The Day In The Life Of A Counseling Retreat

Bangers and mash, stewed fruit, Eggs Florentine, freshly squeezed tangerine juice, Green Chicken Curry…the breakfasts’ are truly amazing. There’s almost anything you can think of. Eating breakfast on our counseling retreat is a real joy.

The dining room is open to the garden so you can eat in the courtyard under the mango tree in the early morning sunshine and watch the day unfold. Butterflies flutter through the orchids, humming birds (or Sunbirds as they are known here) flit through the gardens in a flash of turquoise iridescence and you can just hear the far off chanting of the Buddhist monks in the temple. You’re ready for the day to begin.

First Counseling Session

Your first counseling session is held in our private office of your hotel. It’s a big airy room with book shelves, old fashioned wooden fans whirring above, or modern air con if it’s too hot. The room looks out over its own private outside seating area where we sometimes sit if it’s not too hot.
The counseling retreat program moves at your pace. As you know it’s 16 hours and starts with a discussion about your personality profile. The profile provides us with good clinical analysis, it’s a licensed questionnaire so its not available outside strict clinical settings. It will give us excellent information that you are unlikely to have seen before;

• Core personality traits
• Levels of latent self confidence
• Self esteem
• Levels of anxiety
• Fluidity of emotions
• Depression…you name it and we’ll be looking at it during our first session.

After that we look at the goals, what we need to achieve, work through, come to terms with and overcome. During the course of the program we will begin to draw up your Change Plan. This will be a document that you take home with which is more or less a plan of action; what’s going to change, how you are going to achieve those changes, aims and goals and support network.

You will of course have 12 weeks follow up support from us after your return to ensure that your plans work out. It’s also good to join our private facebook site so you can get help and advice from our current members, all of whom have been though a Life Change Holiday. There wont be any shortage of support after your return home…unless you decide to stay in Thailand, which wouldn’t be unheard of!

Midday

Lunch. Usually the hotel will offer us a complimentary lunch. It’s often the staff lunch so there’s not a great deal of choice. Its usually fantastic as it’s real northern Thai food. It’s a really kind gesture and typical of this caring and thoughtful country.

Afternoon

Unless you are on a Couples Therapy retreat it’s unlikely you will have 2 counseling sessions on one day, so the afternoon is yours. You can relax around the pool, or in the Jacuzzi, have a massge in the health spa or perhaps go out with Khun Sonthaya, our Holiday Manager, on any one of our personalized private tours and activities; perhaps a trip up to a mountain temple, a tour of local food markets with food tasting along the way, or a cooking school, or elephant sanctuary, or flying lessons. Really, whatever you want to do we will make it happen for you.

Evening

You can eat in the hotel or perhaps go out to one of the many fantastic restaurants. There’s usually one or 2 other Life Change Holiday guests so sometimes people choose to go out together. Entirely up to you.

You can also walk along the river to the world famous Night Bazaar and go bargain hunting. It’s only about a ten minute walk away, or hop onto the courtesy Tuk Tuk that’s operated by the hotel which can take you to the centre of the old town, around the moat or the far end of the night bazaar so you can slowly make your own way back.

It’s a very easy going schedule designed to give you the best of both worlds; a lovely relaxing and interesting tropical holiday in guaranteed sunshine and a comprehensive counseling retreat to sort out problems and work out new ways forward.

See you at breakfast.

Chrissy.

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