"Greenbrier Academy for Girls changed my life. It made me see things clearly and understand true gratitude. The relationships I made there will last me a lifetime. GBA helped me find myself when I was very lost. The aspirations have helped me since I graduated the program, I still think about them everyday. The experience I had at GBA is one I value so much."

 

Mission

Our mission at Greenbrier Academy is to mentor and empower adolescent girls and their families to create quality, healing intrapersonal and interpersonal relationships through inspired critical thinking, advanced therapeutics, college prep academics, and stimulating adventures.

Philosophy

The central, overarching philosophy that supports everything at Greenbrier Academy is based on the psychological model called strong relationality. Strong relationality asserts that meaning comes from the relationships of things together, not by separating one thing from another. Currently, many mainstream psychological models try to separate components and reduce them like one would with chemicals in a lab. This creates an emphasis on “issues” rather than context. For example, if a child is adopted, a great deal of focus may be concentrated on the adoption, even if the child has never expressed any signs of struggling with the adoption. On the other hand, strong relationality encourages us to look at the state of the child’s relationships and focus on which relationships present as unhealthy (these relationships may include with self, others, God, ancestors, or the world in general). This helps us avoid focusing on just the presenting “issues” and helps us focus on the student as a whole within context. 

Strong relationality asserts that the context is that which creates meaning and significance. In other words, it is the relationship itself that is most fundamental rather than its parts. A good illustration of this would be the following: a normal, curious child may seem to have AD/HD when in a room filled with other children who are very quiet and timid. That same curious child may seem timid and quiet when in a room filled with hyper children who are in the throws of a sugar high. It is the context, or who the curious child is compared to, that creates the meaning, not the behavior itself. So, when we look at context, we are able to distinguish which relationships are healthy and which are unhealthy. While dealing with unhealthy relationships in a clinical way, we may use a variety of tools from current psychotherapeutic models. But it is the philosophy of strong relationality that helps us in deciding what to use, where to use it, and how to implement it.

 

Strong relationality not only serves as a guiding philosophy that helps drive and implement our therapeutics, it is also an invaluable diagnostic tool. By defining mental and emotional health as the ability to create and maintain healthy, virtuous relationships, we are able to clearly measure clinical progress. As students improve relationships at home that were once poor, it is a sign of healthy progress.  If a relationship with schoolwork begins to suffer or is used as a false sense of esteem, the therapeutic team is able to apply the support needed for progress within that relationship.

 

In short, our philosophy is that our understanding of life, our identity and how we relate to the world around us comes from the meaning of our various and many relationships; as our relationships become more healthy and virtuous, we also become more healthy and virtuous. This is our core theme at Greenbrier Academy. You will find it permeates all aspects of student life: from the schoolhouse, to counseling sessions, to family programs and visits, to activities and leisure time.

 

If this topic has piqued your curiosity, please visit our Therapeutic Philosophy page.  We've also written several graduate research papers and presentations about strong relationality.  Recently, a paper was presented at an American Psychological Association conference specifically about the benefits of the unique therapeutic philosophy at Greenbrier Academy.  

Read more about strong relationality from Dr. Brent Slife, Ph.D.:
 The Main Conceptual Assumptions of the Greenbrier Academy: Explanation and Research Support
 A Radical Approach to Psychotherapy: Radical Relationality
 Problematic Ontological Underpinnings of Positive Psychology: A Strong Relational Alternative