I do agree with him though. The way the sessions are laid out is quite deliberate enabling us to get through large amounts of material during extended individual sessions interspersed with important thinking time.  It was a counselling colleague of mine who always used to maintain that the most therapeutic time in counselling is the time between sessions; “that’s when the real therapy happens” he used to say. I know what he means; it’s often the case that we will go back over things in our mind, we’ll replay the important conversations, go over salient points and focus on things that stand out.

The balance between therapeutic work and the pre planned “time out” excursions is important. Too much or too little of either will take away from the overall experience.

I have often felt that the problem with the standard pattern of weekly therapy or counselling sessions available to most is not helpful. It may well fit nicely into a working week or therapist’s diary but often there is too much thinking space in between sessions for real progress to be made. I guess it would be similar to writing a book or painting a picture whereby you only have an hour a week. It just doesn’t feel enough.

Having a regular therapeutic routine is important. Having extended individual time on a daily basis is vital, we really do condense 4 months of standard counselling into one week. It’s not a gimmick or trick, it just makes sense as a way to really get to grips with problems and sort things out.

This is all backed up by 12 weeks online follow up counselling and coaching support . This is often when big changes happen, when change plans, carefully put together whilst on holiday are put to the test. This is always an exciting and tense time, when things are shifting and changing and people are actually living their change plans.

So if the weekly routine of counselling, life coaching or therapy sessions are not quite doing it for you, you might like to try change therapy sessions back to back, or more poetically perhaps “cheek to cheek”.

I often realize that spending over 20 years working exclusively with change, looking at how we change, why we change, studying what we can change and realizing what we cannot, sometimes makes me sound rather rash. When meeting some of our guests for the first time and talking about what they want to change I know very quickly if they will be able to do it easily or whether it will be difficult. This is not magic or strange quackery but simply based upon the personality profile we use,( which is the most accurate of it’s type in the world) and an extensive knowledge of why and how we change, which in turn has been born out of massive world wide research. The world of therapy, counselling (or “counseling” if you’re reading in the States) and coaching is in the process of catching up with itself. Like all new discoveries things take a while to catch on, and some fairly old fashioned beliefs about how and why we change seem entrenched in our collective pyche.

One such belief is that to make changes in our lives takes huge amounts of time. Of course alot depends on what we want to change, but 9 times out of 10 it’s alot easier and quicker than we think.

I believe we are still largely labouring under beliefs about change that were developed about 100 years ago. Do you know those wonderful old images of men in top hats walking in front of trains and early motor cars, waving a red flag because they believed that if you travelled faster than a man could walk you might have a heart attack, being unaccustomed to “unnatural speeds”. Sometimes when I hear people talk about how and why we change I am reminded of this image.

Certainly the break throughs in understanding how and why we change were revolutionary at the time. Psychodynamic Pyschotherapy was all the rage, and if you had problems and needed to change that was where you were headed. It began to explain with a “scientific” rationale what was previously unexplainable. Suddenly the world of witchcraft and wizardry was overturned with science; there was a plausible explaination for emotional suffering. It seems that it was so plausible however it refuses to go away.

I should make clear that I am not though in favour of “throwing the baby out with the bath water”. I have yet to come across a therapeutic approach (of which there are well over 300 now) that does not offer something to the world of pyschotherapy. Some however seem to make change an immensly complicated and protracted process. It’s as though sometimes some approaches, and I fear some practitioners, loose sight of the fact that therapy is about change; it is not an end in itself.

So when I confirm with holiday guests that they will be able to change during their week with us there is often surprise and sometimes disbelief. Suddenly it’s as though the pychotherapeutic version of the man with the top hat and red flag jumps out of the bushes (read “subconscious” for any pychodynamic readers) steps in front of me and says “Well steady on there old boy, you can’t go a-changing so quickly and so easily as all that, it takes years of in depth talking to start to get anywhere. Good God man, we can’t move that fast we’ll all have heart attacks”.

Well I don’t imagine all of that, but it’s a sense I get. A sense that the only thing that often holds back change is, rather paradoxically, a therapeutic belief that it “should” take ages.

So next time I see a top hat be-decked man waving a red flag in the bushes that is what I shall tell him.

Alex Gunn.

The Puripunn hotel is fantastic, there really is nothing critical I can say about it. The surroundings, proximity to good restaurants and shopping, the staff and food at the hotel are all wonderful. Thank you.

Donna from London stayed at Puripunn Hotel.

The first time I ever heard of a “counselling retreat” was when I was very young and had a holiday job working in what was at the time the “largest toy shop in the world”; Hamleys in Regent Street, London. Soon after huge mega toy stores arrived like space ships landing overnight taking over unwanted sites next to multi story car parks and Hamleys had to make do with a reduced tag line of, the “finest” toy shop in the world.

I worked alongside another holiday staff teenager by the name of Ben who was extremely nice and friendly and kept disappearing to an odd place up in Scotland on his days off. This seemed extraordinary to me as it was a massive journey to make on a regular basis. The reason he was making it, he told me, was to attend a “counselling retreat” that was helping him deal with some anxieties and worries he had. I didn’t pry and left it at that. He described the accommodation as being rather basic (shared drafty bedrooms), and the food being plain but nourishing (porrige for breakfast and lentils for dinner). I wonder how he is now and whether he still makes overnight jouneys to find peace of mind.

I thought of Ben and his counselling retreat stories recently when I was talking to Paul, the very nice and easygoing manager of the Rachamankha hotel (born in Gloucester and speaks perfect Thai). We use his hotel as a venue for one of our luxury counselling retreats. It’s perfect in every way and is everything we wanted our retreat holiday to be when we moved here to set up our Change Holiday company.

I always wondered why traditional counselling retreats where rather austere, offering different versions of what my old friend Ben experienced. What about the other end of the counselling retreat spectrum where the emphasis is in comfort and individual attention I thought.

The hotel is a Relais and Chateaux hotel, which means it is listed by this esteemed organisation for it’s levels of service, its fine cuisine and general ambiance. The hotel has a beautiful quiet, and large swimming pool, one of the best and most valuable private English Libraries in Thailand and a magnificent collection of internationally important works of art and antiques. It has works by Picasso and Henri Moore. The hotel was designed by the owner, a local chap and design and architect enthusiast. It is modelled on a famous Buddhist temple in the neighbouring province of Lampang and reflects the quiet tranquility that temples often have. It must be one of the most wonderful locations for a counselling retreat anywhere in the world.

The individual Change Therapy sessions take place either in the sala next to the swimming pool or a quiet space tucked away under the slow swirl of large colonial fans.

I looked at the menu for this weekend before I left talking to Paul the other day. It started with scallops wrapped in smoked salmon, followed by a coconut chicken curry with lemon grass and ginger. I don’t suppose the old porrige and lentils would go down too well here, although I bet if you asked Paul and his team would rustle them up in no time.

If you are interestd in a luxury Counselling Retreat in the Rachamankha 5* boutique hotel do let us know and we’ll let you know the latest offers and prices.

Alex.

“Relationship problems” is a huge umbrella phrase covering a wide rang of problems, the full spectrum of which we help resolve on our special change holidays. Our holidays work especially well with relationship problems for one very good reason, they give you precious space and time out of your day to day situation. Time that is spent not just waiting to return to the problems at home but really sorting them out and working out what to do next through our Change Therapy program.

By definition relationship problems become part of our everyday life and its often extremely difficult to see a way forward when you are right in the middle of things. Having distance and objectivity on your life and working through things with experienced specialists really does work. 

People come either individually or with partners, sometimes with very specific problems, and sometimes to “get things moving” as one of our guests recently put it.

Relationship Problems -  A Few Recent Change Holidays. 

Over the past year we have helped address a number of specific issues. I’ll go through a few cases, making sure I keep confidentiality, to give you an idea of how we can help:

• Couple A. Spent 2 weeks at the Baan Deva mountainside reteat on our counselling Retreat Holiday. They had been married for 6 years and felt as though they had drifted apart and felt bored with each other and “stagnant”. Frequent arguments and quarrels pushed them both into doing something about their relationship problems. They needed time out of their busy lives to assess where they both were in life and what they wanted to do next.
• Person B. Spent 1 week at the Puripunn Hotel needing to come to terms with the fact their partner was having a second affair in their marriage. They really needed to get away from the family home and think clearly about the decisions that lay ahead. They also wanted a damn good holiday and some comfortable easy going excursions and activities to “take their mind off things”. They were able to return home having decided what to do, created a comprehensive Change Plan that all our guests complete knowing we would be there to support them through the next three months with individual online counselling and support.
• Couple C. Arrived with us in a relationship crisis. A number of really difficult life situations had  happend very quickly and unexpectedly. They both didn’t know if there was a future in their relationship or not but needed to sort out immedeiate relationship problems without making rash or heated decisions. They both needed time out to get some much needed objectivity and perspective as well as some joint Change Therapy sessions to sort out immediate concerns. After a week of joint and individual change therapy sessions, as well as some great outings with our driver and guide some important decisions had been made and a way forward had been established.

I hope these few examples give you an idea of how our change holidays can help with a range of relationship problems.

If you are experiencing any kind of relationship problems please do contact us to find out how we can help. If you are unable to come out on one of our Change Holidays or take one of our online counselling courses do feel free to contact us anyway as we are a team of seasoned professionals and will almost certainly have other ideas and contacts that will be able to help you.

“Lifechange sounds like an overpromise but its not. This is one of a kind, a once in a lifetime opportunity to find new meaning and direction in life”. Bob, Toronto,Canada.

Self Improvement Holiday in Thailand.

Its quite an odd situation that most people who complete a self improvement holiday with us, are amazed at how much they actually manage to change and improve in their lives. There’s almost a sense of surprise that its actually possible; as though the whole thing might just be some elaborate “overpromise”, a bit like every washing powder claiming to get your whites whiter than the last detergent you used. It’s a part of our business that we find difficult. On one hand we do know an awful lot about self improvement and what makes a good self improvement holiday where guests can resolve problems and increase the quality of life, but on the other hand it’s difficult not to sound like we are just promising the impossible.

Self Improvement Holiday and the Quiet Revolution

The world of psychotherapy and especially motivational psychology and change therapy has recently undergone a quiet revolution. It wouldn’t exactly be front page news unless you work as a psychologist or psychotherapist, and even then  psychological revolutions aren’t always easy to spot. It is a revolution though, that has, and will have for years to come a huge effect on anyone deciding to book a self improvement holiday or wanting to improve make changes in their life.

Until recently the world of therapy, counseling and psychology was largely influenced by “insight” led approaches and skill acquisition. These two things, it was believed, underpinned why it is that we change. Undoubtedly these are important areas, but for many people looking for self improvement, they are just two pieces of a much bigger puzzle. Over the past 20 or so years there has been a huge amount of interest in how and why we actually change and improve the quality of our lives, issues that we too have been deeply involved with.

I recently talked with one of our guests who had worked out that she had spent over £55,000 on different approaches and felt that she was back at the beginning of her journey, perhaps even more unhappy than when she started. There are a number of things that we do on our self improvement holiday that make all the difference.

Self Improvement Holiday Active Ingredients

• Identify very quickly and accurately what can and what cannot be changed
• Increase confidence quickly and effectively
• Use a highly effective clinical personality profile system
• Resolve problems with empirically validated models of change
• Clarify goals and aims
• Provide 12 weeks individual support after your self improvement holiday to ensure that changes take root.

We are a small company that concentrate on offering an individual service to all our guests. We look forward to seeing you on one of our self improvement holidays soon.

Please contact us for more information on our self improvement holiday and other range of change holidays.

Bob. Toronto. Stayed at Puripunn Baby Grand Hotel.

Temple near Chiva Som Health Retreat.

I once had a “lively debate” with a senior professor of psychology at London University; actually it got a bit heated. His premise was that love is such a strong emotion that it will overide everything else, including any attempts at change, whatever they might be. Therefore, he argued, when it comes to making changes love is a tricky customer and best avoided if at all possible during any therapeutic course. This has certainly been the case, and still is in most “therapeutic communities”, including drug treatment centres and residential counseling retreats. If residents in these institutions “fall in love” it causes no end of trouble, and usually results in either awkward agreements and comprimises or storming out and eloping. Certainly the good professor has a point.

But, and it is a big but, surely, I argued, love has a positive effect on our levels of confidence, ( why was it that Gene Kelly was singing and dancing in the rain ?) and if confidence is often the key that unlocks change processes surely love can have a postive effect on change? Infact it’s certainly the case that more men who describe themselves as problem drinkers curtail their drinking habits because they get married than those that get treated in residential alcohol treatment centres. Unfortunately, there is scant research into how many men start drinking problematically because of their marriage, so it may not be the magic answer after all.

The real problem would seem to be not whether falling in love is a positive indicator for change or not, but the impossible task of harnessing its power to achieve good effective change. I wonder how many people have started loosing weight and shaping up when they fall in love. Probably quite a few. But then again how many of us let ourselves go when we fall out of love. Perhaps just as many. 

Until more is understood about love and its effect on change I guess its safer to stick to our tried and tested methods to increase confidence. Also as I write this I’m aware that our Change Holidays would begin to take on a very strange shape, The Love Change Holiday conjures up some very wierd images indeed.

Why is it that “New Year Resolutions” seem to vanish by spring?

I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody who has made a new years resolution that has actually worked. Some years ago I ran a college course that unusually started at the beginning of the calendar year in January rather than the normal academic year starting in September. During the introductions of the first class the whispers of the new years resolutions were still in the air. Goals and dreams where gently included in peoples introductions to each other, for some reason “learning to fly” was a popular one amongst first year Counselling Diploma students; an interesting combination.

I wonder what happened to all of these resolutions. Probably not a lot judging by the number of distinctly earth bound non pilots that graduated at the end of the course. So what goes on? What’s the problem with New Years Resolutions?

I think there are several things that go wrong:

In order to make successful change we have to aim at things that are achievable. Sounds obvious, but often we are tempted to get realistic goals mixed up with whimsical dreams that we simply cannot achieve, we’re aiming in the wrong direction. We end up trying to change things that are unchangeable. Depressive people often and understandably want to be less depressed, anxious people often want to worry less etc…By simply trying to be a person we are not is an impossible task. We can’t get away from our fundamental personality, its our hard drive, its who we are.

The good news is though that we can change enormously by identifying more clearly who we really are and learning how to cope with ourselves better. This does tend to make for less exciting sounding resolutions though, but I promise far more achievable.

Secondly we’re often quite blind to how change actually works. I expect that a lot of my counselling students harbouring dreams of aviation might have got as far as the first or second lesson, came across how much it all costs, how long it all takes and how difficult flying is and thought “bugger that” (or a counselling students equivalent) and so disappears another new years resolution.

When we change, we go backwards and forwards. This is normal. Often though, we misunderstand our feelings of retreat as a sign to give up. If we understand the process of change more clearly we can see things for what they are rather than misinterpreting the natural to and fro of the change process. It’s also quite handy to have strategies to deal with the set backs, so they don’t take us by surprise.

So next year, around New Years Resolution time think to yourself, “is this goal achievable” and “what am I going to do when I feel like giving up.” If this catches on, who knows, we might see a lot more flying counsellors.

Change Holiday

 Can I have a New Life Please?

Drawing on their experience of managing, developing and delivering life change programmes, the Life Change People have come up with a simple and effective idea; come on holiday to Thailand (the Land of Smiles), relax in a beautiful peaceful environment, look objectively at your life from a distance, then work with them to identify “barriers to change”. By understanding your own “change processes” you will be able to go on and create your own “change plan”, which will then be supported with calls and email counselling for at least three months after your return home. I’m worried about the answers I have put on my personality questionnaire.

Alex, a founding member of the team, explains the methodology underpinning the programme uses recent advances in   motivational psychology and cognitive behavioural therapy. He assures us there will be no deep psychotherapy or traumatic rebirthing: “We’re not talking about cathartic explosions, but about doing things we can guarantee” he says. “We want to give you the resources to change. It is completely reasonable to think that you can come here, enjoy a lovely holiday in Thailand, work with us and then go home and be able to make major changes to your lives”.

Retreat Holiday

We travel across the Ping River to our hotel that splits this low rise, jungle city, passing open fronted shops, spaghetti junctions of electricity wires and temples on every street corner. I am already feeling better and as a small Thai women  walks up and down my spine, my mind descends into blissful free fall.

I feel bad for initially doubting Chrissy of the Life Change People who proves to be warm, kind and an extremely good listener. She also surprises me with her acute observations about how I act, and what it says about me.

A pattern is established over the following days with sessions of 2-3 hours followed by downtime in which to lie in the sun, have a massage, spa or wellness treatment, or explore the markets and temples outside the walls of our tropical hideaway. The food is fantastic, the atmosphere relaxed to the point of horizontal and my mind and body are gaining strength. The sun and relaxation are doing wonders. It’s like taking a hoover to the dust in my brain. Being taught how to reframe the way I think is helping replace habitual negativity with something new and enjoyably energising.

Life Change Therapy is proving to be far more robust and realistic than I had dared hope for…for the first time in ages

Dan's Change Holiday in Chiang Mai

 I wake up feeling optimistic and ready to take on the world.

Five weeks later and I’m back behind my desk, it’s raining stair rods outside and the sky is slate grey. The credit crunch has turned into a full blown recession, the newspapers are full of depressing stories and my Rover has a flat battery. My old self would have had a field day, but he hasn’t been around much lately. Instead, I’ve moved into a cosy one bedroom flat where I pay little attention to the cold and gloom outside. I get weekly messages, encouragement, online-counselling and life-coaching. I’m staying positive and am at last happily engaged in writing a long overdue book, which is going very well.

Thank you very much.

For more information about Counselling Retreats, life-changing holidays in Thailand, Adventure Holidays, Spa and Wellness Retreats, life-coaching, counselling and therapy services contact info@thelifechangepeople.com