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Welcome to the Nimble Youth podcast, where we provide expert insights and valuable resources for parents navigating the complexities of their children's mental health. We empower parents to nurture healthy minds in children, teens, and young adults through real conversations.
Our team of seasoned professionals, including physicians, therapists and educators, delve into pressing topics, share research-based strategies, and offer practical advice for fostering mental and emotional well-being within your family.
Welcome back to Nimble Youth, the podcast where we explore the emotional lives of children, teens, and young adults, and look for practical ways families can help them navigate the challenges of growing up. I'm your host, Matthew Butterman. Today, we're going to talk about a group of young people who don't always fit neatly into the categories we use when discussing mental health. They're not necessarily in crisis, they may not meet the criteria for a serious psychiatric disorder, but they're stuck. Maybe they're 19 and have dropped out of college.
Matt (host):Maybe they're 22 and still living at home without much direction. Maybe they aren't working, aren't going to school, aren't developing relationships, and don't seem particularly motivated to change any of And meanwhile, their parents are becoming increasingly frightened. What do we do? More therapy? More pressure?
Matt (host):More consequences? Another treatment program? Or is it possible that sometimes we're asking the wrong questions? My guest today, Colin MacDonald has an interesting phrase for this, Stuck isn't sick. Colin and his business partner, Haley Caddies are the co founders of a company appropriately called Not Therapy, which provides lived experience mentorship for young adults ages 18 to 24 and their families.
Matt (host):And Colin comes to this work from a remarkable perspective. As a teenager, he was himself sent to wilderness therapy and residential treatment. Today he works with young adults experiencing some of the same struggles he once faced. So this is going to be a conversation about mental health, but also about the possibility that not every struggle is best understood as mental illness. Colin MacDonald, welcome to Nimble Youth.
Colin MacDonald:Thank you so much Matthew, I'm excited to be on and excited to dive in. So, I want
Matt (host):to start with your own story. So, you were sent away for treatment as a teenager. So, what was happening in your life at the time and what did the adults around you believe they were trying to fix?
Colin MacDonald:Yeah, I think it's always important to even kinda look at what led up to it, right? For me, personally, I'm the oldest of three, I'm from Seattle, Washington, so I always like to think that I'm the trial and error kid, right? Where I'm the first kid, my parents are still figuring things out, and you know, compared to a lot of what we see today, especially with people who are in middle school and high school during COVID, I didn't really struggle with the social stuff, know, I played a lot of sports, had a lot of friends, but for me, I didn't really have much direction or purpose. I'm not saying you need to have your whole life purpose figured out, but just like not even thinking about going to college. And so, fourth grade diagnosed ADHD, was kind of the class clown acting out a lot.
Colin MacDonald:And then as I progressed, I started smoking weed in eighth grade and I was one of the first ones hanging out with older kids because I was really social, and then I kind of became that kid that when other kids would get in trouble, they'd be with me, but it wouldn't always be because of me it'd be, you know, they're the ones that wanted to smoke weed, I smoked weed. And all of a sudden, they're associated with Colin MacDonald with with my kids hanging out with him. He's the bad kid, right. And so when I got into high school, I got through middle school got into high school, and I just didn't really care. I started skipping school and just not really having a direction.
Colin MacDonald:I'm from the suburbs of Seattle where everyone went to college as well. And so that led to me, I barely got through freshman year, was a three sport athlete, but then just kind of was missing practice, the things that I really cared about. And so, I got to sophomore year, and outside of the wilderness in residential, I actually started having really bad anger management. You know, they thought maybe I was bipolar, BPD, and on top of that, just really bad depression through social situations I was putting myself into usually pertaining to females. And so, my sophomore year of high school, I actually went to eight psych wards, and I then was just kind of in and out, and for me at that time, it almost kind of felt as a safe place where I wasn't in school, you know, there was people in there that had much more intense mental illnesses, also I was usually one of the younger people in there, but I was just in and out, in and out, and eventually my parents didn't know what to do.
Colin MacDonald:I'd been in therapy since fourth grade, but didn't really know why I was going to therapy other than you're supposed to go to therapy if you're having issues. And so then they recommended I go to a rehab facility in Spokane, Washington, which I was at for about sixty days, and when I was in there, was a state funded rehab, I was in there with people who were in gangs, heroin addicts, I had this kid from the suburbs of Bellevue, and people would always say like, why are you in here? But I got out and I had a pretty significant mental breakdown, I had a suicide attempt where I had to have my stomach pumped and so for me, at that point my parents were like, we need to do something, and so they started thinking outside the box, and so when I was 16, after all of that, I got sent to Wilderness Therapy in Utah, And those types of programs, you don't even really know they exist. They're much more in the media now. But at the time, the internet was obviously a thing, but I wasn't looking up Wilderness therapy programs and I'm sure we'll dive into that more, but it's a really intense type of program to go to, especially when you're a 16 year old.
Colin MacDonald:Sure. And then from that program, you know, the typical process in the troubled teen industry, let's call it, is you get an ed consultant who is then figuring out the next step for you after that, and so I went directly from there to a therapeutic boarding school that I was at for eighteen months and it was designed for 16, 17, 18 year olds to finish out high school, you're and going to therapy every day, mine was in North Idaho, pretty secluded in the mountains, you're not really interacting with the outside world, and there was a really defining moment for me going through that whole experience and just feeling kind of as if, am I really that bad of a kid? Did I really get my life to this point where I'm in the desert of Utah and the next moment I'm in the woods of Idaho in therapy every day with a bunch of guys who are kind of just like me as well.
Matt (host):So, looking back on the experience as an adult, what do you think the adults understood correctly about you and what did they maybe not understand correctly?
Colin MacDonald:I think that in today's day and age there's more we're trying to figure out what works for the teen, the young adult, the kid, so much more of like they're not fitting in the box of going to public school and going to college. So, I think that they knew that I needed direction and I wasn't headed in a good direction. I mean, can look back and admit that, I've talked to my parents about it a lot as a 33 year old now and before that, especially since starting Not Therapy, but I think what they just didn't understand is it just, the position I was in didn't work for me and it wasn't like let's find him a different school to go to, it was more he's having serious mental health issues and he needs serious mental health treatment and I think ultimately there's other things that are available now that are better options compared to the typical path when I was growing up was go to therapy, therapy doesn't work, you're in some inpatient, outpatient, that doesn't work, then you go to a rehab, a long term residential and then you start looking really outside the box and you'll go up to a wilderness program or a therapeutic boarding school.
Matt (host):Right, and as you mentioned earlier, you know, the so called troubled teen industry has received a lot of media attention, but also a lot of scrutiny recent years, and particularly the wilderness programs and the residential treatment centers. So, you experience that world from the inside, and so I wanna reduce the experience to simply good or bad, but let me ask you a little bit differently, what actually helped you and what maybe left them more?
Colin MacDonald:Yeah, I think overall, wilderness is a good experience. I think where it gets really bad rep that you'll see in the documentaries is the typical way that they send kids to wilderness is, we call it getting gooned if you've been through that experience, but it's getting transported or essentially legally kidnapped to go and you know, we try and we don't really like necessarily work with families before unless we're trying to help them avoid that situation, but there's also a way to go about it where you can have a conversation with your kid about hey, this isn't working out and giving them a definitive timeline of maybe how long they'll be there, there's just a lot of misconception around when my parents first sent me there, they told me I was gonna be there for twenty nine days, and I didn't get transported, most of our clients that we work with have, but then I ended up being there for ninety days and then I ended up being gone for almost two and a half years. So, know, from the get go you feel deceived, but I do believe, you know, there's not as many wilderness programs, programs that still exist now are under much more regulation, I would say some of them don't do transporting, but for any teen or young adult, going out into the wilderness for three months without your phone or sometimes a lot less in today's day and age, but going out and being connected to nature, living off the land, not having the scrutiny of the outside world, most kids you talk to who go through that, including myself, think of it usually pretty positively.
Colin MacDonald:Leaving there a fresh mindset they usually like the experience. What I also believe is a lot of the people who have gone through the industry as what they call survivors, if you can have success after and not let that experience define your life of I'm way different because I got sent away for this period of time, I missed out on prom, I missed out on my senior year of soccer or whatever it might be, you can move through that and realize that it's actually something that you were able to build a lot of resiliency going through. And so I think for me, it didn't define my life. I went straight to college after and had a really great college experience. You know, after two or three years, if you kinda get back on the normal track, it's such a small period of time in the grand scheme of your life.
Matt (host):Yeah. So, I wanna talk a little bit about kind of what comes next. So, what happens when the treatment ends, and there's something in the story of not Therapy Your Business that I find particularly interesting, and it's that, you know, a young person can spend weeks or months, in your case years, in an extremely structured therapeutic environment. And then one day they're back home, the same bedroom, the same family, the same friends, the technology, you know, the same phone and all the same temptations and oftentimes the same expectations. So, what happens in that transition back to ordinary life that traditional treatment programs sometimes miss?
Colin MacDonald:Yeah, one thing that I think is important is I do believe that sometimes parents are always just looking for another thing, another thing and at some point it's gonna stop working and your kid's gonna get burnt out of treatment and if you think about someone who's in any type of treatment program, even if it's an outpatient, it's super structured, know, a majority of your day is filled with going to therapy, maybe you're in some type of schooling, you're in groups, and you're in a residential, you're waking up at the same time, there's always physical activity, you're in so much therapy, you have 20 fourseven support, and so it's almost not real life, right? Yeah. It's not what's gonna happen when you get out. Yeah. And I think that when the structure goes away, the support goes away, you know, a lot of times kids are also burnt out of therapy so that mental health support goes away, you're kind of left to your own devices and the parents aren't necessarily prepared to create that structure, you know, help them fill the gaps of their mental health, have an actual plan of what works and also there is going to be mistakes.
Colin MacDonald:There is going, your kid's probably gonna relapse, right? I mean we see it time and time again and I think on the parent side of things and somewhat on the kid, teen, young adult side of things, you think that it's gonna be a lot better than it usually is and so then you're met with all this disappointment, Did this work, should I have sent them away? You know, the kid is usually having some regrets, they start having resentment, the parents are maybe having regrets or they feel like they're out of options and so I think a lot of it just goes out the window really quickly if you don't have some type of additional support, but I'm not saying that additional support is then your kid goes to another treatment. I think another thing with the troubled teen industry that gets a lot of scrutiny is sometimes it just feels like a funnel program after program after program, right? And so we work with some clients that have been sent away when they were 13 and they're coming to us when they're 18, right?
Colin MacDonald:And those are formidable years where your brain is developing that it really is hard to gets back to your kid feeling like I'm a normal 18 year old and they're gonna wanna get out and it's always gonna happen, they're gonna wanna try so much of the things that they had been missing out on because they feel like they're behind.
Matt (host):So, let's unpack the phrase that really jumped out at me when I read about your work and that's stuck isn't sick, and I love that. What do you mean exactly by that?
Colin MacDonald:Yeah, I think, you know, for most people today, especially teens, young adults, they're looking for answers and so if you are feeling stuck, you're looking for answers and sometimes it's easier to get some diagnosis that might not necessarily be 100% accurate, but maybe you meet 75 of the markers. I'm not saying it's not, right?
Matt (host):Right,
Colin MacDonald:right. But then you're more likely to identify with your diagnosis and almost use it as an excuse of why you can't do certain things, right? I was like, oh I have autism one, right, ASD one. Or I have ADHD, I have social anxiety so I can't make any friends and I think we're not asking teens and young adults in today's day and age enough about what do you think you actually want and it can be as simple as I wanna move out of my parents house, I wanna make more friends. A lot of guys I talk to wanna have a girlfriend, you know?
Colin MacDonald:And so then you start thinking and helping them think more about what do you need to do on a daily basis to become that person. And I also believe that if a teen or young adult is, maybe if they're in school and they're doing well in school, they're getting physical activity, they're getting some type of mental health support, if you can address some of those main areas, you're naturally gonna start feeling better and not feel like you're in this hole of your diagnosis, right? And so I think when we say that, it's like there is tangible things you can do to get unstuck on a daily basis that sometimes you just need some direction or guidance or accountability that we're missing the mark on. But when you give kids diagnosis and all of a sudden the solution is take this medication, but then there's so many different medications that they need to try to find the right thing, and then the parents start to believe, Oh, my kid can't function without their medication. I was the same way going through my whole treatment experience, but when I got to college, I really was thinking to myself, I don't want to be taking these meds for the rest of my life, right?
Colin MacDonald:And so, I think that's where you know, prescription for helping people with their mental health is a lot more simple than I think we make it out to be.
Matt (host):We do have to be a little bit careful here because, of course, depression is real, Disorders are real, ADHD is real, and some young adults definitely need professional But mental health for parents who are kind of looking at this from the outside, how do they distinguish between a young person who is stuck, kind of, you know, just in routine or a pattern that's not working out for them, and then one who is genuinely sick. Are there markers for distinguishing?
Colin MacDonald:I think a lot of it just has to do like are they able to show up for the things that they need to show up for, right? Like I'm not saying that you shouldn't like go to the doctor and get diagnosis or be on certain prescriptions, I'm just saying if your kid is hitting the simple markers of doing the things that they tell themselves that they're gonna do, which is going to build self confidence, or if they're not able to do that, if they're not able to do that then absolutely like get the diagnosis, understand things, but I just think like you know we've worked with over a 100 families and if you can get them to show up for the things that they're supposed to show up to, help them create some structure in their life, you know, we help most of our clients find therapists, it's not like just because we're called non therapy doesn't mean we're against therapy, we're just trying to address the other areas, but I think, you know, especially in today's day and age with therapy, if you can get them to start, they're working out, playing some sport, going to school, maybe they have a part time job and they're able to show up for that but there's still emotional outbursts or they're still depressed, there's usually a deeper underlying thing of maybe something that happened to them when they were younger that the parents don't know about, that's where you go to therapy and work on that.
Colin MacDonald:Like I personally have a huge abandonment wound from getting sent away, right? I still am working on it from when I'm 33, but then, like I said, when I was 13, 14 going to therapy, I didn't know why I was going to therapy. So, I think we're wanting to get help with the things that we know we need help with, right? Right. So, and I think that a lot of times, you you don't want to be on an ADHD medication for your whole life, right?
Colin MacDonald:But if you're, you know, I was on ADHD medication when I was in college because it helped me with studying, right? It helped me, I saw a noticeable improvement in my academics. And so I think for parents, it's one of those things where have you tried to create structure for your kid? You know, and I think that when you're holding a kid accountable to the things that they say that they want, and it's also different for a 13, 14, 15 year old compared to 16, 17, 18 and beyond when those kids are starting to move towards independence, but have you tried to just ask them what they want and help them move in the direction that they think they want and I'm not saying if your kid says, I just wanna smoke weed and not do anything, that you're like, okay, that's what you want, but are we trying the things that we know are good for human beings in general before we just assume that we need tons and tons of medical advice and help before we've tried the basics.
Matt (host):Right, right. And, kind of moving on from that idea, I wanna ask a larger question, you know, are we pathologizing normal struggle? Because, you know, sometimes I think perhaps we're too quick to medicalize the the ordinary discomfort of becoming an adult perhaps. Things like, you know, failure as a young person, you're gonna fail. You're be rejected.
Matt (host):You're probably gonna experience some loneliness and uncertainty. And most of us have experienced heartbreak and, you know, you might have a really horrible first job. Know mind was pretty bad. Yeah. And, you know, certainly not doing what you wanna do with your life is a is a struggle, but it's something that, there's sort of things that we all have to, we kind of have to experience to grow, right?
Matt (host):Yeah. And so, have we perhaps become uncomfortable allowing young people to struggle?
Colin MacDonald:Yeah, a question I always like to ask parents is to reflect on how they were raised, right? Yeah. And just, you know, we work with a lot of families that maybe the parents, right, they didn't have much but they worked super hard, they got their first job when they were 12 to then provide this lifestyle for their family that is the lifestyle that they didn't have growing up, right? And so then all of a sudden they're like, my kid's lazy, they're not wanting to work but then when I asked them, I'll say, well when did you start working? And they'll be like, had my first job when I was 12, you know, I must say kids who were 12 need jobs, but it's just kind of this, something has shifted in this generation of parenting where I don't know if like soft or more anxious is kind of the word, but there's not very much discipline or like allowing our kids to fail because we're so worried about the medical side of things, well my kid's gonna be super anxious and you start this spiral as parents of, well if my kid's anxious, they're not gonna have friends and then they're gonna be living in my basement till they're 28 and then if they're 28 they're gonna be depressed and yada yada yada, it gets worse and worse and worse and we're just not even focusing on the day to day, like how can we just make sure that my kid is on having a good day after a good day but a bad day doesn't mean it's a bad week, right?
Colin MacDonald:Right. And so I think for us, the clients that we work with, we're just trying to give them a perspective that is, you know, a little bit younger people who are there who have walked on their path but we're showing up for them on a daily basis because they just want some guidance, they just want someone to tell them that it's gonna work out and I think when parents get really frustrated and they have a million other things going on with work or you know, a lot of our parents that we work with are CEOs and things like that, they're thinking like, we have no idea what to do with our kids, we need to keep trying all these new things, and like I said earlier, it's really how do we just get it to be more simplified, and I think for parents, up until your kid's 16, you kind of are the director of their life in terms of helping them make decisions, helping them be organized, but as your kid gets past that 16 moving towards 18, you wanna become more of a guide for their life and be that person that they can come to when they have issues because especially if your kid's gonna go to college or when they do become independent, you wanna start building a relationship at that age that when they are struggling and experiencing failure in the real world that they're gonna open up to you and seek guidance and I think that's where parents are thinking three to five years down the road, but we're, we wanna think that way in a way of am I helping my kid when I'm still able to be a big part of my life, they're still living under my roof to help them move towards that independence.
Matt (host):Right, right. So, let's talk about a group that we've discussed a lot on this podcast, and they're the young adults, we sometimes call them, you call the situation they're in, you know, failure to launch, we sometimes call their cohort the NEAT cohort, you know, they're not in education, employment, or training, you know, they're maybe at 22 or 23, still living at home, they're not in school, they're not working consistently, or in and, you know, they've fallen into kind of the trifecta of FICE that we also identify, which is, you know, gaming, porn, and gambling. And so, they're up till like three in the morning, they'll sleep until noon, and they spend hours online. And so, the parents say, well, he has absolutely no motivation. So, when those parents, when that family comes to you, what do you identify that maybe the parents are just not seeing?
Colin MacDonald:Yeah, I think it's about getting small wins to start, right? It's a big jump from my kids stuck to my kids independent, right? And that journey seems like it's really far away. And so for us, we're trying to help them create structure as soon as possible, right? If your kid is in school, if your kid has a job, a lot of their day is going to be built around at least something productive, but even before that, it can be having a conversation about going back to school and them researching school and giving you three schools they're interested in, it can be them applying to five jobs, right, like that's still taking a step in the right direction more than they were taking.
Colin MacDonald:We're not trying to get them all of a sudden to be a super productive young adult within a week's time and realizing that it's a journey that you're gonna be partaking in. I think also with parents we like to look at what they're getting frustrated by, you know, it's like we pay for their car, they don't pay rent, they don't participate in the household and so we always try and get parents to look at, you know, once, especially once your kid turns 18 and above, a lot of the things that you're doing for them are gifts in some way, right? Like if you buy them a car, you're paying for their school, and so we're always trying to say, you know, once your kid turns 18, it's even a gift, but, and this might sound kinda harsh, but if you're giving them a roof over their head and feeding them, how can you get them to start figuring out the things that they can start participating in that then they would need to earn money for, right? So then that's a motivation to get a job. So it could be paying for gas, it could be Ubering to work or something and so they have to start thinking about, you know, what do I need to do in order to continue to live the lifestyle I have and also with parents, we want them, if your kid is making progress and we usually try and help them define what progress looks like and also where the frustration's coming from so that then we can help them just reframe the jump from failure to launch, we like to call it also delayed independence to your kid's a fully independent adult with what does a fully independent adult look like.
Colin MacDonald:And what we also hear parents say a lot is their kid once they turn 18, they're like, well, I'm an adult now, treat me like an adult. And I always say to an 18 year old, Do you know what adults are doing? They're paying for their cars, they don't live at their parents' house, and so you wanna kind of make a plan with what do we wanna accomplish this month, is it we're seeing that on a daily basis our kid is applying to jobs, they're working to maybe go to community college so they can get into a college that they want to, and so we're trying to just look for where are the small wins, because if, I think what parents just wanna see is that their kid is making progress. They don't necessarily care all of a sudden that their kid is gonna be independent in a month, and if the kid is making progress, the parent is more willing to work with them. But it's when their kid is not making any progress whatsoever that they're getting super frustrated by this slow process of this is nothing's changing, nothing's changing, so how do we make it feel and there's actual, you know, proof that things are changing because the kid is taking small steps to make changes and I think once a parent sees that, they're gonna start feeling better because they aren't just thinking, oh, my kid's just watching porn, gambling in their room all day, sleeping all day, and it could be as easy as, you know, having their kid wake up at an earlier time, right?
Colin MacDonald:And also, if you are giving your kid some type of allowance, think one of the easiest things when they're at that age is pay them for the habits as similar to how you would give allowance to someone when they're younger for taking the trash out. Know that sounds dumb or not dumb, but just like it sounds very simple and elementary, but I guarantee that your young adult wants to be independent, they just don't Right, know
Matt (host):exactly, yeah. And so, your business, you work with a lot of young adults who come from very successful families, Their parents may be CEOs, physicians, lawyers, professionals, and people who know how to, clearly through their vocations, they know how to solve problems and make things happen. So, why can those strengths in the family environment sometimes become liabilities when the child is struggling?
Colin MacDonald:Yeah, I think pretty simply it's that the parent operates at a much different level than their kid and they're almost like, this is my kid, why aren't they operating in the way that I had? And I think it really comes down to how they were raised, right? Like I was saying earlier, if you have a really great job and you're taking your kids and family on vacations all the time, your kids never really had to work for much, then they don't have that inner discipline or that work ethic that the parents have developed and so they just don't understand how their kid is not operating at that level, but then it's always a reflection of like, well think about how much more independence you've got, how do you have at a younger age to get to where you are, then you've made the opportunity for your kid to have that type of independence or discipline.
Matt (host):Right, right. So, and that brings up a sort of a one of the hardest parenting questions around I think, which is when does helping become rescuing, you know, things like paying the rent, a doctor's appointment, calling the professor and working out some sort of plan for missed assignments, helping them find a job, and if they've lost their phone, you know, replacing that, and even things like, you know, waking them up and reminding them repeatedly to do things. And so, at what point does that parental support unintentionally remove the consequences that can actually create motivation?
Colin MacDonald:Yeah, I think it really just comes down to boundaries. You know, usually when we're working with the family, we're helping them come out with a plan. And when I say boundaries, I'm not saying there's this huge laundry list of rules, but if you tell your kid that hey, we're gonna pay for your phone for the next two months and then at the end of two months, we expect you to have a job and you're paying for half the phone bill, and then the two months come and that hasn't happened and you don't turn their phone off, that's where all of a sudden you're just reinforcing their kid that you're not gonna follow through with the things that you told them that you're gonna do and then they kind of just think like, oh, my parents aren't gonna do that, they say that and so I think the biggest thing a parent can do is actually follow through with the things that they are telling their kid that will be the consequences and also what I've found is, you know, it's not happen, it doesn't happen all the time but if you follow through with the consequences and put your kid in a hard position, they're either gonna figure it out and you're gonna be like kind of shocked, like wow, I can't believe they actually stepped up or they're going to be in a situation that they're really frustrated with, that they're really stuck in and then they're gonna come back and be more willing to work with you.
Colin MacDonald:Always tell 18 year olds and people in a failure to launch or delayed independence states that it is going to be a lot easier if you can work with your parents and have their support in getting towards your independence. If you're doing the things that you're telling them that you're gonna do, your parents are maybe more willing to put down a deposit on a place for your own or pay for your college, right? Or we'll have families that, you know, they're paying for their kid's college and we say, hey, if they fail out this semester, like you get the insurance or make them have to start paying you back because what I've found is when a kid isn't necessarily fully prepared to full on adult but they try, they realize that it's really really hard So you want them to feel that failure and a little bit of the challenges and we're almost trying to avoid and also when you hold the boundary, your kid's gonna be upset and I feel like sometimes parents just wanna avoid that entirely and they're like, well it's gonna be a lot easier if I just allow my kid to do what they want so that I don't have to fight with them.
Colin MacDonald:But you gotta think into the future, the way that you avoid the 28, 30 year old living in your basement is by doing that when they're an 18, 19 year old, 20 year old and that you're making them overcome some adversity. Then also, I just think that when we don't fall through the boundaries and your kid is essentially walking over you, you essentially somewhat become a prisoner in your own home and then you're really feeling like, I don't know what to do, my kid kinda runs this household and I think that's where a lot of frustration comes from.
Matt (host):Yeah, absolutely. So, there's another place where I think your business model becomes really interesting, and certainly as a parent, I've experienced this. You'll say something to, your 21 year old, mind them something for six months, and it just goes nowhere. But then, you bring in a mentor, and they'll say essentially the same thing, but suddenly the young person hears it because it's coming from another source. So why do you think that is the case?
Colin MacDonald:Yeah, I mean if I look at myself, it wasn't until I was somewhat independent that I could admit to my parents that they were right most of the time. It really did take until I was like in my mid twenties and then my parents totally became those guides for me. And so you know the way that for us that our model works is you know we have a team of 10 now all across The United States and every single one of our coaches and full time staff have somewhat of the same lived experience because when your kid is younger and you're trying to give them guidance, they're always gonna say, you don't know like anything about me, you don't know what I've been through, and that's super normal for someone that age to say. And so having someone that's a third party, and it doesn't have to be you know our organization, it can be a teacher that they really respect, a sports coach, it could be someone that leads their art class that they look up to a little bit, they're gonna be able to say the same things and come across differently because unfortunately they just somewhat like respect and maybe wanna impress them a little bit more compared to you where you've been the person who's been telling them what they should and should not do their entire lives.
Colin MacDonald:So it's almost like that Charlie Brown, you know, the parents talking to him, it's just the wah wah wah wah Yeah, So it's almost that broken record. Yeah. And I think that's where we've been able to be successful because we're partnering them with a mentor that has a similar life experience that can also say, I've actually been in your shoes and I understand what you're going through. This is what works for me, let's find what works for you and also we're very much as a mentor, we're not biased because we're not their parents so we can actually ask them what they think they want, where a parent is gonna feel like they know what's best for their kid and the kid's gonna be like, you don't know what's best for me, if it is what's best for them.
Matt (host):Yeah. So, let's drill down a little bit into Knot Therapy, the business itself and so, if say I'm a 20 year old and I'm working with Knot Therapy, what's happening, how does that play out?
Colin MacDonald:Yeah, I think a super important part from the beginning is we don't work with anyone that doesn't wanna work with us. So, the parents will usually find us, we'll talk to the parents, but then before we ever, get into working with the family, we get the kid to meet who the mentor was or they'll usually talk to me or Haley, depending if it's a guy or a girl, and we'll just tell them our life story and why we started non therapy and tell them, you know, that we created this for when I was your age, this is something that I needed and then they talk to whoever their mentor might be and they just have a conversation about who they are, what we can do, tell me about your interests and then we help them define their goals a little bit before we start working with them. So once we start working with them, we start with three months. Typically where we see a lot of success is like six months to a year timeframe, and for us, what we think is important is right when they start working together, the coach will actually come out and meet their client as well as the family and spend one or two days doing what they're interested in, taking them to their favorite restaurants, take them to the gym, you know, whatever the client is wanting to do, so they have that in person relationship.
Colin MacDonald:But then, you know, where our model's a little different, is it's seven days a week, and we also work with the parents as well. None of us, one person on our team's a parent, but she's a younger parent, so we're not trying to be parent coaches, but we have a parent coach that we contract out, so every family when they come in, the kid has their mentor, the parents have a family manager, which is someone on our team that they can reach out to seven days a week, and then they get parent coaching on top of that. We have parent communities, but for the client, it's seven days a week, so they usually have, you know, two structured calls where they're applying to jobs, maybe they're signing up to take driver's ed, another thing on this generation is a lot of them don't have their driver's license and that's a quick way to have independence, so we're helping them get their driver's license, maybe we're helping them organize their week for school, but then what we think is really important is we're also helping them in the moment, so they can text their coach, there's no set amount of calls, we just like to have set calls for structure, so the kid can reach out to the coach whenever they want and jump on as many calls.
Colin MacDonald:So we're helping them figure things out in the moment where typical therapy is once a week, right? And so a lot can happen in between Tuesday and Tuesday or maybe something happens Wednesday and by the time therapy rolls around, you forgot it completely and you can't just call your therapist whenever and talk through things. And then for the parents, the family manager does the same thing. They're able to talk to them seven days a week. So we're also kind of separating the conflict, so the parents are kinda talking through it with the family manager or the parent coach, and their kid is talking through it their mentor, and we're able, and then we collaborate as a team to kinda always find the middle road.
Colin MacDonald:We're also very much about advocating for the client and giving them their kid's perspective a little bit more and I think that's when you mentioned the younger people get like them more likely to listen to a younger person is because we're not that far removed, right? And so, we can also speak from our lived experience and say I understand where sometimes you know with a therapist we hear from clients all the time, they're like, I don't wanna talk to this older person, they weren't my age for thirty years or something like that and so we're really playing this like middle man role for the family to help them kind of problem solve in the moment, but it's very practical things, right? Yeah. It's not, we're not diagnosing them, we're not making sure they're taking their meds or something, we're just trying to help them on a day to day basis, build self confidence and the parents building self confidence that things are moving in the right direction.
Matt (host):Right, yeah and that model, my wife and partner here at her behavioral health practice, she uses a person called a behavioral healthcare manager, which sounds very similar to kind of what your employees are doing. They just take care of the things that the parents may be having trouble doing. Exactly. And, you know, it's enormously helpful. And, as that brings up another question and something that we see often with when we talk to therapists, when a client comes to them, a young person, you know, the parents' behavior can often be part of the huge issue or part of what's keeping them in dysfunction.
Matt (host):So, do you tell, how do you navigate that, which has to be navigated very carefully? How do you tell a frightened parent that their behavior needs to change while at the same time not making them feel, you know, completely blamed for the child's Yeah,
Colin MacDonald:I mean, first and foremost I'll say that usually when I, we start working with a client, we can see very quickly maybe why they are the way they are based on some of the parenting styles, but I think also when a parent is really frustrated, when they're coming to us, they're usually feeling like they're kinda at the end of their rope and so we ask them permission from the get go, like in our first call with them, like are you open to us giving you feedback? We also ask them to attend our parent communities and talk to other families and make sure that they go to the parent coaching sessions, but also, when things maybe aren't working with your kid, we just kinda tell them that when, we've seen this a lot, when the kid is not making the decisions that you're wanting, the only thing you can control is how you're showing up as a parent. And so, we're gonna work on them with, you know, the certain types of boundaries or how to have a constructive conversation with their kid so that then they're showing up differently and then they're actually kind of being that guide or someone that the kid is then noticing, oh, wow, my parents aren't taking the same stuff that they used to or my parents are actually wanting to have these conversations with me that they had it and so that kind of does something for the kid where they're like, wow, my parents are taking this seriously, and we tell our clients that we talk to their parents and that we're there to advocate for them so that we are able to work both angles where the client knows that their parents are doing the work as well as the kid knows that the parents are doing the work and so for us, we just think it's really important that if we're gonna work with a family, that the kid also knows that the parents invested because I think sometimes with, especially if you send your kid away to treatment, they feel like you sent me away and changed my life, you were able to stay at home, and I remember when I got sent away, my family like went on vacations and they'd write me a letter and I'd be like, do you realize I'm in this therapeutic program right now and you guys are at Disneyland, like that's not supposed to make me feel good.
Colin MacDonald:So, I think that also is another thing is we want the client to feel like their parents are also super invested in their own journey, not just their kids and trying to feel like there's nothing that the parents can't change.
Matt (host):Right, right. So, there's another line in your media kit, and just as an aside, as a media professional myself, it's a really good media kit, and it really explains things well, I think, for me, but there's a line that really stopped me, and this is definitely a twenty twenty six problem, maybe a twenty twenty five problem too, but my kid would rather talk to AI than And me, so, you know, what are young adults getting from AI or even things like online communities for that matter, that sometimes they don't believe they're getting from their parents and I guess another sort of follow-up question is, you know, is the AI has a tendency to be sycophantic, right? Gives you the answers you wanna hear, so is that problematic?
Colin MacDonald:Absolutely, I think one thing that AI is doing is it's like instant access, right, and maybe based on how your parenting relationship has been, there hasn't been that instant access, maybe you're always at work or something and so, they're feeling like they have access to this AI which they're also using for other things besides that, right, like school, maybe it's helping them in school, maybe it's helping them like learn things that they're interested in and so they're kind of becoming reliant on that. I also think you know with the video game thing, I don't ever wanna totally discredit the relationships that our clients have online because sometimes it might be their actual friends, like I know a lot of people that you know live across the country and they stay in contact with their friends, but it's the human interaction piece that I think is just really missing and I think that's where COVID really did it a disservice where they got so used to it in middle school and high school that it doesn't seem that different from them, for them to be having interactions with AI, especially because you can almost ask it anything, right?
Colin MacDonald:So I don't think that, I think when our clients are in a really bad place, then maybe they're leaning on it more heavily, but I also think that when you really try and figure out with a teen or young adult if they want to change, if they are unhappy, and then you're trying to tell them, I will help you to become on a better path by getting out of the house and then also when they do have, let's say a good day where they wake up on time, they go to their job and then they get a good night's rest and immediately asking them how they feel and say, how do you feel and they're like, oh, I actually feel really good and then helping them recognize you feel really good, well let's review what you did yesterday. Right? So I think it's about breaking the pattern, but you're not expecting it to break for the long run, it's just like how are we reinforcing what are the good things that they're doing right when they happen? Right. So that, but also not like reinforcing things that are super, super small, but if they have a good day, like help reflect back to them, like, sounds like you're feeling really good today, I noticed that, you know, you got off the Xbox at 10PM and went to bed, we wanna just like reinforce those things because that's more immediate reinforcement, similar to like what the AI is giving them.
Matt (host):Right, right. So, I wanna finish our conversation today with something very practical. Maybe there's a mother or father out there listening right now thinking, so, we've been talking about, this is my child, their son or daughter is 19, 21, maybe 24, they're still living at home, they're stalled, the parents are frightened, and there's a lot of conflict in the house, everyone's arguing about it. So, what's one thing, what's the first thing you would want that parent to do differently starting this week?
Colin MacDonald:Yeah, I think having a conversation coming from curiosity instead of just at it from frustration and feeling like you're trying to force a change and just saying like do you want to be feeling better? Especially if your kid's been expressing that they're depressed or they're feeling hopeless and just asking like what do you think would make a difference right now and it can be something super small and they might say I don't know, but then you just ask them like well what do you think that you want? Like if you could feel like things would get better, what would your life look like and start there. Just like come out with curiosity and just realize what you've been doing has not been working, and so, you've gotta be willing to try something else.
Matt (host):Yeah, for sure. So, one thing from our conversation today that sort of keeps sticking with me is, this is for a fifth, stuck isn't necessarily stick, isn't necessarily stick, but stuck is very real. Right? And it's, it's one of the challenges for parents is learning not to confuse support with rescue or discomfort with pathology, because sometimes young people need med med, sometimes they need medication, sometimes they need a therapist, but sometimes they may need something very different, mentorship, like not therapy provides a job, a routine responsibility, and kind of a reason to get out of bed. So, is there any before we close, is there anything I haven't asked that you wish more parents perhaps understood?
Colin MacDonald:Yeah, I think that the things that your kid wants aren't necessarily the things that you want and today's generation is also moving at a different pace, right? And so really how do we get parents and kids on the same page to realize that your timeline isn't gonna be the same as your kid's timeline but how do we somewhat get on a timeline that feels good for the parents and comfortable for the kids? And that doesn't mean you want them to move at a snail's pace and you want them to barely do anything but also like how are we listening to the kids more and asking them what is it that you think you want in today's day and age? I think if they can broaden their horizons a bit more, there's so many opportunities out there, there's so much opportunity to do something outside the box in today's generation that maybe wasn't around in the parents' generation that if we can just kind of crack the code with the kid to then create, I like to think of it as like a roadmap for them that is step by step, there's some structure, there's accountability, there's some purpose around what they're doing on a daily basis, the parents won't feel as stuck also because they're gonna start seeing momentum and I think we're just trying to go from my kid is stuck to I want my kid to be independent, but there's a big journey in between that comes through curiosity and having conversations and you know, the goal is to have a lifelong relationship with your kids, so how can you start doing that now to then set your kid up for future success?
Matt (host):Right. My guest today has been Colin MacDonald, co founder of Knot Therapy, a Luke's experience mentorship company working with young adults ages 18 to 24 and their families. And Colin and his business partner, Haley, have both experienced wellness therapy and residential treatment as teenagers themselves. And so, their experiences eventually led them to develop a different model for helping young adults navigate and transition into independent adulthood. And we'll certainly include information about Colin Haley and Knot Therapy in our episode notes.
Matt (host):And if you know a parent who is struggling with this very issue, please do share this conversation with them. And if you enjoy Nimble Youth and follow the podcast, please leave us a rating or review because it helps other families find these conversations. Until next time, remember that becoming an adult isn't a straight line. Sometimes getting unstuck doesn't begin with knowing exactly where you're going and it begins with taking responsibility for the next step. I'm Matthew Butterman.
Matt (host):This is Nimble Youth. We'll see you next time.