Using Nature As Therapy

I’m disabled, an INTJ, stuck, can’t work regular hours, and 10 weeks of tent camping in Upper Michigan is healing my psyche.

Donald J. Claxton is using 10 weeks of tent camping in the woods of Upper Michigan as Adventure Therapy.

Important Factors Involving My Story

I began seeing a Christian counselor during the process of my first divorce in 2004. Off and on throughout the years, I’ve remained a patient. We have done lots of cognitive behavioral therapy.

I’ve done Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages most every day since 2014; four years after the second divorce.

Since graduating from Auburn University at Montgomery in 1989, I’ve worked for two Alabama governors; assistant press secretary to the first, press secretary to the second.

Then I did five years as the communications director of the Dallas school district and their 163,000 students, 20,000 employees, and 240 or so schools. I’ve also held temporary positions as comms director in Oklahoma City Schools and Duncanville Independent School District in DFW.

Add to all that, a debilitating injury to my lower back in 2016, that continues to adversely affect my body today. Because my doctors were not looking at my situation as permanent by July 2017, there is nothing in my medical records before then that says so.