Services will be provided at 6561 Clay Road, Martinsville, Indiana 46151 as soon as our new barn is completed
Soul Healing new website Under Construction
Soul Healing is a 501c3 dedicated to empowering at-risk youth and survivors of sexual abuse and sex trafficking. We will offer emotional support, coping strategies, and life skills to children and adults, along with services for the families and create a better education for the community. Using individualized therapy and support from our advocates and mentors, we will create a more modern holistic approach to empowering our youth.
All of our staff and volunteers are trauma-informed care certified.
Every kid is one caring adult away from being a success story.
John Shipp
What is At-Risk youth?
We define at-risk youth as our community’s most vulnerable population. Children in need of more support than the immediate family can provide. One aspect that helps us identify at-risk youth is the lower socioeconomic (SES) status. This lower SES community is more likely to lack resources, emotional and social support, and finances to provide opportunities to their children than those in higher SES statuses. We can provide many kinds of support to those families including opportunities to attend our equine program, art program, journal program, and summer camp activities.
How Does Equine Therapy Help At-Risk Youth?
Horses can help youth gain knowledge about themselves. The horse does not care if you have dropped out of school, what your relationships with others look like, rather you are popular, or have challenges learning. Horses are incapable of lying, they will not manipulate you, or try to judge you.
According to Spring Reins of Life (Creative, 2020), some benefits at-risk youth experience working with horses are:
- Enhance problem-solving and social skills
- Learn empathy and stimulate creativity
- Accept accountability for behaviors
- Gain a sense of personal control
- Learn stress, anger, and frustration management
- Decrease feelings of hopelessness and depression
- Learn better communication skills
- Build a strong and positive perception of self
- Learn cause and effect – taking responsibility
- Find direction, focus, and meaning for life/future
- Establish and build positive relationship foundations
What is Childhood Sexual Abuse (CSA)?
The Indiana Department of Child Services and the Indiana Codes define child sexual abuse in many different forms. Soul Healing defines CSA as any act committed against a child by another child or adult, in a sexual manner, that could result in long-term emotional, physiological, and mental harm. Sexual abuse can prevent healthy relationships, cause a victim to feel shame, and potentially create a barrier in the family dynamic.
Physiological effects of abuse and trauma to children can lead to heightened stress responses, inability to regulate emotions, sleep difficulties, lower immune function, and increase physical illnesses into adulthood. (International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, 2020)
How Does Equine Assisted Therapy Help after CSA?
Equine Therapy has been proven time and time again to show benefits to clients some of the benefits are
- Adaptability
- Distress tolerance
- Emotional awareness
- Independence
- Impulse control
- Self-esteem
- Social Awareness
- Social Relationships
Anxiety, Agoraphobia, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder, Separation Anxiety, Selective Mutism, Social Anxiety Disorder, specific phobia, and PTSD are a few disorders equine therapy can assist as well as trauma. (Clark 2020)
What is Sex Trafficking?
Soul Healing defines someone as being sex trafficked if they have been forced or coerced into a sex act with another person or themselves, rather physical or technological resources are used for financial or personal gain of that individual or someone else.
http://www.instagram.com/soulhealingcorp/
Resources
Clarke, J. (2020, 06 22). Using Equine Therapy as Mental Health Treatment. Retrieved from What Horses Bring to the Therapeutic Process: https://www.verywellmind.com/equine-therapy-mental-health-treatment-4177932
International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. (2020, 09 28). Effects of Childhood Trauma on Adults. Retrieved from International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies: https://istss.org/public-resources/what-is-childhood-trauma/effects-of-childhood-trauma#:~:text=Children%20who%20are%20exposed%20to,of%20physical%20illnesses%20throughout%20adulthood.
Creative, C. (2020). Equine Assisted Growth and Learning Association. Retrieved from SPRING REINS of LIFE: http://www.springreinsoflife.org/srol-programs/at-risk-youth-program/#:~:text=Powerful%20yet%20gentle%2C%20perceptive%20yet,demons%20and%20their%20inherent%20strengths.&text=%E2%80%9CEquine%20therapy%20helps%20patients%20identify,learn%20to%20establish%20