Basic Attendance
Basic Attendance is what occurs on shifts with team members. It is the clinician actively and compassionately attending to the client throughout ordinary aspects of daily living. There is a collaboration between the client and team member around how they would like to spend the time. This may include going on a hike, partnering around household chores, going to a doctor or dentist appointment together, listening to music, having conversation, and many other ideas that arise in real time. Our team members have cars in which to bring clients out in the community on shift. We have found over the many years of collaborating relationally in these ways with our clients that this remains an integral aspect of recovery.
One of the biggest things Windhorse has offered to me is the sense of real relationship with people and real friendships. When I was in other treatment facilities.. they just didn’t work for me for various reasons, but Windhorse, having the sense of companionship and friendship over time got me to open up more to people and seek the support I needed and be able to actually feel comfortable processing things with people and make it feel more real, because it is real. That’s where Windhorse has filled a void in my life.
– Windhorse Client
Relational Medicine
Relationship medicine is a dynamic and many-faceted process of whole-person treatment that begins with the simple act of opening one’s door and saying,”hello.”
The “outer” or surface meaning of relationship medicine is just what it sounds like: the healing quality of being in relationship with others. This understanding of the healing power of connection is the underpinning of Basic Attendance. Through this practice, Windhorse clinicians synchronize with our clients in a regularly scheduled way, connect with their innate intelligence, and develop deep and meaningful relationships over time.
Basic Attendance relationships foster an enrichment process that then develops and spreads into other areas of a client’s life. Some practical Windhorse relational medicine outcomes are an increased tolerance for being around other people and for the challenging feelings that invariably come with being in close connection to others. Healthy relationships also activate neurological pathways that may have become accustomed to solitude (or screens), allowing for more creativity, improved cognition, and increased compassion. We know that our clients are doing well when they begin caring for us as much as we care for them.
It is probably true that there is a “relationship bias” at Windhorse. Indeed, our view is that relationships are key to mental health. This is not to discount the great benefits of solitude. Many of us Windhorse clinicians are meditation practitioners who regularly go on retreat. But that is a different kind of solitude—one that involves intention, container, space, and practice. That is something altogether different from the solitude born of isolation, self-absorption and insulated depression that often accompanies extreme states of mind. Windhorse relational medicine intends to interrupt—even agitate—what could be seen as a lonely and confused retreat from life. And in the process our clinicians look for the natural unfolding of sanity and basic goodness. Just as psychosis and other disorders of the mind undergo a process of development, health and recovery have their own developmental paths.
As the outer, team relationships progress, conditions are created for more intrapersonal or “inner” connections to form—foremost among them being the relationship with one’s own mind. With the aid of the Intensive Psychotherapist and other team members, clients can explore their thoughts and stories without fear of judgement, get curious about their own movements and patterns of mind, and practice a variety of approaches to begin relating in a way that departs from the reflexive tendencies toward self-aggression and pathology. Recovery plans might involve medications as well — not as a weapon of fantasy destruction, but as an agent to further facilitate insightfulness and kind relations with one’s own mind. And finally, relationships with team members who actively participate in healthy life activity can inspire one to relate differently to their environments, to food and to movement practices.
Our doors are open. Please come in.