What Is Reactive Attachment Disorder?

Having served in the United States Air Force as a Judge Advocate, L Jay Mitchell is the founder of Greenbrier Academy in Pence Springs, West Virginia, which helps young women develop into healthy and well-balanced adults. L Jay Mitchell is also interested in the topic of reactive attachment disorder (RAD).

RAD is a condition that affects infants and young children who do not form a secure or emotionally healthy bond with their primary caretakers. A primary caretaker is usually defined as a parental figure in the child’s life. Children who suffer from RAD usually have difficulty managing or expressing their emotions and forming meaningful connections with other people.

RAD is rare but can develop as a disorder if the child’s basic needs are not met, such as feeling comfort, receiving affection, and being exposed to nurturing. Some treatments to combat RAD include psychological counseling, caregiving counseling, and learning positive child and caregiver interactions.

Building a Healthy Self Relationship

The founder of therapeutic programs and schools, L. Jay Mitchell has owned three highly successful residential programs for adolescents, such as Greenbrier Academy for Girls in West Virginia. L. Jay Mitchell also wrote “Decide Now; The Good Life or the Best Life” to share the importance of building relationships with others and yourself in both his book and at Greenbrier.

The following are several keys to creating and maintaining a healthy relationship with yourself:

1. Recognize negative self-talk

For many of us, the voice in our heads does more harm than good. It claims that we aren’t strong enough or good enough for certain situations or people. This is negative self-talk, and recognizing it is the first step toward building a strong relationship with yourself. Once negative self-talk is more easily recognized, people can change or challenge the dialogue in their heads.

2. Be kind to yourself

Exercising regularly, getting a massage, and watching what one eats boosts self-confidence and improves self-care. Treating the body with kindness in this way helps people naturally love themselves over time. They will also notice that their body loves them back in the form of more energy, less pain, and other physical benefits.

3. Practice forgiveness

It might seem that holding onto grudges doesn’t affect someone, but it actually robs them of their peace. Forgiveness releases the burden of anger and lets people free themselves of energy that is not serving them. With forgiveness comes peace, and with this peace, people feel more love for themselves.

Inhibited and Disinhibited Reactive

The author of “Decide Now: The Good Life or The Best Life,” L. Jay Mitchell is the innovative founder and owner of several successful residential programs for emotionally challenged adolescents. Possessing upwards of four decades of experience, L. Jay Mitchell leads Greenbrier Academy as the founder. He understands a range of psychological conditions, including reactive attachment disorder (RAD). This disorder occurs when babies and children do not form a healthy emotional attachment to their primary caregiver.

RAD often appears before the age of five. Symptoms are tantrums, avoiding eye contact, and displaying inappropriate affection towards strangers. RAD appears in two forms, inhibited or disinhibited.

Inhibited RAD occurs when children do not respond normally to outside stimuli. They are still aware but often unresponsive or withdrawn when confronted with changes. Children who exhibit inhibited RAD symptoms resist comforting, push others away, or act out in aggression when peers or caregivers get too close.

Children who exhibit disinhibited RAD symptoms are overly friendly toward strangers. They seek attention and comfort from nearly anyone. Kids with disinhibited RAD are very dependent and anxious. They seek affection in unsafe ways and act younger than their age.

Signs of Anxiety Disorders in Teens

As the founder of the West Virginia-based Greenbrier Academy for Girls, L. Jay Mitchell brings decades of experience developing teen-focused mental-health programs to the therapeutic boarding school. L. Jay Mitchell is also the codeveloper of strong relationality, a theory that focuses on self-discovery through building strong interpersonal relationships. It informs Greenbrier’s work with its clients, helping them overcome negative and destructive behaviors and cope with non-acute mental-health conditions such as depression and anxiety.

Many parents wonder how they can differentiate their teen’s mood swings from what might be a serious anxiety disorder. Most teens experience some degree of anxiety, a normal response to stress that can sometimes serve as a coping mechanism. Although “normal” differs for each individual, mental-health clinicians note a number of key indicators that could be signs a family should seek a professional opinion. These include emotions and situations that adversely affects their participation in everyday life at home and at school, as well as their ability to engage with others.

Social withdrawal, hypervigilance, continual nervousness, and other extremes associated with fear and worry can indicate an anxiety disorder, especially they occur without an actual threat present. A teen might seem consistently irritable or restless or even display outbursts of emotion with no discernible cause. Their behavior in social settings can range from appearing dependent or overly emotional to uneasy or restrained.

Anxiety disorders can also involve physiological issues like unusual or intense episodes of fatigue, listlessness, headaches, or unexplainable physical pain. Problems with falling or staying asleep and frequent uncontrollable nightmares can also be signs.

The intensity of symptoms can vary, as do their triggers. Anxiety can manifest as a free-floating general unease or morph into phobias or panic attacks, which can signify a specific type of anxiety disorder. Moreover, their wide-reaching effects can lead to school problems, worsened by an inability to concentrate or complete tasks.

Families Note Greenbrier's Role in

L. Jay Mitchell and his team at Greenbrier Academy for Girls in West Virginia provide adolescent women with a rigorous academic program and individualized treatment to address a variety of non-acute conditions. The therapeutic boarding school creates plans to help students cope with anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and substance use. In addition, L. Jay Mitchell has built Greenbriar around methodologies designed to help heal students’ strained and broken relationships with parents, peers, and themselves.

The testimonials posted on the school’s website offer a glimpse into the ways that students and their families have received assistance.

One former student noted how many aspects of her life have changed for the better since she attended Greenbrier. She described her former self as someone who experienced difficulties with alcohol and drugs, as well as a history of destructive relationships. Toward the beginning of her time at the academy, she put up barriers between herself and the staff and students that recreated past unhealthy interactions in her life.

It was during a Greenbrier Village Retreat that she was able to confront her baseless feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy. She overcame ingrained habits of thought that had conditioned her to always feel in competition with her brother. Her relationship with him became easier and more secure, and she went on to succeed in college.

A mother of another Greenbrier student wrote that she will never forget that staff consistently said that they were going to love her daughter until she could learn to love herself. This mother witnessed her daughter’s growing maturity and ability to develop a sense of purpose and integrity that exceeded the family’s initial expectations.

Numerous other students and families have shared how Greenbrier’s team invested themselves in students’ healing journeys and the extent to which programs bring out students’ authentic selves in constructive ways.

Music’s Power to Enhance Brain Function

In 2007 L. Jay Mitchell founded Greenbrier Academy for Girls as a residential therapeutic boarding school for teen girls struggling with non-acute mental, emotional, and social problems including low self-esteem, interpersonal conflicts, depression, anxiety, and addictions. The school anchors its approach in the theory of applied relationality, which L. Jay Mitchell co-developed, as well as in therapeutic programs that help young people find their own strengths and capacities for relationship-building and good character.

Led by its licensed therapists, Greenbrier offers daily drum circles. These drum circles, based on the art of traditional African drumming, foster a sense of community while teaching rhythm, musicianship, and performance skills. Not incidentally, drumming also has been demonstrated to help decrease anxiety, calm the mind, and promote focus and concentration. It also unites disparate functions of the brain and enhances creativity.

As numerous studies have shown over the decades, music also holds the power to help trauma survivors as well as those who deal with depression and anxiety. On both an individual and a community level, music allows for the holistic processing of traumatic events and opens new avenues for understanding and moving forward.

As one study sponsored by the American Music Therapy Association demonstrated, 7,000 survivors of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks and their families participating in a music therapy program discovered new ways to lower stress, relax, and improve their coping mechanisms. 

Family Healing Program Extends

Formerly a judge advocate in the United States Air Force, L. Jay Mitchell holds a law degree from the University of Idaho College of Law. In addition to creating three residential programs focused on personal growth, L. Jay Mitchell founded and directs Greenbrier Academy for Girls in Lewisburg, West, Virginia.

Greenbrier Academy for Girls combines rigorous academics with effective therapeutic programming to help adolescent girls shift negative thought patterns and develop healthy relational patterns. Recognizing that healing is essential for the whole family, the school operates the Family Healing Program to help repair and strengthen relationships.

Within the first six weeks of a girl’s admission, her family is invited to attend a two-day virtual workshop. Open to all families of new Greenbrier students, the workshop educates and orients families in key school procedures. Then, the school hosts bimonthly 90-minute virtual workshops, during which parents can explore provocative subjects using the “Fearless Living” framework.

Finally, families visit the Greenbrier campus to take part in a three-day experiential workshop that may include seasonal activities with their daughter, therapies, and assignments designed to create space for parent-daughter relationships to thrive.

Unlocking the “Frozen Paralysis” After a Trauma

L. Jay Mitchell leads the Greenbrier Academy for Girls as founder and combines an enriching academic program with therapeutic offerings that help teens move past emotional disorders. Among the issues L. Jay Mitchell has researched and incorporated within his approach is the “freeze” or paralysis response, which is a causal dynamic arising from emotional trauma and the symptoms that follow.

In the normal course of traumatic events, the body discharges super-charged energies that were long utilized in avoiding or escaping real and perceived danger. Humans, as well as animals, typically enter a dormant “frozen” state following the traumatic event. This is followed by a gradually unfolding release response that includes vibrating, shaking, and yawning, as the accumulated energy is processed.

In cases where this necessary and healthy physiological mechanism does not take hold and the nervous system release process does not occur, emotional trauma can develop. Fortunately, even long after an event, there are ways of accessing this frozen energy and generating reflection and self-awareness, an essential element of the healing process.

Experts recommend a gradual healing and recovery process within an environment that is safe, quiet, and protected. The emphasis is on creating a personal growth experience that transcends the individual, through a community support element that normalizes the healing process.

Embracing a Multifaceted Sense

An educational leader who oversees the Greenbrier Academy for Girls in West Virginia, L. Jay Mitchell emphasizes the therapeutic model of “applied relationality” that he co-developed, which is based on the idea that forging relationships with others is crucial to emotional well-being. In his book Decide Now: The Good Life or the Best Life, L. Jay Mitchell delves into the theoretical concepts behind this approach and challenges the common conflation of “feeling good” with a deeper sense of life purpose.

In the book, he suggests that good feelings and emotional satisfaction, while important, are ideally not viewed as life priorities. The main goal in life might be more beneficially stated as one that involves attaining “a life of rich meaning and purpose,” in which giving and receiving love and forming quality relationships takes precedence. What many fail to grasp is that there are often complex emotions at work in these processes that do not involve “feeling good.”

Mr. Mitchell also tackles the concepts of self and identity, as well as the uniformity with which many in the psychological community regard such constructs. The self is often treated as a single set of feelings or as a unified thought system. The author argues that people inherently possess conflicting thoughts and mixed feelings about many things. A more productive way of looking at personality may be in terms of “mini-selves” that emerge in various social situations and that may even come into conflict with one another.

Equine Therapy Promotes Emotional Awareness

An author and the creator of several residential self-development programs, L. Jay Mitchell founded the West Virginia-based Greenbrier Academy for Girls in 2007. Under L. Jay Mitchell’s ownership, Greenbrier Academy offers treatment modalities such as art therapy, one-on-one therapy, and equine therapy.

An innovative way to help girls explore negative beliefs and personal narratives, equine therapy is an experiential approach that encourages students to interact with horses in a safe, nurturing environment. Horses are highly intelligent and perceptive, making them capable of mirroring their handler’s behaviors and state of mind. When the handler is anxious or uneasy, the horse responds accordingly.

Riding and participating in activities such as grooming and feeding fosters an emotional bond between handler and horse. As such, their engagements can help girls increase emotional awareness, build confidence, and develop a wider range of problem-solving skills. Moreover, equine therapy reinforces social abilities like interpersonal and communication skills, as well as offers physical benefits through improved balance, respiration, circulation, and muscle strength.

A Look at Social Media Addiction in Adolescent Girls

A graduate of the University of Idaho and the University of Idaho College of Law, L. Jay Mitchell founded the Greenbrier Academy for Girls in 2007. L. Jay Mitchell serves as the principal owner and program director of the West Virginia therapeutic boarding school, which combines academic learning with therapeutic interventions for emotional and behavioral problems in adolescent girls.

As social-media use continues to rise across all US populations, mental health professionals are becoming increasingly concerned about social media addiction in young women. People with this condition devote so much time to social media use that it negatively affects other aspects of their lives. According to a study from Pew Research, teenage girls have the highest usage rate among individuals aged 13 to 17 and log an average of more than 140 minutes daily on sites such as Snapchat and TikTok.

These and similar applications often become the primary source of social connection for teenagers addicted to social media, leading to extreme emotional reactions to boundaries on usage. Other signs of addiction range from anxiousness when unable to check accounts and correlations between mood and the amount of attention received online. In addition to interfering with relationships and hobbies, excessive social media use leaves adolescent girls particularly vulnerable to cyberbullying due to its links with isolation and depression. For instance, many develop low self-esteem as a result of judging themselves against unrealistic standards.

Treating social media addition can involve equipping girls with the tools to navigate online platforms in healthy and constructive ways, thereby helping them to build confidence and connections rather than feed insecurities.

Greenbrier Academy for Girls Brings

In 2007, attorney, author, neurolinguistics trainer, and experienced therapeutic youth-program director L. Jay Mitchell established Greenbrier Academy for Girls (GBA) in the rolling foothills of West Virginia. This therapeutic boarding school operates with an equal focus on academics and the personal journey of healing, offering young women the chance to gain new insights into their lives and relationships and cope successfully with issues such as depression, anxiety, emotional dysregulation, substance abuse, and fractured relationships. L. Jay Mitchell and his team make students’ families a central part of the therapeutic process, believing that the most successful outcomes consider students as part of a family system.

GBA’s experienced staff observe the numerous positive changes in a student’s ability to handle her own emotions and live a full and rewarding life of conscience, character, and integrity. The GBA experience is specifically designed to help families grow for the better, as well.

In many cases, a young woman’s negative behavior patterns are based in unconscious or poorly expressed desires to see a change in the way her family members relate to her and to each other. A typical GBA student’s personal conflicts and problems did not originate in a vacuum; they will not be fully addressed in a vacuum either.

While Greenbrier Academy therapists’ regular phone conversations with parents cover the issues their daughters are working through, families have another powerful tool at hand through the Family Healing Program. This allows for the exploration of multi-generational patterns of miscommunication and misunderstanding while bolstering intra-familial connections and helping everyone ground themselves in strategies for coping and healing, long after the student leaves the school.