he came to anenvironment where, um, he was
coming from an environment whereyou knowing things was valued,
so he didn't know anything andhe walked into a group of
friends or a situation and he'ssupposed to know something.
(28:40):
It feels embarrassing not toknow something.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
And and then you know he's got to either be quiet or
find a way to hide or find a wayto not show that he doesn't
actually know.
And of course, I see that allthe time People are talking
about things and everybody actslike you know what you're
talking about, but I have noidea what we were just talking
about actually, right, impostersyndrome, right, well, but we
(29:07):
don't, we don't know.
You know, it's not okay to notknow, even though somebody,
nobody's ever told you what thisis or how you should act or
what it's about or any of thoseother things you're not supposed
to not know, because you shouldhave been told and you should
be ashamed for not having beentold.
That's kind of the thing, andwhat he said about his
experience and coming over therewas that none of us know
(29:30):
anything.
It's a brand new culture.
It's totally okay for me to notknow something for the first
time.
Um, and there was this reliefand I thought that was.
You know, I got chillslistening to him talk about that
(29:51):
.
It was so cool and I think thatyou know there's a we could
spend a lot of time talkingabout.
You know the, the, the conceptof, and the use of risk.
You were talking about comfortzones, the use of risk and
experiential education.
You know it's like you want tothrow somebody into the red, but
(30:11):
you know taking risk promoteslearning and but if you are so
afraid to take any risk at all,you're gonna find yourself
stunted in your learning and ina experiential deprivation state
Because you're not seekinganything, you're not going after
(30:33):
things, you're avoiding things.
This isolation which is at theroot of much of the mental
illness our young adultsexperience is rooted in
isolation, rooted inexperiential deprivation.
And so is that something thatyou thought of intentionally?
Is that something that youthought of intentionally?
(30:53):
Like, how do we, in forming theprogram, in looking at
environments, in studyingecology in the degree and
teaching at the university, didit occur to you as a component?
It's like, how do I make peoplenot afraid to take risks?
Again, like, did that live inthere somewhere or did it emerge
in the program?
And how and where?
What are the other cool storiesthat you have for where you're
(31:16):
seeing this show up?
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Yeah, no, that's crucial.
And you know, again, going backto supportive immersion, that's
the supportive part of thewhole thing, right, it's like
50%, right I?
You know, sometimes whenstudents I'm interviewing
students that want to come tothe program and and I tell them
that, um, we take turns cookingand students cook for everybody
(31:39):
in the house, and they're like,okay, am I gonna?
So I'm cooking for 13 people,uh, and they're like I've never
done that.
And I said you, you don't haveto know how to do that, you just
show us what you can do.
And if you can do 5% of themeal, we'll do the other 95%.
But guess what you're doingnext time you cook, you're doing
(32:01):
six or 7% and then we'll takecare of the rest.
And what this does is it justallows people to actually have
an experience of the maximumlevel of contribution possible
for them, um, without the fullexpectation that they have to go
from zero to 100.
(32:22):
And you know that I feel likethe issue with young adults a
lot of times is that adolescentscan be pretty devoid of these
kinds of contributions orindependent life skill kind of
activities, and then all of asudden, there's this expectation
that you're going to do that asa young adult, in the United
(32:43):
States in particular, move out,go to college and figure it out
on your own, and then this hugedisparity leads to a lot of
anxiety and a lot of people, youknow, failing out of college
and so on and so forth.
And they maybe not.
They don't leave because theydon't know how to do the math
work.
They don't leave because, oncethey leave the classroom, they
don't know what to do withthemselves.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
you know they leave, because they don't know how to
leave the room.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Right, exactly, yeah, and so um, so, yes, in the
design.
This piece about um providingas much support as the person's
capable of is really important.
(33:28):
But then there's another piece.
There's two other pieces thatare really important, and one is
that I think you have to bebrave in the design of
programming.
That involves theseexperiential elements, in the
sense that you have to budget inthe mistakes and the failures
(33:52):
and see them as as part of thelearning experience.
And the more the world becomessort of uh because it's not just
young people, it's just a wholesociety that becomes more
anxiety driven and more controldriven, and so the more we have
access to these technologies,the more we feel like we need to
control everything.
And so you have to be a littlebit brave to say you know, allow
(34:16):
someone to catch a public busin Costa Rica and teach them how
to do that, and so on and soforth.
But the opposite is more of arisk.
Right, well, what if you don't?
You know, and this is the riskthat people are running into is
like, well, okay, so you're safe, but you're not.
You don't, you know, and thisis the risk that people are
running into.
It's like, well, okay, soyou're safe, but you don't know
(34:37):
how to navigate the world, andso that's pretty risky.
And so I think that people feelthis sense that it's not just
that you're in a country wherenobody knows how to navigate the
area, it's not just that CostaRicans see you and they don't
(34:58):
expect for you to know becauseyou're from somewhere else, but
it's also that we're designing aprogram that is looking, that
the goal is the experiment, islooking, that the goal is the
experiment, and so we're.
You know, if we use the analogyof climbing a mountain, like we
(35:18):
may or may not get to the top ofthe mountain, what we want to
know is how we hike, what kindof hiker am I?
Is ultimately the question.
You know not if we reach thetop of the mountain, or who got
there first, or whatever thecase may be.
And in that, in order to knowthese kinds of things, we just
have to explore.
And sometimes, you know, we'llkind of find the wrong alley or
(35:40):
find ourselves I don't know at ariver that we can't cross and
we have to backtrack, and youknow.
But like it doesn't matter,because all of it, the process
of it, is what's teaching us.
So if you're paying attentionto the learning that's happening
while you're doing all of that,then you're actually getting
somewhere, and so you take thepressure off of these
(36:02):
result-based, theseoutcome-based types of
therapeutic processes where like, oh, now you've reached, you
know, this particular, I don'tknow milestone, or whatever the
case may be.
And so for us, it's much moreimportant that people understand
themselves and how theyfunction in this very sort of
visceral, applied way, like thisis how I navigate the world for
(36:24):
real, and I have experience, Iknow it and I can speak about it
, but, more than anything, Ihave proof that that's something
I can do.
And then I would add anotherlayer which is important to the
Costa Rican culture inparticular, which is that I mean
, this would be a longdiscussion about how the country
is set up in comparison to, say, costa Rica continues to be a
(36:51):
country that, um, thatprioritizes community, and, and
so what you're going to find ifyou come to Costa Rica is that
people want to talk to you,people want to engage in a
relationship with you, and soit's not as important who you
are or like your accolades orwhatever the case may be,
because ultimately they justwant to connect with you, and so
(37:12):
that is somewhat secondary, andso I think our students start
feeling like there's this sortof inherent, unconditional
positive regards, I guess, touse Bergerian language to just
who they are as people, versusfeeling like you know.
They need to kind of come withsome kind of label that
(37:35):
validates them as people likeyou know, what are you doing,
are you going to college?
You know, what have youaccomplished, are you summa cum
laude Like, or whatever the casemay be, versus you know, I
don't really care, you're just aperson.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
Who are you?
Speaker 2 (37:49):
You're a person let's hard to kind of create a sense
(38:19):
of community when people aremoving around so much, and Costa
Rica because it's smaller andthe economy just kind of is kept
to a particular area, then thatjust makes it a little bit
easier for people to stickaround and so that helps
perpetuate the sense ofcommunity.
So there's a few factors therethat contribute to people
(38:41):
feeling the sense that I cangive things a try and it's okay.
There's a student who recentlysaid I don't know if you met him
because I think he had left bythe time you came, but he said
to me in a short interview I didwith him he said you know, I
would say that the bridge isbased on failure and that's a
(39:02):
good thing.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
So, wow, that's one of the biggest compliments I've
ever gotten.
That's great.
Yeah, well, you know the safeexploration of failure.
I mean, that's you're notlearning if you don't fail.
The thing that, the thing thatoccurs to me a little bit about
(39:25):
the cultural aspect of it issomething that Dave Bone talks
about.
You know, in dialogue, whereyou know the purpose of dialogue
is dialogue If you're, ifyou're, you know you can make it
the person of your dialogue tolike, get something or earn
something or establish, you know, a path for success for
yourself or what have you.
It's very difficult to build atrusting or even effective
performative relationship, onewhere you can get things done,
because you haven't, you haven'tdone the basics of just getting
to know each other.
Yet you see a little bit, yousee it.
(39:48):
You see that in culturalaspects, certainly in Costa Rica
and other areas, areas I thinkthat you used to see it a lot
more in the south.
You know you talk about theweather first before you, before
you talk about anything else,and we're losing a bit of that,
and part of the cost of that isthe is the fear of connecting,
and then, without connecting,you end up once again here, we
(40:10):
circle back around to a deprivedexperiential environment.
Well, I tell you, danny.
I was grateful to have theprivilege of visiting your
program and hear some of thesestories and see some of the
interviews with the students.
I'm so glad that you're outthere doing what is ultimately
(40:31):
with experiential educationbeing unique and, of itself, a
version of it.
That is kind of taking thingsto the next level and using
cross-cultural experiences tobring experiential work into a
new place, and hopefully we canfigure out how to bring more of
that back to the States.
But thanks so much for being onthe show today.
I really appreciate the workthat you're doing and I hope
(40:53):
that what we get to do is talkabout it again sometime.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Yeah, well, we could do like 10 of those in a row.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
I'm sure we could just keep going for sure.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Well, we'll do this again and I hope to have you on
and maybe you bring some of yourteam, but this has been Head
Inside Mental Health with ToddWeatherly, Dr Danny Arisio my
guest today with the Bridge andthe Supported Immersion
Institute.
What a cool name.
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
We'll see you again next time.
Outro Music.
I found the illegal illegalillegal illegal illegal illegal,
illegal, illegal, illegal,illegal, illegal, illegal,
illegal, illegal, illegal,illegal, illegal, illegal,
illegal, illegal, illegal,illegal, illegal, illegal,
illegal, illegal, illegal,illegal, illegal, illegal,
(42:51):
illegal, illegal, illegal,illegal, illegal, illegal,
illegal, illegal, illegal,illegal, illegal, illegal,
illegal, illegal, illegal,illegal, illegal, illegal,
illegal, illegal, illegal,illegal, illegal, illegal,
illegal, illegal, illegal,illegal, illegal, illegal,
illegal, illegal.
Thank you, I'm so lonely andlost in here.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
Bye I feel so lonely and lost in here.
I need to find my way home.
I feel so lonely and lost inhere.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
I need to find my way home.
Find my way home.
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