Why Private Counselling Retreats are a great alternative to traditional counselling.

From own practice to private counselling retreats 

For eleven years, Martina Famos had her practice in Zurich. Her clients were mostly international and bi-national couples. Today, her clientele is the same however, her approach has very much changed.

In September 2019 she decided to use nature as her counselling office and moved back to her home town, Scuol in Engadin. There in Graubünden she offers Private Marriage Counselling Retreats.

Practice work/Private retreats: two approaches

This form of working with her clients fulfils her by far more. In difficult times counselling is indispensable and an important resource for individuals and couples to seek help. However, her approach is more holistic and condensed than it was in a practice room, resulting in being an extra agreeable alternative of marriage counselling and an enhanced and lasting success.

Traditional limitations of traditional counselling

One of the main limits of working with people in a practice is the time factor. Counselling for couples usually lasts 90 Minutes because sitting in a room, face to face, with intense talks, can be very tiring and requires a lot of focus and patience.

When talking with her clients in nature time has a completely different quality.  They walk for 3 hours on every retreat day and it never feels intense or too much. The quantity of talks remains the same, but words come more naturally and easier.

Another limit of “traditional counselling” is the before and after the session. Most people come in straight from work or home, through traffic, after rushing to arrive on time. They need a moment to tune in and become present, and yet, a tiny bit from their full day always remains in the room in a form of worry, tension, stress, impatience, or the to “do list” sitting silently in the back of their mind.

Nevertheless, after a session they leave encouraged, feeling strong, and hopeful. With this very positive energy, they go separate ways to rush back into traffic, sit in a tram, walk into the office, and so they give away this positive energy to a lot of people around them.

This always bothered her from an efficiency perspective. She always encouraged her clients to take the  20 minutes to walk from her practice to downtown Zurich along the Limmat river in order to be in their best energy. This would allow the talks to sink in and do its after-effect. But of course, for many, it’s difficult to be 3 1/2 hours away from work every week or two weeks.

These limiting circumstances are very unfortunate, considering the consultations have a far greater response with time and space to reflect and let the talks sink in.

Why some people reject traditional counselling?

With her new approach, she also wanted to encourage those who usually reject counselling for various reasons. From her personal experience, the obstacles people face are these four ones:

The majority are unsure if the invested time, money, and effort will pay off. On top of this, there is uncertainty as to how long the process may take and what the results will be. This is usually the question they ask when reaching out for the first time. Some personalities feel more secure with a project-like approach, with a time limit, and when they know the counselling sessions are very much goal-oriented.

Another reason some (especially men) hesitate to take marriage counselling, is because they fear sitting in a room for 90 minutes may feel awkward, stressful, and too formal. Women can talk very well when having an eye to eye contact, whereas men have better access to their thoughts when visually distracted.

(Maybe some female readers can relate to this and recall having asked their partner the question: “Are you even listening to me?”)

For most men, the idea of walking and talking better appeals to them as they don’t see themselves locked-up in a room. Their feedback is that her my approach feels like talking to a friend and not a counsellor. This means they find this natural.

Then there are people with busy lives that are unable to commit to many appointments. Unfortunately, couples often wait long until they seek out for help, and as a result, ten to twenty sessions are needed to reconnect and heal from the hurts they have experienced. With bi-weekly counselling, that’s six months of commitment and having kids and jobs, this is difficult to keep up with.

Many give up along the way, which is unfortunate, as invested time and money are lost. It is especially critical for couples because very often counselling is the last chance to save their relationship. She believes a couple in distress needs to come out of their struggle as fast as possible, or chances are high that they give up.

In a retreat, these obstacles are ceased and the limiting factors are replaced by holistic components that support successful results in counselling.

About the author:

Martina Famos is a Swiss counsellor. She is goal-oriented counsellor and creates solutions to motivate people to take counselling and to help her clients achieve their goals.
​For over ten years she had her event production company and for several years co-owned and managed the production for an international action sports publishing company with employees from 11 different countries. Over the course of her life she has been studying, fair-trading, working on humanitarian projects, or traveling for sports events in the countries of Canada, USA, Mexico, Guatemala, Cuba, Ecuador, Argentina, Switzerland, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Thailand, China, Japan and New Zealand. At forty, she changed her career to become a private counsellor in the Engadin Valley.

• counselling
• downsides of traditional counselling
• nature
• obstacles of traditional counselling
• private retreats
• psychology
• therapist
• traditional counselling