Wunderwege – Psychotherapeutisch-Erlebnispädagogische Sommercamps zur Trauma- und Trauerbewältigung

When a child is diagnosed with cancer or another severe illness, this affects the whole family. This possibly results in enormous psychological stress within the family as well as fear and uncertainty about the child’s condition. The psychological and social stress in siblings is frequently expressed as sadness, retraction, depression, aggression or anxiety. As a result the family system is in need of socio-pedagogical and psychological support.

Siblings of chronically ill or deceased children are mostly pushed into the background with respect to their wishes and needs and receive less attention than the child who is ill. Siblings frequently have to cope with low self-esteem and feelings of guilt. They are preoccupied with many questions concerning illness and death, guilt or justice and as rule there are very few suitable persons who they can speak to. These children keep their questions and worries to themselves and withdraw and the “difficult” feelings, such as anger, anxiety or sadness cannot be felt or even expressed. For all the psychosocial stresses that these children experience in their environment due to sickness and death, they try not to present an additional burden for the family. In their accustomed social environment they frequently experience a certain special status. Siblings think that their family is the only one where such a bad thing can happen. Due to the lack of exchange with other similarly affected persons they rarely feel understood, frequently “abnormal and alone”.

We are a team of experienced psychotherapists and adventure educationalists, who have completely committed ourselves to working with these families. We have developed camps for siblings, family mourning weeks and weekends for mourning parents. The exceptional feature of our projects, which last for several days, is the combination of psychotherapy and adventure education in small and large group settings. In these camps a psychotherapist and an experiential educationalist always work together as a team. In this way very different methods can be merged and efficiently support the processing of the psychological burden and coping with bereavement.

Our projects are financed by donations.