It may look two guys taking a walk along the shores of Lake Michigan on a nice day, but Glenn Sevier is actually holding a therapy session with a client.
“This is my office. Right 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 started taking his sessions outside more than 20 years ago, coining the term “Walk-n-Talk” therapy.
“Onee day I said to a client, ‘why don’t we go outside for a walk?’ It’s the best place to try things out and we don’t have to be in this closed environment,” Sevier said.
Tom Miller of Chicago became a client five years ago after a bad back injury kept the filmmaker out of work.
“I was, like, laid up and I couldn’t work and I was not out and about and, you know, it was really depressing,” Miller said.
His wife learned about Sevier’s “Walk-n-Talk” approach online and shared it with Miller.
“I grew up doing Boy Scouts, stuff like that. So I’m very familiar with how being on a long walk or a hike, you can have conversations you might not have otherwise, so I said, Okay, I’ll give that a shot,” Miller said.
Sevier says the benefits aren’t just psychological, but physiological.
“When you’re walking outside there’s energy that you receive, the exercise and it raises your heart rate. You begin to have this sense of feel good moments and it really allows you to open up,” Sevier said.
“You know, I felt much more able to talk and go to some vulnerable places because I did feel like it was a side by side sort of joint activity, as opposed to, you know, like I was being studied,” Miller said.
The strategy Sevier uses isn’t just for therapy, it also can help when you need to get someone in your every day life to open up – a friend, your spouse, even your kids.
“That’s what I do with my daughters. Oftentimes if there was something difficult that they wanted to talk about, or that they didn’t want to talk about, I’d say, let’s go for 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 on a walk. It’s therapy. It’s very intentional, but I didn’t feel like I was under a microscope,” Miller said.
With endorphins being released with every step, it’s therapy that’s quite literally, a walk in the park.