About Me. The condensed and relevant version
How it came to be
Ecotherapy is where my professional and personal life met, and everything fell into place
For over 20 years I have designed and delivered mental health training programmes, believing strongly in education as the earliest intervention and key to empowerment. I excelled academically at degree and post graduate level and added qualifications and experience in group facilitation, community development and fitness. Mental health always felt like the right profession for me, but clinical settings felt like the wrong place. My heart was in the community, with a holistic and democratised approach.
As well as delivering training, I facilitated depression support groups, witnessing the power of a group dynamic and peer support. I provided a listening ear on crisis help-lines, becoming convinced that, above all else, people need to be heard. Volunteering as an advocate highlighted the importance of simply being there for another person at a difficult time.
In these multi – faceted roles, I worked with people of all ages, from every walk of life. I engaged with literally hundreds of people about their experiences of mental health and illness, often listening more than I talked, and learning more than I taught.
When discussing ‘what helped’, it was evident that seemingly simple things meant the most, namely ‘being heard’ and ‘feeling connected’. A less obvious theme also became apparent in responses such as; “gardening . . . pets . . . fishing . . . walking . . parks. . . beaches.” The theme was nature! Without direction, irrespective of background, people repeatedly told me that they were drawn to nature in times of distress and sadness. As a mental health professional, trained to signpost support and disseminate information, I was acutely aware that services just did not reflect this.
I had another, more valuable, insight into mental health services. I was also a service user myself, with the unhelpful label of having ‘a severe and enduring mental illness’. These are not my words, and I now clearly understand my experiences as natural emotional responses to grief, trauma and immense levels of stress. However, believing that I was ‘ill’ and only professional help could make me better; I attended GP’s, psychiatrists, psychologists, mental health nurses and counsellors. I was compliant and co-operative, taking medications as prescribed, engaging fully with talking therapies and following advice given. Yet, at no point did I consider the importance of nature connection, neither was it ever highlighted to me.
As an avid diarist, I accurately reviewed my own history of mental health and nature. The correlation was undeniably strong. When living with depression in London, I went to Hampstead Heath at every opportunity. When my mental health worsened in Derry, I yearned for more time gardening and dog walking in green spaces. Even as an inpatient in Gransha psychiatric hospital, diary entries reveal my greatest motivation for getting off high level suicide watch, was to get to the the small woodlands beside the hospital.
I realised that I had silenced this call to nature, because nothing or nobody else valued it as essential to my recovery. I had continued to work hard, achieve professionally and ‘manage my bipolar illness’ as directed, with an ever increasing prescription for psychiatric medications. As directed, I took anti-depressant, mood stabiliser, anti-psychotic, anti-anxiety and sleeping tablets daily. This cocktail of chemicals invariably had physical side-effects, as well as suppressing emotional expression and stifling creativity. Yet, it was considered an essential ‘maintenance dose’ before I was 40.
So, having exhausted every external treatment available, I decided, for the first time, to let my intuition guide my healing. I slowed down; making life choices that prioritised my emotional well-being above productivity, career attainment and financial security. I moved to the countryside and immersed myself in nature; turning the soil, walking the hills and swimming in the cold sea. I was outdoors, usually barefoot, in all weather. I didn’t know then that this was Ecotherapy, and I was in intensive care. In solitude and silence I cried a lot and I cried loudly, feeling held with acceptance, love and support by other-than-human nature. I processed and released a lifetime of grief and emotional pain, and I healed.
Within three years I was entirely medication free, with no depression, elation, anxiety or psychosis. I was flourishing creatively and enjoying better mental and physical health than I had ever known, or dared believe possible.
Determined to never again neglect this sacred bond with nature, I resolved only to return to freelance and/or part time work. I trusted that the right role would manifest, and it did; Solas Donegal opened a part time service in Inishowen and I was employed as co-facilitator and peer support specialist. Solas is a HSE mental health recovery programme based in the community, using a model of walking, talking and listening in green spaces. I witnessed first-hand how this model profoundly enhanced recovery for people with diagnoses of depression, anxiety, bipolar, OCD, PTSD and schizophrenia. I attended training courses, and the more I researched and learned about Ecotherapy, the more it made sense. I now had a professional framework that validated my own lived experience and that of countless others. I was excited that Ecotherapy was a recognised, credible and growing ‘discipline’ in mental health care. I had found my place.
Solas participants are referred from within the HSE mental health team, so are already ‘in the system’. Despite a welcome increase in positive psychology and social and green prescribing, mental health services are still based on a reactive and paternalistic care model; i.e a person is already ‘unwell’ so we try to ‘make them better’. In this approach, medical interventions dominate as prescriptions for psychiatric drugs increase while availability of talking therapies decrease. As with all services, there was a waiting list for Solas almost as soon as the programme opened.
As always, my interest remained firmly in an accessible and holistic approach of education, self determination and community connection. Because the reality is that most people have mental health challenges, not as an ‘illness’ requiring diagnosis and professional treatment, but as a natural, though difficult, part of the human experience. Making a self – determined decision to engage in an Ecotherapy practice providing education and listening at this stage, without need for a referral, could be life changing.
The practice I have developed is intentionally and unapologetically simple.
Layers of bureaucracy, professional hierarchy and restraints are stripped away to focus energy on innate human emotional needs; connection to nature and others, being heard and feeling empowered.
I don’t endeavour to apply psychotherapy or counselling modalities to the human – nature connection. I remove barriers, facilitating the time and space for people to rediscover and value this connection themselves, underpinning it with mental health education, self awareness and peer support. I elevate the importance of empathic, compassionate, non-judgemental listening for the sake of hearing another human being. As opposed to listening for the sake of analysis, diagnosis, treatment, box ticking and record keeping.
Not intended to take the place of important and necessary therapeutic intervention, this service offers another option for those seeking to maintain or improve wellbeing, wherever they are on the mental health spectrum. If currently using medications and/or talking therapy, Ecotherapy will not undermine this, in fact it will increase efficacy and add value. There are no side effects or waiting lists, and personal autonomy is upheld by the choice of how much and how often to engage.
Ecotherapy is not some airy-fairy, hippy- dippy, new wave nonsense. It is a scientifically proven, evidence based approach to mental health care that predates both psychotherapy and the medical model. In recent years, Ecotherapy is gaining recognition as a credible discipline due to an ever increasing body of international research.
Science and academia are catching up with what intuition and lived experience always knew and told us, but we were too busy to listen.
Intuition and experience are the best teachers I know.