A Nautical Marriage Counseling Retreat With A Smart Strategy

Have Fun While Strengthening Your Relationship

Our strategy involves more than the simplistic notion that communication can solve everything or that a troubled marriage only needs romance. There are complex reasons why even good relationships can turn sour.  We encourage you to read Dr. Kaye’s in-depth explanations on this website. Peruse The Marriage First Aid Kit and learn how our approach is based on a profound understanding of what’s really sabotaging your relationship.

Several effective principles are employed during our Safe Passage marriage counseling retreat:

 

1) Individualized attention is most effective for your unique relationship problems.

Not all relationships are the same and it would be very limiting to use the cookie-cutter strategy of sitting you in a group.  An intensive individualized approach is superior because it lets us focus on where your relationship needs the most attention. Our intensive marriage counseling retreat is totally private.

2)  The environmental setting can help free you from your previously stuck emotional states.

A renewed sense of adventurous exploration can help you to break free from the stuck patterns of defensive behavior in your current relationship.  Our Safe Passage marriage counseing retreat is designed to reignite the more free-spirited parts of yourselves with which you probably started your relationship.

3) Intersperse fun and challenge to decrease fear and increase cooperation.

 Couples have limited emotional resources.  Having periodic fun can make the hard work less taxing.  Experiencing fun around each other can also reduce the usual tension in a troubled relationship.

4) Relationship problems occur on different levels.  Effective interventions often require different kinds of learning:

Knowledge -  A relationship can fall out of balance because one or both partners hold erroneous beliefs or are unaware of what a relationship requires.  On this level, the couple can be educated about how to better maintain their relationship.  Special skills or training aren’t required.  This involves learning in what is called “semantic memory.” 

Skill – A relationship may be in trouble because partners need to perform certain activities that they don’t have the skills to perform.  Merely knowing what should be done isn’t enough.  A partner might know what they should do but they find they don’t have the skill or can’t even remember how to adequately perform in the moment.  Conflict management often requires self-soothing skills that have to be trained into “performance memory.”

 Capacity – It’s a myth that all relationship problems are about communication.  Sometimes a partner hasn’t sufficiently evolved an important part of their personality.  “emotional intelligence”, “level of consciousness”, “theory of mind”, level of integration, insight, wisdom and empathy are all terms that involve a broader level of learning beyond skill.  They all involve the ability to view the world from a more evolved perspective.  Limitations of capacity can have profound effects on a relationship and there are no quick fixes.  However, partners can be shown how to plan their own program for growing capacity over time.

Each Safe Passage marriage counseling retreat includes:

• Tools for burying old resentments
• Assessment of which covert inhibitions are blocking important emotional states.
• Intimacy exercises to explore reattachment
• Tools for “getting close” with your partner
• Psycho-education about fundamental relationship responsibilities:
• Healing old wounds that interfere with optimal behavior
• Nourishing the relationship through healthy attachment
• Protecting your partner, yourself and your relationship from emotional injury
• Exercising and growing your emotional capacity
• Analysis of how each of your backgrounds may be limiting your relationship. 
• Psycho-education about meta-motivational states
• Psycho-education about managing money and chores
• Tools for benign distancing when you need privacy
• Tools for managing healthy conflict
• Tools for stopping dysfunctional conflict
• Tools and intensive practice for shifting emotional states
• Tools and recommendations for continued emotional growth

Our 7 day Safe Passage counseling retreat also includes::

• Training and practice of the “micro-correction” technique for neutralizing emotional injury so that it doesn’t accumulate
• Intensive practice of conflict management skills in staged mock conflicts
• Personal sharing with both Bryce & Helen to help model and exemplify principles taught during the marriage counseling retreat..
• Assessment of your own core values which will help you stabilize your relationship
• Training and practice of “autonomy shifting” of your attention in order to protect yourself when facing someone’s disapproval
• Additional intimacy exercises to deepen your mutual sense of reconnection.

 

Read more about our Safe Passage marriage counseling retreat:

 

Our 7 day Safe Passage Odyssey

Our 5 day Safe Passage Odyssey

 

 

 

Dr. Kaye explains some little-known relationship truths.

 

 

 

 

 

Click here to go to the Marriage First Aid website and read Dr. Kaye's recommendations to help your relationship even if you don't need a marriage counseling retreat.

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