Narcissistic behavior is a symptom of our self-indulgent society at large, observes Mount Carmel Youth Ranch. This type of thinking lives by the motto “do whatever you want .Many young men who come to Mount Carmel Youth Ranch have become so selfish that they have lost all sense of “others.” They have no care or concern over how following their own selfish impulses has affected other lives—especially their family relationships, says Mount Carmel Youth Ranch.
What makes Mount Carmel Youth Ranch-MTCYR unique from other programs for troubled teens is that, for the first time, the young man will be in a place where he is not the center of the universe! Too many programs, explains MTCYR, focus hard on the at-risk individual. Mount Carmel Youth Ranch helps a young man realize what it is like to be part of a team. He will have to bend to others, rather than just please himself, explains Mount Carmel Youth Ranch.
Because the young man is brought into a working ranch that often sets the pace for his daily activities, narcissistic behavior does not have a place at Mount Carmel Youth Ranch. For example, he cannot feed the cattle, horses and other animals at MTCYR when he “feels like it.” This encourages a natural shift, says Mount Carmel Youth Ranch, from being “me”-focused to being outwardly focused on the reality that “these animals need me to feed them or they will die.” MTCYR believes this experience of being needed is huge in its effect of getting a young person to move beyond a focus on self and towards how good it feels to be needed by others.
This reality of giving meaning and purpose to life is hard to duplicate outside of a working ranch like Mount Carmel Youth Ranch. The goal of the caring professionals at MTCYR is to change a youth’s internal perception from a self-centered focus to a “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” kind of thinking, explains Mount Carmel Youth Ranch. As Pope John Paul often stated: “We come to discover who we truly are”—meaning we find our authentic self—“only when we give the sincere gift of ourselves to others.”