By Wesley Gallagher
Are you feeling stuck in life and relationships? Are you in therapy but frustrated with the pace? In recovery but needing a boost in your journey? A workshop could be just the thing you need.
Weekly therapy sessions are an essential part of recovery, but you can only make so much progress in an hour-long appointment. Intensive workshops are a great option if you are not looking for inpatient treatment but want or need more immediate results than what weekly therapy can provide.
What Are the Benefits of Workshops?
Intensive workshops are designed to address a specific area of concern or personal struggle, often focusing on negative patterns and cycles that are holding you back from freedom and healing. The concentrated format allows you to gain insight into unhealthy behavior and practice new relational skills in a safe environment.
Here are just a few of the many benefits of workshops:
- Intentional time away from the busyness of life allows for a focused time of reflection and transformation.
- Openly sharing your struggles and emotions in a small group environment leads to greater vulnerability, openness, and self-acceptance. A Community Mental Health Journal study found that young adults who shared their mental health struggles with others benefitted from increased confidence, greater self-awareness, increased ability to talk about their mental illness, and a reduction in self-stigma.
- Forbes lists several professional benefits of intentional personal development, from increased compassion and decreased reactivity, to greater clarity on direction and better leadership skills in the workplace.
- Substantial growth and healing can be accomplished in a short amount of time, making your time and money a worthwhile investment.
You may be surprised at the transformation that can occur when you’re given the opportunity to focus on healing without distractions.
Types of workshops may include the following:
- Mental health workshops
- Addiction recovery workshops
- Trauma workshops
- Relationship workshops
- Grief and loss workshops
The specific nature of workshops allows for targeted, intentional healing for your individual struggles.
Who Can Benefit from Workshops?
While anyone can benefit from intentional time away to focus on your mental health, workshops are particularly beneficial if you’re feeling stuck or have a personal issue you need to take time to address. If you’re in recovery from a mental illness or addiction, or have recently come out of inpatient treatment, workshops are an ideal way to enhance your recovery.
Whether you’re looking to begin the emotional healing process from trauma, continue in your mental health journey, or renew your commitment to recovery, a workshop offers the time, space, and tools you’ll need to succeed in these efforts.
What Should I Expect at a Workshop?
Workshops typically last a few days to a week, and because they are so short, they are usually action-packed. Most provide on-site accommodations and all the necessary amenities for your stay so that you can focus completely on your healing. You can expect a full day of programming, often including evening activities. Workshops are in a small group setting, so you’ll be surrounded by others who share the same goals.
You will leave with greater awareness of yourself, healing of past hurts, and the tools you need to live a healthier, more authentic life. Your relationship with yourself and others will improve as you put into practice the knowledge you gain during your workshop.
Rio Retreat Center at The Meadows offers a variety of intensive workshops, most of them lasting five days. Each one is designed with a specific goal in mind and run by our highly trained mental health professionals who specialize in the workshop setting. Workshops fall under the following categories:
- Emotional trauma workshops help you address unresolved childhood trauma and get to the root of self-defeating behavior, heal wounds, find closure, and break free from unhealthy relationships.
- Relationship workshops help you strengthen relationships like marriage, family, and friendships by uncovering and healing hidden emotional pain and learning new skills for communicating with and relating to others.
- Personal growth workshops help you achieve lasting change and find acceptance through techniques like mindfulness, somatic experiencing, and psychodrama. They can address everything from self-defeating patterns and disordered eating to unhealthy sexual behaviors, addiction, and shame.
- Professional development workshops offer mental health and addiction professionals the opportunity to gain additional skills and insights for effectively treating their clients.
We offer a range of workshops under these categories, so be sure to check out all our workshop options to see what is best for your needs.
“Our workshops are a ‘deep dive’ into whatever issue that brings them here. There is a synergy that is created when they go through their process with others who have the same issue,” says Rio Retreat Center’s Executive Director Jean Collins-Stuckert. “We often hear from alumni that the benefits keep coming long after they leave: in particular, increased self-care, empowerment, [and] making better choices [from] knowing they deserve better. They are also better partners and parents as a result.”
MBH Onward Cares About Your Recovery
MBH Onward exists to provide alumni of our treatment programs with the ongoing resources and community you need to continue the work you began in treatment. Workshops are one of the many resources we hope you will take advantage of as you keep walking on the path of recovery.
If you’re not sure where to start, the Survivors II workshop builds on the foundation laid during treatment, allowing for a more in-depth look into unresolved emotional trauma and its lingering emotional and behavioral effects. If you are in need of healing of family relationships, the Family Matters workshop explores the impact mental health and addiction issues can have on family members. And our THRIVE workshop uses psychodrama to take you to the next level of recovery by releasing old patterns and embracing new ones.
If you’re not yet a member of our alumni community, contact us today to gain access to all we have to offer to stay connected and remain on the path to healing.