Ben - Wingate wilderness therapy

Instructor: Here we go. So tell us your name, please. Student: My name is Ben. Instructor: And your age? Ben: I'm 16. Instructor: 16. And how long have you been here? Ben: I've been here for five weeks today. Instructor: Five weeks, wonderful. So Ben, what is the reason why your parents wanted you to be here? Ben: Because of my drug and alcohol abuse. It was like overall had a bad relationship with my parents. I relapsed from my last program. I was, like, running away from home, and, like, sneaking out of the house. Instructor: K. So tell us a little bit about what you've learned here. Ben: I've learned, well, a lot of the staff here have, like, current or previous experiences with... like, some of the staff here were students at the program, and when they staff here it's, like, and they tell their life story, like, it's really easy, they get it. Like it's really easy to relate to them. I find that it's a lot easier to get through my time here when there's somebody to talk to that actually understands. Instructor: Great. So who is your favorite staff? Ben: Probably my favorite staff would be Miles. Instructor: Miles. Why? Ben: Because he's really funny. He's always positive. He treats everyone with respect... the same amount of respect. He doesn't choose favorites or anything like that. I could really relate to him. He was a previous student here. 0:02:19.000,0:02:22:779 I think me and him had a lot in common. Instructor: Awesome, thank you. Tell me, what kind of advice would you give somebody who is coming to WinGate? Ben: Be open. From the start, be honest. Don't try to, like, *** the program. Don't worry about how long you're going to be here. Actually try and work on your problems and don't try and push help away. And let it in. Instructor: Excellent, that is awesome insight. So... what's been one of the hardest things you've had to do while you've been here at WinGate? Ben: I think probably one of the hardest things would be my parent visit. You get a parent visit halfway through your stay and WinGate. Probably the hardest thing was, my therapist John had told me, as an assignment, to write an agenda for my visit, so I was ready to know what I was going to talk about. I had to write, kind of like a disclosures list about all the things that I had done. Like, whether it was drugs or stealing from my parents or something like that. Things that my parents might not know about. Instructor: Kind of a coming clean letter, huh? Ben: Yeah. Instructor: Yeah. Ben: And just, like, being in person. Like, in my other program I had to write that, but we didn't get a parent visit halfway in between. And it was just a letter I wrote to them, so it wasn't really… I didn't feel too emotionally... Like, it wasn't too emotionally difficult. Instructor: But it was this time, huh? Ben: Yeah. Actually being in person, face-to-face, telling it to their face, it was really hard to do that. Instructor: Very difficult. Well, cool. So have you learned that you can do hard things? Instructor: That is so awesome. Good job. Thank you so much, Ben, for sharing your story with us. We wish you lots of luck. Thank you.