Dr. Tim Thayne, who is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Homeward Bound, was interviewed by Lon Woodbury on L.A. Talk Radio about the ideal of “home” as a safe harbor and how this image has assisted family members navigate through troubled times together.
About Tim Thayne and Homeward Bound
Tim Thayne, PH.D., LMFT, is the founder and CEO of Homeward Bound.
After receiving his doctorate from Virginia Tech, he focused on specializing in Marriage and Family treatment to help dysfunctional family and organizational systems get back into harmony. His methods have helped both families and companies settle longstanding issues that created conflict. Before launching this psychological intervention work, he started and operated Therapeutic Expeditions, an extremely effective Wilderness therapy education school.
Homeward Bound was produced to fill the void between out-of-home psychological interventions and the realities of living at home or trying out independent living. This process has helped families get useful and personalized education, coaching, and real-time help from Homeward Bound’s experienced Coaches.
Homeward Bound: Appreciating the true Meaning of Home
During the discussion, Dr Thayne shared how his own family experiences growing up showed him the value of family life. As a therapist who focused on recovering the emotional connections in a home, he was able to help families experience similar profound individual development by renewing family bonds
Drawing an analogy between the “homing instinct” and pets and livestock, he talked about how animals found security in having a regular place to go where they could feel at home. Humans, too, shared this need to have a safe haven when life became difficult.
Dr. Thayne explained that when the family bonds are tight, tragedy and crisis brings everybody together to overcome it, but when the family bonds are weak, a crisis or tragedy pulls them apart and each will look elsewhere for a home. It was the hardest thing for parents to actually send their children out of the home-to a therapeutic boarding school, for example-to help the child learn to reintegrate back into the family again.
In closing, Dr Thayer offered parents listening in some suggestions on what they needed to do to create an ideal of home. Parents needed to honor the recovery power of love and be very deliberate in establishing a home around family customs and values.
Summary
Home is the place where we establish our most important relationships. It is a sacred place where families share experiences, customs and values. For parents to create a home they must be open to spontaneous sharing experiences as well as to developing family traditions. The homeward bound experience was all about feeling at home because of the established supportive relationships in a home.
Find out more about Struggling Teens. Lon Woodbury has the recorded the entire interview on his L.A. Talk Radio show for people to listen to at any time.
