For thousands of years, life has been lived in community, be it extended family, a village, a croft of houses, or a whole town. But in much of Europe and North America we have moved away from community to a more popular contemporary model of private homes. Rather than interdependence, we cultivate independence and self-reliance.

For those already suffering from the isolation of emotional illness, this is a devastating trend. But in the late 1940s the tragedy of the second world war opened up a different response.

THE HISTORY…

At the end of the war medical services in Europe, and especially psychiatry, were faced with an overwhelming challenge. There were large numbers of mainly men that were unable to return to civilian life because of the extent of their mental and emotional suffering. They were experiencing what is now recognized as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or combat fatigue.

Medical professionals had few answers to this range of disorders. In desperation one psychiatrist, Dr Tom Main of the Northfield Military Hospital (UK), suggested that all the patients organize themselves into groups of 8-12 and go round the circle telling each other what they had been through.

With no professional training, and no previous experience these very damaged men and women broke down as they shared their trauma of war; the physical injury, emotional damage, trauma, the deafness from being under fire, etc. In addition to providing each other with emotional support they also shared responsibility together for cooking, cleaning, and other decision- making within their groups. Roles that were usually held by staff were carried by patients.

To begin with many of the officers and soldiers struggled to recall what happened, but slowly they began to speak out, and let the tears and pain flood them. With the cathartic emotional release of their experiences, and their increasing ability to put them into words, they were able to begin defusing the repressed and controlled emotion and its memories.

Within their community groups, their own experience then became the expertise they used to support others. Alongside this they were relearning social and life-skills, carrying responsibility for the community they were part of. As this was extended across the wards, the whole hospital became a therapeutic environment (Main 1946). Each interaction was intended to help support the process of recovery.

Before long some began to recognize that they were now ready to return to their homes and families, which they did.

The therapeutic community movement was being born. This and other similar hospitals were to become some of the earliest examples of intentional salugenic (wholeness-creating) places (Williams 2007), where every relationship and the reality of shared responsibility for the community created greater wholeness.

PRESENT DAY…

Today the therapeutic community movement has gone global, with communities in many parts of the world in a variety of forms and settings. In USA therapeutic communities can be found offering recovery from addictions, helping to reduce re- offending in prisons, as residential clinical programs for those with mental illness, and to support troubled young people in growing the relational skills needed for daily life.

Finding Freedom uses therapeutic community principles to empower people to find transformative change relationally. We fly in the face of the pretension that once you have had some kind of emotional or mental illness you must remain sick for the rest of your life. Instead through a peer-to-peer process sharing your own journey of healing and simultaneously supporting others doing the same, each person becomes an expert by experience, growing life-skills that extend the benefit of healing into families, employment, and society.

In therapeutic community we recognize the damage in our lives has often occurred as a result of people, so we must harness the help of people in getting well. The emphasis of such an approach to greater wholeness is that it is caught, not taught. Being around others who are finding their own healing becomes the catalyst for a journey of personal transformation.

We also specialize in a cathartic process that encourages and supports people to engage the emotional trauma that has caused and become part of the damage in their lives. Damaged feelings of anger, grief, hate, shame, guilt, fear, near-death experiences – these easily get trapped in moments of crisis and then we are unable to process the feelings healthily. Therapeutic community offers an ideal support process to allow us to let go of these blockages and be able to welcome the energizing feelings so essential for living life to the full.

While some will go on and gain psychological therapy training, most will just enjoy living in their new freedom, often staying part of a therapeutic community process and sharing their healing. Therefore the primary qualification for becoming a leader in such a movement is not training but successfully getting healed with the help of others.