Relationship-Focused Communication as a Greenbrier Academy Value

A longtime educational leader, L. Jay Mitchell oversees Greenbrier Academy for Girls (GBA), a therapeutic boarding school in Southeastern West Virginia, as its founder and owner. L. Jay Mitchell designed the school to provide young women who have experienced trauma with an opportunity to develop self-esteem and a positive sense of connection with others.

To this end, GBA instills healing and empowering intrapersonal and interpersonal relationships between adolescent girls and their families. This entails a combination of mentorship and advanced therapeutics, as well as the application of critical thinking in academic and group settings. Moreover, the approach not only engages the intellect, but it also involves an experiential component and focuses on developing a social conscience through “relationship-focused words and actions,” whether in counseling sessions or through classroom conversations.

The aim of this emphasis on relationality, or relational communication, is to “[live] more virtuously.” Reflecting this communication-focused mandate, GBA administrators and educators, who offer a combination of innate understanding and advanced professional training, are generally altruistic and have high moral standards. 

Greenbrier Academy Can Help Parents Understand Introverted Teens

At Greenbrier Academy for Girls in West Virginia, founder and owner L. Jay Mitchell and his team have created one of the nation’s leading non-acute therapeutic boarding schools whose approach is distinctly student-centered. Built around the therapeutic model of applied relationality that L. Jay Mitchell developed in collaboration with Dr. Brent D. Slife, the school works to provide enriching academics and creative experiences as part of its emphasis on helping girls to overcome destructive beliefs based on a false sense of self and others.

Greenbrier Academy’s staff members get to know students and encourage them to engage in a variety of constructive, empowering activities that include equestrian experiences and therapeutic drumming circles. The team understands that each young woman has a core identity and works to help them overcome whatever obstacles are holding them back.

That said, many parents become concerned if their daughters seem to be introverted, believing that it goes hand in hand with conditions such as depression or that it is tied to outcomes like school and social failure. Parents who may themselves be more extroverted may also feel alienated from an introverted child.

Greenbrier’s team can provide reassurance for families, helping them determine whether signs of introversion are a natural and normal part of their daughter’s personality or if there are underlying traumas and problems that need to be addressed. The school has developed a special understanding of best practices involved in working with introverted teens and in helping them and their families achieve greater mutual understanding and appreciation.

While introversion as a personality trait is not a cause for alarm, there are a few warning signs that professional help may be needed to deal with deeper issues. Teens may isolate themselves in their rooms for long periods of time, interact with others solely online, refuse to engage in any way with new people in their life, or use solitary activities as an escape from real-world problems.