Couples Counselling Intensive or Retreat
Create moments for quality time that deepen your bond, strengthen your connection, and remind you why you chose each other. - Jo
Couples Counselling Intensive or Retreat
Create moments for quality time that deepen your bond, strengthen your connection, and remind you why you chose each other. - Jo
Sometimes keeping a relationship strong can be challenging. Many struggle to find the balance between couple time, family time, work time, alone time. Scheduling time together whether it be a day or two or more provides the opportunity to turn towards each other and connect more deeply.
Couples Counselling Intensives or Retreats can be helpful when a couple wants dedicated time to focus their attention on their relationship. The goal is to offer couples an opportunity to step away from daily distractions and engage in deep, intentional work on their relationship.
There may be significant events that challenge your marriage or couple relationship presenting a need for intensive support, to repair a relationship that has gone awry or discern your pathway forward. Others enjoy the opportunity to retreat from the tasks of daily life to renew a tired relationship or enrich a healthy one.
"The deepest connections are built not in perfection, but in the quiet moments of vulnerability where hearts are open and unguarded." - Jo
Couples Counselling Intensive or Retreat: overview of what you might expect
Intensive Therapy Sessions
- Individual and Joint Sessions: Couples usually receive a combination of individual therapy and joint counselling sessions, where both partners can explore their concerns and emotions in a safe space.
- Couple Dynamics: A more in-depth exploration of each partner’s personal history and how it may be influencing the current relationship dynamic.
- Deep Dive into Core Issues: These intensives often focus on core relationship challenges such as communication breakdowns, unresolved conflicts, trust issues, intimacy struggles, and emotional disconnection.
Relationship Tools & Techniques
- Communication Skills: Learn how your communication patterns foster connection or drive disconnection in your relationship.
- Emotion Regulation: Techniques to cultivate deeper emotional awareness, especially during disagreements or tense moments.
- Conflict Resolution Strategies: Developing healthier ways to disagree and problem-solve together.
- Focused Topics: Some retreats focus on specific themes, like rebuilding trust after infidelity, improving intimacy, or overcoming communication challenges.
Couple Exercises & Activities
- Reflection and Reconnection Exercises: Activities designed to help couples reconnect emotionally and physically.
- Shared Experiences: Couples may engage in activities like journaling, meditation, or mindfulness exercises to improve their emotional connection.
- Fun and Playful Activities: Retreats may also incorporate playful or recreational activities to promote bonding and joy.
Mindfulness and Emotional Healing
- Mindfulness Techniques: Practices that encourage present-moment awareness, which can help both partners better understand their emotional triggers and reactions.
- Healing Past Wounds: The retreat may focus on healing past hurts or traumas that are affecting the relationship.
Environment
- Relaxing, Distraction-Free Setting: The setting is often intentionally secluded or peaceful, to minimise distractions and allow couples to focus on their relationship.
- Time for Reflection: Ample downtime and spaces for personal reflection are typically built into the schedule.
Post-Retreat Support
- Follow-Up Sessions: Many intensives include post-retreat counselling or check-in sessions to ensure that couples continue their progress and have support when they return to their everyday lives.
- Ongoing Resources: Couples may receive tools, books, or worksheets to continue their work after the retreat.
What are the benefits of Couples Counselling Intensives or Retreats?
- Faster Resolution: Because these programs are immersive, they can offer faster progress compared to traditional weekly therapy sessions.
- Deep Focus: The retreat-style setting allows for a concentrated, distraction-free experience.
- Strengthened Bond: Couples often report feeling more connected and understood by the end of the retreat.
Things to Consider:
- Cost: Couples Counselling Intensives & Retreats can be expensive due to their immersive nature and the involvement of specialised counsellors.
- Emotional Intensity: It can be a very emotional experience, which may bring up intense feelings, both positive and negative.
- Compatibility: Ensure that the retreat or intensive aligns with your specific goals and challenges as a couple.
Why Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples (EFT)?
Couples Counselling Intensive and Retreats at landscape of life, are informed by the principles and practices of Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples (EFT), powerful approach that integrates the science of attachment, adult relationships and provides a map to guide us in creating healing and loving relationships.
By identifying negative patterns of interaction and the underlying emotional needs driving them, EFT helps couples develop a deeper emotional connection and create a secure bond.
EFT focuses on fostering open communication, empathy, and emotional responsiveness, allowing both partners to express their feelings, needs, and vulnerabilities in a safe, non-judgmental space.
Through this process, couples can rebuild trust, resolve conflicts more effectively, and strengthen their emotional intimacy, ultimately creating a healthier, more resilient relationship.
Research has shown that EFT is highly effective for improving relationship satisfaction, reducing distress and rebuilding emotional closeness in couple relationship.
Couples Relationship Therapist · Jo Gniel
Jo Gniel (she/her) is an ICEEFT, certified Emotionally Focused Therapist and supervises therapists learning EFT. She will help you go deeper into understanding yourself and your partner and what happens between you both when you lose your connection.
She was a founding committee member of the Melbourne Community for Emotionally Focused Therapy (MCEFT) and has contributed to EFT training and research in Australia.
Jo's practice is grounded in person centred, humanistic attachment orientated Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples (EFT), Emotion Focused Therapy, Compassion Focused Psychotherapy (CFT), the principals and practices of Mindful-Self Compassion (MSC) and other frameworks tailored to resource you to respond to specific relationship dynamics.
Prior to being a counsellor and psychotherapist Jo could be found walking the boards of a global giant as an innovation and change lead. Since leaving the theatre of corporate life, Jo has been dedicated to building human connection; creating a safer, more compassionate and inclusive world.
Couples Counselling intensive in Melbourne, Online or book a retreat
IN PERSON (Glen Iris, Melbourne)
IN PERSON Relationship Counselling appointments are held in Glen Iris, Melbourne. If you are near me in the adjacent suburbs of Camberwell, Malvern, Malvern East, Chadstone, Carnegie, Canterbury, Hawthorn, Hawthorn East, Surrey Hills or other Inner Eastern suburbs of Melbourne or happy to travel from further afield we are located near the High Street exit of the Monash.
Online
ONLINE Relationship Counselling appointments are held via Zoom if you are based in regional, rural or remote parts of Victoria, Australia, US (after hours) Asia, Bangkok, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Middle East, UK, Europe.
Resource library
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