1KHO 594: How to Build Resilient Youth | Bryan Gouge, Compassion International

Summary

The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast – Episode Summary

Episode: 1KHO 594: How to Build Resilient Youth
Host: Jenny Erich
Guest: Dr. Brian Gouge, Compassion International
Date: October 10, 2025
Theme: Building resilient youth through holistic development, community involvement, and strength-based approaches, with a particular focus on mental health and the power of time outside.

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Episode Overview

Jenny Erich welcomes Dr. Brian Gouge, youth mental health expert at Compassion International, for World Mental Health Day. They discuss the finite nature of childhood, the universal stresses facing youth worldwide, and ways families and communities can foster resilience in their children. Gouge shares insights from his international work, highlighting the impact of strength-based, trauma-informed, youth-centric, and locally-owned approaches to mental health. They explore actionable ideas for parents to create supportive environments where children feel "known, loved, and protected."

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Importance of Reframing Mental Health (02:48–07:10)

• Mental health vs. mental health conditions: Gouge challenges the idea that mental health should be equated only with conditions like depression or anxiety. Instead, he promotes mental health as an everyday practice and a community responsibility.
• Community response: Emphasizes the power of community assets in responding to trauma and supporting youth.
• Universal youth stress: Regardless of geography, children aged 8–19 face intense emotional experiences and stress without robust frameworks to process them.

“We don’t generally talk about mental health as a practice, as a way to care for yourself… Or as a community activity.”
— Brian Gouge, PhD (02:48)

2. Community Assets and Program Design (07:11–14:56)

• Assessing strengths over deficits: Compassion International’s approach starts with identifying community strengths and resources rather than focusing on lack.
• Program adaptation: Programs are tailored to each locale, using what’s already working within the community.
• Strength-based approach: Many traits linked to struggle (like empathy in depression, awareness in anxiety) can be assets if properly guided.

“I always wonder how beautiful would it be if the first question you ask a kid is: what are your top five strengths?”
— Brian Gouge, PhD (09:46)

• Example: In Dandora, Nairobi, youth-led peer-support groups evolved into an advocacy movement for mental health, demonstrating the unexpected power in investing in local youth’s passion and energy.

3. Compassion’s Four Guiding Principles (09:18–14:56; 21:59–26:22)

• Strength-based
• Youth-centric
• Trauma-informed
• Locally-owned

a. Strength-based

• Focus on amplifying existing positive traits and community assets.

b. Trauma-informed

• Recognize that children’s behaviors are often expressions of past trauma; punitive responses can worsen their struggles.
• Listening and presence are essential in understanding and responding to these behaviors.

c. Youth-centric

• Involve youth in program design to ensure engagement and relevance.
• Example: Testing a mental health app with direct youth feedback.

d. Locally-owned

• Programs are delivered via local churches or community structures and handed off for sustainability rather than being externally operated long-term.

“The act of caring for somebody, sitting with them in their pain, listening to their story… is not a specialized skill. That’s instinctive, that’s inherent. We have that ability in us.”
— Brian Gouge, PhD (19:48)

4. The Power of Listening and Presence (26:22–31:15)

• Transformative listening: Genuine, patient listening can reveal underlying causes (e.g., Dr. Bruce Perry’s case study of childhood growth issues related to relational trauma).
• Presence and co-experiencing: Being together (not just being outside) is fundamentally restorative—for children and adults alike.

“There’s a different experience of being alone and outside, and the difference of feeling that sense of connection.”
— Brian Gouge, PhD (29:52)

• Family stories: Moments of shared awe in nature, such as seeing a “fog bow” together, illustrate the core value of shared, meaningful presence.

5. Rethinking Resilience: From Individual to Village (31:15–37:23)

• Community over independence: Resilience isn’t just a personal trait; it requires a support network.
• Known, loved, protected: Compassion’s goal for each child, acknowledging this is a community effort, not just a parental responsibility.

“The idea of if we just commit to just making sure that every kid is known, loved and protected… we need a village to do that.”
— Brian Gouge, PhD (31:33)

6. Parenting Amidst Stress and Modern Culture (37:23–46:25)

• Challenges for parents: The pressure to be perfect and perform in isolation is a major stressor, especially absent a traditional “village.”
• Advice for parents: “If you’re asking, ‘what more can I do?’ you’re already doing more than enough. Sometimes you just need to remind yourself you’re enough.”
  —Brian Gouge, PhD (39:27)
• Knowing your child takes time: Quality presence trumps constant busyness and enrichment.

7. Building Community in the Modern World (41:30–46:25)

• Intentional choices: Gouge describes moving to a walkable neighborhood to create “village” conditions. Where direct community isn’t available, even small steps toward more caring adult presence matter.
• Comparison to global cultures: US culture’s intense pace and focus on achievement adds stress for both kids and parents, but this is not universal.

8. Holistic Child Development and Compassion International (46:27–53:00)

• Beyond physical needs: Compassion International’s programs address emotional, relational, and psychological health, not just food and education.
• Options for families: Sponsoring a child can create meaningful, enduring connections.
• History: Compassion’s holistic approach has evolved with the growing understanding of children's emotional and psychological needs globally.

“If you don’t have [psychological safety], you can have all the resources, but you’re not going to be doing well.”
— Brian Gouge, PhD (50:40)

9. Final Reflections: Universal Human Needs (53:00–55:02)

• Global commonality: Regardless of culture, children everywhere need to feel known, loved, and protected.
• Actionable question: How can families borrow from these principles to enrich their own environments?
• Nature connections: Gouge’s favorite childhood memories are of freedom and risk-taking outside in Scotland—connecting the episode theme with lived experience for resilience.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On strengths in adversity:
  “Children who experience depression… are usually more empathic, I find. They just haven’t really found a way to channel their empathy. Same with anxiety—those kids are so observant; it’s a gift that needs support.”
  — Brian Gouge, PhD (11:04–12:30)

• On community-based healing:
  “We have this idea that mental health is a hyper professionalized role… The act of caring for somebody, sitting with them in their pain, listening to their story… that’s inherent.”
  — Brian Gouge, PhD (19:48)

• On presence vs. performance:
  “As parents, we want to do our best. There’s a performative factor to that. Sometimes that takes us away from just being present.”
  — Brian Gouge, PhD (39:27)

• On culture and child-rearing in the US:
  "We live in such an extreme culture… everything that we experience is the volume is turned up in the US… it creates a lot of pressure and stress."
  — Brian Gouge, PhD (41:30–43:00)

• On what every child needs:
  “Every single child or youth we work with, we hold ourselves responsible that they feel three things: that they’re known, loved, and protected.”
  — Brian Gouge, PhD (31:21, 39:51)

• On the value of doing enough:
  “If you’re asking yourself that question, you’re already doing way more than you need to. What you need to do is remind yourself that you’re enough.”
  — Brian Gouge, PhD (39:27)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 02:48–07:10: Redefining mental health and the universality of childhood stress
• 09:18–14:56: Compassion’s guiding principles and examples of strength-based programs
• 19:48–21:59: The essential, inherent skill of community caring
• 26:22–31:11: Stories of listening, transformational presence, and shared nature experiences
• 31:15–37:23: Building resilient youth through community and the “known, loved, protected” ethos
• 39:27–41:24: Challenges of modern parenting and the value of “enough”
• 41:30–46:25: Cultural perspectives on community, pace, and creating a village
• 46:27–53:00: Compassion International’s broadened scope and how families can participate
• 53:48–54:54: Brian’s favorite childhood outdoor memory

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Episode Takeaways

• Resilient youth are created not in isolation but in community.
• Mental health is a lifelong, communal practice—not just a set of conditions to treat.
• Every child needs to feel known, loved, and protected, and it takes intentionality and presence (not perfection) from adults.
• Parents and caregivers are enough—the key is showing up, listening, and building small communities of caring around their kids.
• Nature and “village” time are vital; shared time outside offers unmatched value for resilience and well-being.

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For more information or to support Compassion International’s work in holistic youth development, visit compassion.com.

Transcript

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[Jenny Erich]

Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Jenny Erich. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside, and I am so excited about today's guest. Today is World Mental Health Day. Now, we're not recording this on World Mental Health Day, but I'm saving it. October 10, World Mental Health Day. And here to talk about that is Brian Gouge, PhD Compassion International's youth Mental health expert. What an honor to have you here, Brian. Thanks for being here.

[Brian Gouge, PhD]

Yeah, thanks, Ginny. I'm really, really happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

[Jenny Erich]

Yes, this is a hugely important. I don't even know if that's a word. This is a majorly, a mega important topic. Is youth mental health just mental health in general. But kids are struggling and what we found is that getting them outdoors, slowing down the pace of life, different things like that are really helpful for mental health relationships and things like that. But you are the one who is going to be the expert here, talking to us about what, what you've learned and how you've learned it and just advice for parents and for family. So can you give us some of your background? The Compassion International's youth mental health expert, how did that happen?

[Brian Gouge, PhD]

Yeah, I mean. Well, let me. Let me start off by saying, I think probably like most people, particularly I would say people within the field like psychology or counseling, where a lot of your work is about listening. The term expert, I think, is I always balk a little bit at it because I think the best way to continue to learn is to be curious and to listen. And just when I think I've learned something or I have something to share, I think, oh, wow, there's much more that I need to learn, Right? So let me start off by saying probably a lot of what I'll share is based on my experience. And my experience is always growing, but I'm always trying to stay curious. So if I say something and in a year or two, it's obsolete, I think that is part of the journey. So my role at Compassion has been the product of a long journey. I'm a Counselor. And I'm really interested in how. Got really interested early on in my education and how communities can play a role in the response to mental health.

[Jenny Erich]

So.

[Brian Gouge, PhD]

So I think when we talk about mental health, I think a lot of times we talk about it as synonymous with mental health conditions. Right. When I say mental health, people just naturally think, what's a mental health condition I know of? Is it depression? Is it anxiety? Is it adhd? Is it autism? And so we don't generally talk about mental health as a practice, as a way to care for yourself. And we don't talk about mental health as a community activity. We talk about it as an individual responsibility or something that befalls an individual. So I got super interested in specifically how trauma affects communities and how communities can respond to that in collective ways, harnessing their strengths and their assets and their power to respond. So that got me into research, and then that got me eventually into helping design programs for compassion. And we work in about 29 different countries through local churches and work with about 2 million kids through over 8,000 project centers.

[Jenny Erich]

Tell us about some of those programs that you design. I like all the details.

[Brian Gouge, PhD]

Yeah.

[Jenny Erich]

How do you even know to do that? And then how do you go about. Because you talk about. I mean, you are in all sorts of parts of the world. You're in Bolivia, you're in South Africa, you're in Uganda. You've been all over the world. You have all these different programs. Humans need the same things.

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[Jenny Erich]

So that's a lot of questions, like.

[Brian Gouge, PhD]

What'S the unifying thread?

[Jenny Erich]

Yeah. Well, how do you know you need to do a program? How do you figure out what the program is? And then how much variability is there from place to place? Or are there a lot of lines that run through all of the programs?

[Brian Gouge, PhD]

Yeah, I mean, good question. I think. I think there are layers to that. Right. And so let's talk for a second about what is the unifying factor or the shared experience of lots of children and youth around the world. Let's bucket that with, let's say kids 8 to 19. Just for fun, let's just say that. Right. And so I think when we talk about what that age group really needs or what that age group is really experiencing are ways in which they can manage stress. Right. I mean, whether you're the conditions in the environment that may surround kids who live in Philadelphia, where I live, or kids who live in La Paz, Bolivia, the conditions in the environment may look very different, but the experience of managing stress is very Similar. They experience some of the same stressors. At Compassion, we work with children and youth who are experiencing significant amount of poverty. Right. And so with poverty comes usually a massive lack of resources and a lack of. Maybe also a lack of healthy caregivers or healthy, what we call proxies around them that can help take care of them. And so while that is stressful, there are kids in Philadelphia who are experiencing significant amounts of stress as well. Right. And so how the body responds to that stress, how we conceptualize that stress and respond to that stress, that's what we're really helping kids manage. And that's kind of this universal thread that runs throughout all children and youth around the world. So it's helping them manage stress, but it's also like one of the things that I think really grips this age group is intense emotional experiences. Right. They experience things very, very strongly, which is beautiful. And yet at the moment, they don't have yet a wealth of life experience to build this mental model or framework for where to put that emotional experience in. Right. So you and I have. We've lived life. We've lived some life. So we know we have a model for how we view the world, who we are in the world, who our safe people are, how we're going to use all of our assets to respond to that. And so when something strikes, something hits you, you're able to say, I'm going to get through this and I'm going to use these resources. And you're almost going to do it out of instinct.

[Jenny Erich]

Right.

[Brian Gouge, PhD]

A lot of kids and youth, they're like, I have this experience, I'm going to feel this way forever. They don't know the impermanence of it. Right. And so we know that that's a shared experience with all children and youth around the world. That feeling of isolation, that feeling of overwhelm, and the lack of resources to respond to their external environment. So what do we do? What's the next step? Right, Yeah. I think the next step is you go into any community, whether that be here in the US Whether that be wherever, and you look at what the assets are, you look at what the strengths of the community are. You look at what some of the resources are, and you ask questions. What exists here that we can utilize to help support the youth? What are some threats? What are some challenges? What are some things we need to be aware of? And it's different in every context. It's different in every state, every city, every country. Right. And then, so then we build programs that utilize some of the strengths and address some of the threats and challenges.

[Jenny Erich]

Oh, I actually love that so much because then you could do that in your family. I talked to this photographer one time named Joy, and sometimes people would say to her, can you come into my home?

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[Jenny Erich]

A one hour session outside. She would come in and be at the, in the person's home for four to five hours and really kind of get that lifestyle, what's going on in this person's home. And she said sometimes people would come to her and you know, their family's falling apart and they would say, can you come and do a session and tell me if there's anything here worth saving? And I think that's kind of the same thing, which is, what do we have? Like, what can we utilize instead of, you know, this is all falling apart, which it may feel like it is, but like, what are the assets? What are the strengths? What does exist here that we can use? What would be an example of that in some of these places that you've been, where you've created these community programs where, you know, to the outsider it might look like, how are you going to draw from anything? But you do you find strength in something that exists there that's really going to help the kids with their mental health?

[Brian Gouge, PhD]

Yeah, I want to answer that, but let me just reflect on something you said because I think it's really important. We at Compassion, our ethos for responding to mental health is we have kind of four guiding principles that kind of drive all of, all of the way. We make decisions, we choose partnerships, we develop programming. And I think this is something you could apply, of course, like you said, to your own family. As a clinician, I think it's really great for families to have mission statements and guiding principles and these things that tether the individuals of a family into some meaningful mold a meaningful group. And so those are strength based, youth centric, trauma informed and locally owned. And I love to talk a little bit about strength based because I think it's really important within, in understanding youth mental health. And I think this is less, it's less contentious now than it used to be. But this idea that when we talk about mental health conditions, generally speaking, or mental health in general, right, we naturally think, what's wrong? What do we need to fix? Right. When any kid walks into a counselor's office, usually the first questions are, what are your symptoms or what are you experiencing and how long have you been experiencing it? Because they're trying to build this understanding within a Diagnostic context, which makes sense. But I always wonder how beautiful would it be if the first question you ask a kid is like, what are your top five strengths? What do you think are your top five strengths? Because a lot of times what we realize are the things that children and youth are struggling with are usually their biggest strengths. A couple examples. Children who experience depression at a stronger prevalence rate are usually more empathic, I find. Right. So they just haven't really found a way to channel their empathy. They feel things so strongly, but it's just like the volume is turned up too loud for their feelings, right? And so they just feel it, they internalize it and then it turns to either intense sadness or anger or something. Right? It's got to go somewhere. I notice that kids who struggle with anxiety just pulling out two different examples, are usually incredibly observant and very, very, very aware, acutely aware of all the things that are going on around them. They're scanning. I mean, these are incredible gifts, right? But when you put those gifts within an environment that is either is not conducive to those gifts or doesn't know how to teach the children, youth to harness those gifts, then they become too heavy and it becomes too much of a struggle for these kids. So we try to build all of our programming around being strength based. What are the things that are working? How can we build on those things rather than asking the question what's wrong or what's broken? One example, I just recently got back from a community in Kenya called Dendora in Nairobi. It's a community. We have a center right in Dendora and Dandora is relatively common around the world. But you'll have communities built in or around a large waste dump. And so this is where all the trash gets sorted and recycled. And there are usually business is built around sorting and recycling and managing the waste, as you would expect. There's lots of poverty in this area. There's not a whole lot of resources. So there's a lack of mental health infrastructure. There's certainly, certainly a lack of public health infrastructure. So the question is, what is there? Right? So there are youth that are really struggling. They have programs for sports and other things where they can find connection and healthy relationships. But one thing that is true of all youth is there is a level of idealism and passion and optimism, right? Like they, they don't know what they don't know yet. And so they, they're dreamers. And we started to run this program there that was like youth helping youth manage their mental health. So like kind of peer led groups. And what ended up happening as a result of this is the youth naturally kind of took on this responsibility and started to advocate for youth mental health policy change in Nairobi and throughout Kenya. And now you have a group of youth that have started their own ngo, which is short for non government organization, and a community level project, like community level organization, community based organization that's going around advocating for youth mental health. Because the asset that they had was just energy and passion and they wanted to change. And so we funded them, we said, go for it, like organize yourselves and make change in the community. And now they're going out and they're trying to work with schools and they're teaching the adults about how, how to change their thinking related to mental health. We never thought that was going to be the case, right? I mean, it was just when you hand over, when you look at the strengths and then you support the strengths rather than just say, hey, we know there's a lack of resources here, let's build a building or let's like try and implement some kind of like income based generation program, which is still a good idea. This took one, the one strong asset they had and then just invested in it. That was the outcome.

[Jenny Erich]

That's got a lot of implications, powerful implications. What exists here? Because I think in general, so often we look at the lack. I don't have this, I don't have that, I don't have enough time, I'm too stressed out, I don't have enough resources. What exists here? You said you look at the strength, but you're looking for the strength. What are the strengths and then how can we support them?

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[Jenny Erich]

Just because I have no frame of reference for this type of work at all. How long? What does that process look like you're gonna go? I mean, obviously you have to spend time there. You're spending time with these families. You have an interpreter. Like, I've hardly been out of the country So I don't have a frame of reference for like how this happens. So, you know, are you spending weeks there trying to sort of figure out how this community works? Are you going back to the same place often to check in? Like, I want to know about this sort of nitty gritty day to day.

[Brian Gouge, PhD]

Yeah, yeah, good question. So we, when I, when I say like we, we work through like the local church, right? So with Compassion, let's say you're in the community of Dendora, right? You wouldn't really know. It's Compassion. We work in a sort of a non branded, we work through the local church. And so people will just know it's the local church that's supporting us with these efforts, not Compassion. Similarly, like we, Compassion has national offices in all these countries. And so I work in partnership with the national office. And so usually from a mental health perspective, one of the ways we, we try and address responding to all of the youth throughout the world that we have kind of responsibility to care for is we have a, what's called a technical working group that's a combination or a collection of individuals from all the national offices. And we try and kind of build this hive mind of like thinkers, people that are building strategy and working throughout the world. A collection of our national office staff. So I'll have a few from, you know, the Africa region, a few from Asia, a few from Latin America and we come together and we plan. And then so when I go to one of these countries, it's, it's usually I'm in partnership with the national office and I want to remove myself as much as possible from being involved in the local work because we want to utilize as much as possible the concept of sustainability. A lot of times, and I think this is true too, here in the U.S. really, we have this idea that mental health is a hyper professionalized role. You need to seek out an expert. And I think that's true in a lot of circumstances. But the act of caring for somebody, of sitting with somebody in their pain, of listening to somebody's story, of just being with them in a therapeutic manner is not a specialized skill. That's instinctive, that's inherent. We have that ability in us. So when we talk about, all right, there's a, there's a mental health need in, let's say, rural Indonesia. We can't send a psychologist in there, expect them to build relationships and then just leave. We want to help empower and train and equip the local community to be able to build psychological safety and build this therapeutic landscape and environment in the community that can be sustained by grandmas and aunties and people in the community that can be trained in listening skills and Mental Health 101, how to prevent and manage suicide, these kinds of things that can be handled by anybody. In my opinion. We don't need somebody with multiple letters after their name. We need people who are loving and kind and caring and have a basic set of skills on how to, how to handle that, handle that stress.

[Jenny Erich]

It's so interesting because you do have letters after your. Your name, but you say your greatest joy is listening, especially to the stories of children, caregivers and church leaders working toward healing in hard places and, and listening. Listening is the skill that anyone can have and build and use that to help better their own life and help better other people's lives. Can you talk through, I don't know if you called them pillars, Strength based, Trauma informed, locally owned. I missed the third one.

[Brian Gouge, PhD]

Youth centric.

[Jenny Erich]

Youth centric. She talked about strength based. What exists here? What can we build upon? Can you talk about trauma informed?

[Brian Gouge, PhD]

Yeah, yeah, happy to. So, trauma informed. When, when Trauma informed, as a phrase, generally it refers to this idea that as people, we need to understand how the experience of trauma specifically affects children and youth. Living through difficult situations, intense situations, traumatic situations, affects the brain and body. And children and youth tell that story usually through their behaviors. Generally speaking, these behaviors are ones that are. If you're not aware of how trauma affects children and youth, you'll see these behaviors and you might respond to them in a punitive or disciplinarian perspective. Right? Making that trauma or making the experience of that felt trauma like, much worse for the children and youth. And so one of the things that we do when we go into communities is we really talk as much as we can talk about in a very simple way, how trauma affects the brain and how trauma affects the body and how that story comes out in the actions. And I think it's important too, here in the US in our own communities, we don't always know what children have lived through, but when we see, sometimes we see. I mean, you see it all the time, like in public, where maybe, maybe you see a kid acting in what we might perceive as defiance or something, or disrespect. I think rarely do we think, wow, that kid must have lived through some difficult stuff, right? Or that kid just probably really needs a hug or something like that. I think we're almost conditioned to think, wow, that kid needs to be told what's up. Or like that kid needs. And we don't know what that kid needs. Right. We have no idea. We haven't listened. We don't know their story. Right. And so that, that's the power of listening is when we listen, we really get a sense of what's happening, what's needed and how we can respond. So that's trauma informed Youth Centric is kind of just means that the programs that we develop and implement, we want youth to speak into what those programs are. Youth are not going to utilize or engage in content or activities that they don't want to. I mean, they may have to be coerced into them. Right. I mean, but if, if we have them speak into. What do you want this to look like? How do you want this to feel like? We were just testing out an app. We're launching an app that delivers like, audio content that deals with mental health stories and challenges. And they talk about it as a group, they listen to the story and then they talk about it as a group. But in the early stages, we tested it with youth and we said, what do you like about this? What do you don't. What do you not like about this? How would you change this? And then we did. We have them be part of the design process. Children generally don't like to just sit in a room and talk to an adult, just the two of them. Right. Like, that's not. It's just not their preferred activity, at least not my kids. So, yeah, what we design needs to be informed by the voice of the youth and locally owned is. I kind of reflected on it just a little bit in the previous comment, but it needs to be like, when we step away, after we do the training, we do the intervention, we kind of launch the program, we step away. That program needs to continue and that needs to be owned by the community.

[Jenny Erich]

Right.

[Brian Gouge, PhD]

And so they need to be at the heart, in the center of the design process as well.

[Jenny Erich]

The listing is so interesting because I just read this book by Dr. Bruce Perry and he, I think, did some seminal work on trauma informed care. He's got some really good books. But he told this story about this mom and daughter, and the little girl was 4, and they said that she had infant anorexia. You know, it was like, no one like that. And this Dr. Perry was like, I've never heard of that. Like, you know, she wasn't gaining weight. She was maybe 26 pounds or something like that. She's not gaining weight. They have her on this high calorie diet. They're doing this whole battery of tests on her. I mean, all sorts of tests. Right. She's four years old. What's going on? And they've been doing it for years because this little girl's not gaining weight, and they think that she has anorexia and she's trying to control the food and the. They don't want the mom to eat with her anymore. And it's just this whole thing. And so this Dr. Perry is called in and he. And he sits with the family and. And this mom and daughter, and he notices that the mom is just a little absent. Like she's not really interacting with the little girl anyway. So what he said was he. He learned that the mom had been in foster care, the mother of this little girl, and she'd been bounced around then that's how the model was for that time period. They didn't want the little baby to get attached too much and then have to switch. So she'd gotten bounced around for several, several times as a baby and didn't learn maybe these instinctual things of touch and. Or what other people would consider as instinctual things of touch and holding. And so what he said was, is that because she wasn't engaging with her child in that way, that the. There was issues with the growth hormone and so that that child was getting all of this nutrients, all of these calories, and the body didn't know what to do with it. And. And so she wasn't gaining weight. And so when he was able to kind of step in and she moved in with, for a time period with this older woman who did a lot of foster care, and she started to learn, you know, how do I interact and I hold my little girl. Anyway, she gained 10 pounds in one month, 35% something increase in her body weight in one month. And that was the whole point is listening to what the story is, what's actually going on in that situation, instead of coming in with all the answers that weren't answers and didn't work and taking that time. But that does take more time quite a bit.

[Brian Gouge, PhD]

Yeah. And as you were. As you were telling that, like, really impactful story, one of the things that stuck with me is you, as you were saying, you know, it's the listening. And I was thinking also it's the presence. It's like the presence that's needed and the stress of the caregiver that must have been felt. Right. So kind of tying this back to like, you know, this idea of, we know that nature is reparative and restorative and being outside is reparative and restorative. But what's interesting to me about, like, what. What you all do is it's not just singularly the action of being outside, but imagine the relief of stress from the parents or the caregivers or whoever's outside with the kids or kid. And the. Just the. The powerful aspect of presence, being, being together. And so, sure, we know that, like forest bathing. We know, like, the. The. The. The importance of the rhythms of nature and how they regulate our nervous system. We get that. Right. But there's a different experience of being alone.

[Jenny Erich]

Right.

[Brian Gouge, PhD]

And outside. And the difference of being felt like feeling that sense of connection.

[Jenny Erich]

Wow, that's actually really powerful, Brian, because it gave me chills. It made me think about. I. I was on a plane last night. I flew home, and it was just gorgeous. I, like, flew home around sunset, and it was just like these gorgeous colors across the sky. I was looking out my window. You know, it's like the blue and the clouds looked really cool. And then it was like these oranges and reds and yellows, and it was just stunning in pinks. And. And there was no one to say, look at that. Would you look at that? Oh, gosh. You know, you're like, you know, I wasn't with my family. I was alone. And so you're just kind of like. Well. And it made me think about how often. What you just said made me think about how often, like, look at that. Oh, look at. Look at the clouds and the simple things. You know, it's not necessarily. We saw a fog bow recently, which is a rainbow, but it's made out of fog. I learned about it years ago from this man who writes about clouds. And I was like, I've never seen one. And we were together as a family. We're in Michigan, in the Upper Peninsula, and there was this fog bow. And I mean, but it. It's so different when you experience it together. It's a completely different experience if you're by yourself.

[Brian Gouge, PhD]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Jenny Erich]

If you're with other people, look at this.

[Sponsor Voice]

Look at that.

[Jenny Erich]

And that presence is so powerful.

[Brian Gouge, PhD]

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, for me, that's. That's why. So there's, you know, two things that, you know, I think that we. With. Because of that, we try and apply both as an organization and for me, as a practitioner and just me as a parent, really, we have these kind of. These pillars, I guess, at Compassion, that when we apply to youth, every single child or youth we work with, we hold ourselves responsible that they feel three things that they're known, loved and protected. That's it. Right? And for me, when I think about that through the lens of mental health, whether as a clinician or a parent, I know that I cannot provide that all the time for my kids or my clients. The idea of if we just commit to just making sure that every kid is known, loved and protected, we need a village to do that. We need those, our kids, or they need other people in their lives that are also going to commit to that, to be part of that journey. And when, you know, say, for a minute, we're talking about the practice of mental health, like being mentally healthy, but let's talk for a second about what happens when a mental health condition emerges. In my experience, like, you could, you could approach that from this Western mindset, which is, yes, let's take this person to a counselor, let's get them seen and let's get them. Like, that can be very helpful and often is very helpful. But additionally, if you haven't built this community of carers around you that's going to continually support your youth, your children, all of our children, then we're not going to achieve this. That we're not going to achieve. Building resilient youth. Because our notion of resilience, I think, is often built around this idea of independence. How can we, like, create resilience within this kid? Our, our question needs to be, how can we. Now hold on. How? So we ask that question. How can we build resilience within the kid? Whose responsibility is that? The parents. Right. And a lot of times the mom, because the mom's usually the one who stresses about this stuff. I don't mean stress in a pejorative way. I just mean, like, they carry the cognitive load of the family oftentimes. Right. So they're questioning, how do we build resilience? So then it's their responsibility to make sure that the kid is resilient. Right. No, the question we need to ask ourselves is how can we build this community of carers that when any of us experience difficulty, we have a network of supports, like a layered, integrated network of supports that who know us, love us, and are committed to protecting each other. And that, for me, is how we really build, like, and secure resilience and build mentally healthy kids and communities rather than this idea of like, well, if you're not resilient, if you're struggling, then we're going to send you to a counselor. It's this very individualized experience rather than a community experience. And so I think that speaks to the heart of kind of what you felt on the plane is like, we want to experience things together, but the experience of stress and the experience of distress is often very isolating. And it can, if we're not careful, it can continually isolate us.

[Jenny Erich]

Oh, there's a lot to think about there.

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[Jenny Erich]

I mean, I would imagine that most people feel that they don't have a community like that, no matter where they live in the world. In that Dr. Bruce Perry's book, he was talking about how in the hunter gatherer communities there was a ratio of 4 to 1.4 to 1 adults or older cousins or aunts or uncles or grandparents, four to one. Older, older people to one child. And then he said today if you look at daycare numbers that it's one to five. It's basically the opposite. It's one adult, five kids. Really, there should be 20 adults for those five kids. Yeah, and it's tricky. And Dr. Madeline Levine, I love her work. She says that one of the most common things that she hears from teens in her office is no one knows me. Because it's like these common human things are universal.

[Brian Gouge, PhD]

I wonder, I mean, why we say it's very, very hard. So it's very easy to talk about all the things we should do and not do. And it's very hard to do it for sure. Yeah. I mean, I remember being. When I first got out of graduate school, I ran an intensive outpatient therapy group, and I met with children and adolescents. This was here in Philadelphia, and their parents and I. I always was kind of trying to give recommendations to parents, but I wasn't a parent yet. I had no idea what I was talking about, really. And what I would. What I would say, what I still believe is like, I think our role is really to get a PhD in our kids and really, really, really know them. What strikes me, though, is as I. As I became a parent, and I'm sure a lot of the folks who listen to your podcast probably feel as well, is we experience this, like, deluge or this onslaught of information on how we can be doing better, what we need to stop doing, what we need to start doing. And it feels very prescriptive. And I think as parents, we want to do our best. And there's a performative factor to that. We feel the pressure that, are we doing it right? And when. Couple that with, like, we don't live in this village mindset, most of us don't, where there's, like, all kinds of extended family and all kinds of, like, connections around that are sharing the load. What you experience is a lot of stress from parents. Yeah, a lot of stress, because probably more so now than ever, there's lots of information on how to protect our kids, how to create this wonderful conditions for them to thrive. And so we're working a lot on performing, and sometimes that takes us away from just being present.

[Jenny Erich]

Yeah.

[Brian Gouge, PhD]

And I don't blame anybody for that. Like, it's stressful. But sometimes when parents come to me and what can I do? Usually I'm like, well, if you're asking yourself that question, you're already doing way more than you need to. Like, what you need to do is remind yourself that you're enough. You're doing enough. You're showing up, you love your kids. Your kids feel that right?

[Jenny Erich]

And interesting for those three things, known, love and protected. So you've got children that are in severe poverty. That compassion is helping. And so in that case, you're helping with that protected piece and those baseline elements that a child needs to grow and thrive. And so if you're a family, let's say, in the United States, and you're, you know, you're not in that situation, then, you know, known and loved. That's what's on the table. And so.

[Sponsor Voice]

But it's harder.

[Jenny Erich]

It is easier said than done. It's easier said than done because to.

[Sponsor Voice]

Know your child, to have a PhD.

[Jenny Erich]

In your child means time. I mean, setting your phone aside, you know, it means playing board games and doing puzzles and going outside and combating what you talked about, which is that fear and the pressure where everyone else is doing all of these other things and you're not going to. So that you have more time together as a family so that you can know your child known, loved and protected. That's powerful. If you can try and build your family through that lens, then that's going to do so much for your own kids. And the community piece is tricky. I mean, do you have any advice for people that are living in the United States for. I mean, we've had. Our personal family has had a very negative, like, very awful experience with the local church. And I know that that is actually a pretty common thing, especially now that we've started to talk about it. I mean, people have story after story and has been very damaging to our children.

[Brian Gouge, PhD]

Yeah.

[Jenny Erich]

So what is your advice for trying to build that community in this day and age?

[Brian Gouge, PhD]

Oh, yeah. I mean, that's so one of the. I think one of the most powerful things. I'll just speak personally. And again, it's anecdotal because it's my story, but I'm not saying that this is possible for everybody, but, you know, we as a family, as I spent quite a bit of time, you know, my PhD is in international psychology. I'm all over the place. I'm experiencing things all over the world and I'm seeing the differences in culture. When I would come back to the US I would find that one of the things that felt very true to me was when I came back to the US we live in such an extreme culture. There's a lot of wealth, there's a lot of poverty. We have extreme weather, we have extreme tv, it's just like everything that we experience is the volume is turned up in the US and so I think when we talk about being still being present, being calm, being connected to our family in a way that's not at a breakneck pace, it's important that we talk about that. That's hard work to fight against the current. And I'm not saying. I'm not in any way saying the US Is a bad place. I'm just saying it's intense compared to the way some other Places live their lives. You don't really feel this until you go. Go around, right. And experience the pace and the culture of different places.

[Jenny Erich]

Just give us a little bit more, because I have not done that. I haven't experienced a pace or culture of other places.

[Brian Gouge, PhD]

Yeah, it. I think a lot of it come. A lot of it can come down to. It's almost hard to explain unless you've experienced. But what I would say is, you know, we. From the earliest moments, the United States culture was built around the accumulation of wealth and progress. And so that's built into a lot of our actions, innovation, progress. And that yielded hustle, culture, and all kinds of things that don't necessarily exist in other places. Again, that's not in and of itself a bad thing. But it can be really hard for kids because it creates a lot of pressure and stress. And there's a lot of comparison that happens at that age. Am I smart? Am I as smart as my peers? Am I. Am I going to get into a good school? I mean, there's like this stress and this pressure mount because everything is built around this idea of what you do is who you are, what you produce defines your purpose and value, rather than just this notion that we matter because we are, because we're here, because we're. Because we're human. That gives us our inherent wealth, that gives us our inherent value and our worth. Right. And so we have to kind of fight against some of that. And I think we have to start making really, really, like, specific. We have to take action. So for me, what we did is we intentionally moved into a small, walkable community where the kids could walk to school, where we knew all the neighbors, and we just were comfortable with just kicking our kids out of the house and saying, come back when it's dark. Now, I know that that isn't possible in all environments. So for us, we know that we wanted a village, we wanted a community. We wanted. I. I wanted my. My kids to be able to say, well, it's just not mom and dad who love me. It's the neighbors love me as well. And I know them, and I like. And I'm sure that's more difficult to engineer in certain contexts, but for us, we intentionally moved into an environment that was primed for that possibility. And I think that that's made a really significant, significant difference in the lives of my kids, to be honest.

[Jenny Erich]

Yeah, it's worth it to try and figure out, at least to a small degree, how you might be able to do that in your own life. You know, that increase of ratio of adult or caring, compassionate people in your kid's life. So it's not just you. And when you talk about the hustle culture for kids, it, you know, it's also there for adults. And that seeps into the time that we would learn our kids to become the PhD in our kids because we just feel like we have to go, go, go, accumulate, innovate, do more, do more. So like you said, it's a big thing to fight against, but really important to know that it's not like that everywhere else.

[Sponsor Voice]

And if our highest, one of our.

[Jenny Erich]

Highest goals is to know our children, then we might act in a different way. This has been really eye opening. I don't know how many people have heard of Compassion. I think probably I would guess most have, but maybe that's just in my experience. And you know, that it's helping children and they're getting education and they're getting the food they need and the water they need and these elements that keep them safe and help them to grow. But I didn't realize that Compassion was doing all of these programs that are youth centric and locally owned and strength based and trauma informed. I think that that's an incredible thing to know because it goes far beyond what you might envision is happening, which is just sort of the baseline care of their physical needs. So if people wanted to connect more with what Compassion is doing, can you tell them how they could do that?

[Brian Gouge, PhD]

Yeah, I mean, quite simply, the easiest way is to just go to compassion.com and explore. I mean, there's opportunities to, there's opportunities to sponsor youth and that can be a really beautiful way to build a relationship. One of the common things is for a family to sponsor a youth. But it's important to also understand that that money goes to, to the development of that youth. But it's, there's also these kind of these programs that are surrounding that youth that you had just pointed out that leads to this holistic child development and these beautiful stories about how these kind of enduring relationships happen. I was just, like I said, I was just in, in Kenya and one of the, I ran into to one of, one of our children there. One of the, he was, I think he's 18 or 19, and I looked like his sponsor. He like, I think, you know, dude with a beard, you know his name and his sponsor's name was Brian and he had tears in his eyes and he goes, are you my, Are you my sponsor? And I had decided to say no, but I wish I Were because you're an incredible kid. But just the. What was so impactful to me was that it's. It's not. That is another way to really. For people to feel really known. Right. And it's a way for them to feel loved. And that was a beautiful thing. And so I think that's a great way for a family to kind of build this relationship. And so that's one way to get involved, of course, is your sponsorship. But there are other ways to get involved that also help support disaster resilience efforts. We do work in disaster relief and resilience. And we work. We have a program that is called our survival program where we work with mothers and babies. And so, Yeah. I mean, compassion.com go and explore and get involved.

[Jenny Erich]

And what a thing. This is really what we all need is holistic child development.

[Brian Gouge, PhD]

Yeah.

[Jenny Erich]

You're talking about, you know, if it's World Mental Health Day. This is what the struggle is. The struggle, for different reasons, is that we are not looking at children, I don't think in a holistic way. We're looking at them as a brain, as a grade, as a test score. Yeah. And in different parts of the world, obviously there's different things that are focused on. But it. That is a struggle. And I think if we can step back and do more of what you're doing, which is this holistic child development model. I mean, it really is remarkable. I don't know if you know the history, but did compassion, like, is that something over time they realized, okay, it's one thing to make sure a child has enough meals, but it's another thing to make sure that their environment is helping them thrive as a whole being.

[Brian Gouge, PhD]

Yeah.

[Jenny Erich]

Or was that there from the beginning?

[Brian Gouge, PhD]

No, I mean, I think, I think over time, I think we, I mean, even as if, even, even as a field of sociology, psychology, child development, we, we understand the importance of that sense of well, being, that sense of like, sense of peace within you is a basic need. And if you don't have that, you can have all the resources, but you're not going to be doing well. I mean, we have lots of evidence that supports that notion. And so.

[Jenny Erich]

Right. Which is like that little girl who couldn't gain weight even though she was being fed and she lived in a home and she had all of her physical needs met, but she didn't have the emotional needs met. And it wasn't. The mom wasn't doing it maliciously. She just didn't know. She didn't have the education. She had her own Trauma as a child and that child would not grow.

[Brian Gouge, PhD]

Right, exactly. And so I think over time we've developed that understanding because we've seen the way in which the brain and the body are not mutually exclusive. Right. And so, yeah, I think as we've been able to learn that and surround youth with healthy communities, with psychological safety, with like what I call therapeutic milieu, then we're able to kind of feel less isolated. And I think that would be just one thing that I would probably reinforce is this idea that, like, when we're talking about mental health, it's such a heavy topic, and certainly when we're talking about it on World Mental Health Day, it is, or you're listening on World Mental Health Day, it feels so overwhelming. And just like anything, if you're trying to do it alone, it probably is. And so to the extent that you can always be asking yourself not what you could do more of, but who could help you, like who is around, how can you build that is a much more sustainable. And it's difficult. I'm not saying it's easy, but my guess is every single person listening is already doing way more than they can probably. And so the work of caring for the kids is a community level work. And so for us at Compassion, I can talk about that in sort of this conceptual way, like by building community level mental programming. And we know how to do that. It's a little bit harder when you're talking about how do you do that and engineer that within the nuclear family. I get that. But it's still worth having that conversation.

[Jenny Erich]

Yeah, yeah. So interesting, actually, that the needs of humans are global, you know, these baseline needs that we have. And so to think about all the things that you're doing with Compassion, and how could you take some of those elements and bring them into your own community, into your own family? It is remarkable what compassion is doing. I'm so glad to learn this. I'm so glad to learn that this is what you're doing. And then you're able to take those things that you've learned that are working. And you know, we can fill needs here to fill the needs around us, knowing that these kids need to know that they are known, loved and protected. Brian, what an honor. What an opportunity to get this chance to talk with you. And I love that this is going out on World Mental Health Day. We have about one minute to wrap it up, but I'm wondering if you could answer this question, because we always end with it. What's a favorite memory from your childhood that was outside.

[Brian Gouge, PhD]

Oh, gosh. So, favorite memory. So this is. This is going to feel like cheating, but when I was very little, when I was a wee boy, we lived in Scotland, and it was apparently pretty common practice to just, at that time in the 80s, to just throw your kids outside and just let them wander the glens and the locks and everything. And so when I was a kid, I spent a fair bit of time outside, which started in Scotland, and then I was homeschooled after. So I lived life outside. I lived a lot of life outside. Catching snakes, you know, taking risks, learning how to respond to all of that. But, yeah, I think running around the Highlands of Scotland is probably my favorite.

[Jenny Erich]

Wow. What an experience. Gosh, you have really unique experiences in your life. That's really, really cool. Will your kids have some of that, do you think? Like, have they gotten to travel?

[Brian Gouge, PhD]

Yeah, they have. They have. And I started my kids with forest school, and we did unschooling. And so, yeah, they're. They're getting exposed to all of that.

[Jenny Erich]

Cool. How cool. Well, Brian, what an honor. What an opportunity. Thank you for all you're doing for compassion and thank you for this time that you spent here with us today.

[Brian Gouge, PhD]

Yeah, it's been great, Jenny. Thanks for having me.