Hey, it’s Alvin!
We’ve turned healing into a lifestyle. Tuning out. Curating comfort. Giving ourselves grace. But what if it’s really just a way to stay in our comfort zones?
Adult summer camps.
They’re now being sold as a way to heal from trauma.
It sounds innocent enough on the surface. Even charming. Who wouldn’t want a break from adulthood?
In case you haven’t heard of “summer camp,” it’s a rite of passage in North America. It’s when kids spend a week or two in the woods away from their parents, live in cabins with strangers, roast marshmallows, and learn to canoe or tie-dye a T-shirt. It’s nostalgic, tied to childhood freedom and now, adults are paying hundreds of dollars to relive it.
To be extra clear, there are different types of “summer camps” for kids. The whole bunk bed, bug-spray, first-kiss-by-the-lake type I just described is a sleep-away camp. There is also the day camp, which is just supervised play while parents are at work.
An adult summer camp tries to recreate the sleep-away type. To quote the article above, they have “craft beer, curated playlists, and a collective desire to log off and feel something.”
Or “yoga at sunrise, journaling circles by the fire, and themed dance parties.”
Or “journaling, meditation, or vision boarding workshops; bonfires with late-night s’mores and acoustic sing-alongs; camp-style activities,” etc.
All under the guise that the camp will “heal the soul and bring out your inner child.”
But to say that an adult summer camp heals is like saying that a fever is the fix for a physical illness. Yes, a fever is the body’s way of battling pathogens in your body. But perpetual fevers are signs of a deeper health issue that will kill you sooner than later if left unaddressed. For your long-term well-being, the solution is to address the cause of the fever. And an adult summer camp does the opposite.
An adult summer camp is not a solution, but a symptom of a problem.
The core problem is the avoidance of self improvement, even though it would lead to a better life long-term. An adult summer camp worsens this problem in 2 main ways:
It takes away people’s agency.
It promotes escapism as healing.
In fact, escapism prevents proper long-term healing for 2 main reasons:
It discourages people from confronting and working through problems.
It numbs people from feeling their pains and their joys.
Problem 1: Lost agency.
All summer camps share one common trait:
Someone else organizes your schedule, your purpose, and even your joy.
But why do so many adults today feel incapable of creating meaning, connection, or joy on their own and in their daily lives?
Why do we need camp counsellors in our 30s to guide us through play, rest, or reflection?
It’s fine to have someone else arrange your life when you’re 8. But when you’re 38 and still need someone else to organize your joy, your connection, your sense of rest? That’s spiritual atrophy.
If you keep letting others run your life, you’ll never build the life you want to live. That’s why people end up with lives they want to escape. It’s broken and they can’t or won’t fix it. They don’t know how. So, they turn to fleeting experiences curated by other people for temporary relief.
We’re losing our ability to generate meaning and joy without external scaffolding. So, people feel the need to escape. Except… escape doesn’t heal.
Problem 2: Calling escape “healing.”
Adult summer camps are places people can go to escape trauma when they need to face it or grow through it instead. Unfortunately, modern society completely demonizes trauma while over-romanticizing healing. It’s silly. If you think about it. Because trauma and healing go hand-in-hand.
When we exercise, we subject our muscles to trauma. They tear. Rest lets our muscles grow back stronger. Trauma and healing work together to help you grow stronger.
The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity—even under the most difficult circumstances—to add a deeper meaning to his life.
- Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning
Modern healing culture likes to say: “you’re broken and need to be fixed.” But it’s healthier and more accurate to think: “you went through hard times, and you’re growing stronger through them.”
The problem with escaping to a summer camp to avoid problems is that you miss out on the opportunity to grow and improve your situation. In fact, it’s even worse than that. It numbs you to joy.
Problem 3: Escape makes you numb.
The article says that:
Adult summer camps are here, and this time they come with craft beer, curated playlists, and a collective desire to log off and feel something.
The irony is that escape can you make you feel “something” in the moment, but it makes you feel less in the long run. In the same way that getting wasted drunk can feel like you’re having the time of your life until you have to return to real life.
Escape makes you feel emptier over time because when you escape from pain, you also escape from joy. Because they go hand-in-hand. When you leave your day-to-day life behind, you’re not just leaving behind the pain, you’re also leaving behind the joy.
Escaping to an adult summer camp is not “bringing out your inner child.” It’s regressing to childhood. A time in a person’s life with fewer pains, sure. But also, fewer experiences. And therefore, fewer joys.
If trauma is about feeling bad, and healing is about feeling good, then feeling good can only happen after feeling bad. If the goal is to eliminate all trauma from life, then we’ll also eliminate all the good feelings from life.
It’s not that you just feel less pain when you escape. It’s that you feel less. You become emptier. And emptier. Until you feel… nothing. Habitual escapism is how you become numb to life.
To be clear, what concerns me isn’t escape. It’s the fantasy that you can escape and be healed at the same time. It’s the “temple as a cigarette” mindset. If you come home from adult summer camp with the same job you hate, the same anxiety, the same habits and the same life you were trying to flee, then what did you “heal”?
A real reset isn’t a curated weekend of bonfire crafts. It involves changing your life in ways no camp counsellor can orchestrate for you.
The Fix? Service. Not self-indulgence.
Unfortunately, when most people talk about self-care, they think only about caring for themselves.
A spa day.
Buying yourself a gift.
Watching cute animal videos.
Heck, this list has 96 other activities you can indulge in, all of which are focused on making yourself feel better right now.
Like comfort food, these are short-term solutions.
Nobody talks about long-term self-care. Because it takes time and it’s hard work. It requires self-sacrifice. Long-term self-care means giving yourself to others or something greater. If you’re religious, it might mean devoting yourself to God. But even volunteering for your community helps. Why?
Because unless you live in total isolation, those around you affect your life. If you make their lives better, they become easier to live with. If they’re happier, your world is more joyful. Less friction. Less drama. Less need to escape.
Will you still feel pain? Of course. But you’ll be able to carry it without needing to run away from your own life.
The article says that the underlying thread among adult summer camps is that “no one’s trying to sell you anything, fix you, or make you ‘better.’”
And that’s exactly the problem.
People go to adult summer camps because they don’t want to change. They want someone else to offer temporary relief under the guise of “healing.” But when the camp is over? They return to the same job they hate. The same patterns. The same unhealed life.
And the cycle repeats. Until they grow numb to it.
Like the rest of their lives.
Real self-care is not indulgence. It’s the hard work of facing your life and changing what’s broken.
You don’t need to escape it.
You don’t need a curated fantasy to feel alive.
The rise of adult summer camps is a symptom of a deeper disease:
Our refusal to do the hard work of living well.
Our endless desire to erase trauma without growth.
We need to stop looking for healing in curated getaways. And start looking for it in the everyday act of living.
With purpose.
With tension.
With courage.
You don’t need a campfire.
You just need to lead a life you don’t want to escape in the first place.
What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.
- Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning
Reply to belowthesurfacetop@gmail.com if you have questions or comments.
Check out Dive 17: The Joy in Pain where I dive more into living in harmony with that tandem.
And Dive 81: How to fill the void when you lose someone special where I dive into a way to deal with grief without escape.
Thank you for reading. Take care. And I’ll see you in the next one.