OUR RETREATS

Next to individual therapy and coaching, Healthy Choices together with Empower Ability offers Stress and Burnout Retreats to work preventative and to speed up the recovery process from a burnout.

Sinead Daly at Healthy Choices has collaborated with Clement Faber from Empowerability to create this comprehensive programme to treat both the symptoms and underlying causes of chronic stress and burnout. Our Burnout Prevention and Recovery Programme is by far the most inclusive, in -depth and holistic burnout prevention course available today.

It has been tailor-made to tackle and improve all the different problems involved in burnout. The 4 levels: physical, rational, emotional and subconscious all get a boost during and after the retreat.

Research has pinpointed specific character traits and coping mechanisms that are risk factors for burnout. We have designed our 4-day course around 7 themes that all burnout patients contend with. During the course, all limiting and undermining convictions, emotional responses and behaviours associated with stress and burnout will be tackled in a holistic approach. .

Next to the long weekend prevention programme, we plan to also offer a weeklong programme in the future to help kick start the recovery from burnout.

All therapy, training and interventions each day will be in service of that day’s theme as we work to transform the obstacles that arise. The combination of individual attention and group dynamics make this course incredibly effective.

Location

On relocating to Andalusia, we discovered the hotel Cerro de Hijar in Tolox, a mountain town in Malaga province. According to the Guardian (2022) it is one of the 10 best hotels globally for retreats. However we can give these retreats anywhere you would like, as long as the location has the required facilities.

Why a multi-disciplinary approach?

Burnout is as much a mindset problem as it is a state of physical fatigue and it is as much an emotional setback as it is a set of physical symptoms. Body, mind and emotions have conspired to bring a patient to their knees and so it is essential that body, mind and emotion are ALL engaged in the healing process.

In addition, subconscious convictions may be holding clients back, so we also use hypnotherapy to remove negative subconscious influences that cannot be dealt with on a rational level. We use our expertise as a psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, body-based therapist and senior trainer(who also has experience as a former burnout patient) to treat burnout on every level.

We will also make time for individual one-on-one sessions with both trainer/coach/HRM consultant and psycho- and hypnotherapist/counselor to give personal attention to our clients for specific and privacy-sensitive issues.

As this is a retreat, participants benefit from the power of being away from daily routines and the daily stressors. Research has shown that clients coming for therapy or coaching, for an hour a week will lose some of the momentum by going back to the same home and work environment with their incumbent negative triggers. On our retreat, our participants will have four complete days of therapeutic/coaching interventions and training courses. Each building on the day before, culminating in a new mindset, a new ability to process difficult emotions and new skills in interpreting and relieving physical and psychological symptoms.

At the end of the weekend our clients should be well on their way to recovery and stay out of the danger zone. To ensure their continued progress, we will provide them with a toolbox to help them maintain their energy levels and prevent future burnouts.

In need to stay on track we offer an after care package during which group therapy and coaching sessions help to deal with the remaining challenges.

For all of this a combination of psychotherapy (individual and group), hypnotherapy (group), movement therapy (specially chosen yoga stands), wandel coaching (coaching outside in groups)/coaching individual, healthy food, wellness options to relax after the more intense parts of the retreat, etcetera.

Both the therapist (Irish) and trainer (Dutch) are fluent in English and Dutch and retreats are available in either language.

Sinead Daly and Clement Faber