It may look like two guys walking along the shores of Lake Michigan on a nice day, but Glenn Sevier is actually hosting a therapy session with a client.
“This is my office. Here. What you see is what you get,” said Sevier, LCSW and executive director of Advance Potential Psychological Services (APPS).
A school social worker and private therapist, Sevier began giving his sessions outdoors more than 20 years ago, coining the term “Walk-n-Talk” therapy.
“One day I said to a client, ‘Why don’t we go out for a walk?’ It’s the best place to try things and we don’t need to be in this closed environment,” Sevier said.
Tom Miller of Chicago became a client five years ago after a serious back injury kept the filmmaker from working.
“I was off duty and I couldn’t work and I wasn’t traveling and, you know, it was really depressing,” Miller said.
His wife discovered Sevier’s “Walk-n-Talk” approach online and shared it with Miller.
“I grew up doing Boy Scouts, stuff like that. So I know very well that by going on a long walk or a hike, you can have conversations that you might not have had otherwise, so I said, “Okay, I’ll try,” a Miller said.
Sevier says the benefits are not just psychological, but physiological.
“When you walk outside you receive energy, exercise increases your heart rate. You start to feel this sense of well-being and it really allows you to open up,” Sevier said.
“You know, I felt a lot more able to talk and go into vulnerable places because I felt like it was a kind of side-by-side joint activity, as opposed to, you know, like I was studied,” Miller said.
The strategy Sevier uses is not only therapeutic, it can also help you when you need to convince someone in your everyday life to open up – a friend, your spouse, even your children.
“That’s what I do with my daughters. Often, if there was something difficult that they wanted to talk about, or didn’t want to talk about, I would say, let’s take a walk,’ Sevier said.
Walking side by side means less eye contact, so people often feel less judged.
“It’s not just two guys talking while walking. It’s therapy. It’s very intentional, but I didn’t feel like I was under a microscope,” Miller said.
With endorphins released with every step, it’s therapy that’s literally like a walk in the park.
NBC Chicago
