Evoke Therapy Intensive Experience
I recently attended my second Evoke Therapy intensive or as I like to call them: therapy sleep-away camp. The intensive spans from a Wednesday afternoon through the following Sunday afternoon and takes place in a beautiful home in Midway, UT. I wish everyone could have the opportunity to attend one of these retreats. For those who are interested, I’m going to share just a little bit about my experience.
Full disclosure: While I have known Dr. Brad Reedy since my teens, this blog post is not sponsored nor are the retreats gifted to me.
First, let’s talk logistics. Everyone in the group stays together in the Evoke-owned home during the retreat. The home is large and everyone gets their own room and bathroom. I never felt like I was lacking personal space. All of the meals are beautifully provided, prepared, and served. There are plenty of snacks and treats always available. Both times I’ve left with an email of all the delicious and healthy recipes.
During the intensive, you spend your days doing a nice mixture of group discussions led by the therapists, Q & A, and experiential therapy.
The number one question I receive about intensives is “Is it worth it?” The truth is I can’t answer that for you. For me, it absolutely is.
I love therapy. Growing up, I thought therapy was where someone went if they had mental or relationship problems to fix. I remember hearing that “so and so was in therapy” and immediately sensed a layer of shame. Like there was something extra wrong with that person or their life so they had to pay someone to help them fix it. Therapy seemed a bit embarrassing and quite a bit shameful.
As I’ve learned more about and experienced good therapy in my adult years I now know much better. I understand that therapy is more like caring for your body by regularly going to the gym than it is going to the doctor when you’re sick. Regular therapy helps me not only progress in life but it helps me maintain good mental health. Does it prevent hard times? No. But I’ve found I’m much better equipt to face those hard times when I’ve been putting in the work ahead of time. Therapy affords me a healthy base layer and an established routine to better face the hard times when they come.
When you are working with a good therapist, therapy is a safe and healthy place to dump it all out and be fully seen and heard. I like to think of my therapist as a container that is always ready and adequately prepared to contain all of me. We all need this in our lives, but it’s not very fair or realistic to expect it from our friends, family, or partners. Yes, loved ones can be great to turn to, but at the end of the day everyone is dealing with their own crap and it’s not always reasonable to expect them to be able to show up for us in the same way a trained professional may be able to. I’ve found that when I’m doing the work and taking the time to care for my mental health I’m better equipt to show up for my own loved ones when they need me.
All of that is to say, an Evoke intensive, for me, is kind of like what I imagine special conditioning weeks are for athletes. It’s a sacrifice, an exhausting amount of mental work, and intense, but so worth it and beneficial.
As I mentioned earlier, I wish everyone could have an opportunity to attend routine therapy or intensive. I understand that just isn’t possible for a lot of people for a lot of reasons. With that in mind, I wanted to share a great free resource with all of you. Dr. Brad Reedy, the founder of Evoke, hosts a weekly podcast. While a podcast can’t offer the same “containment” that therapy can, this podcast does share many of the insights and life approaches that have played a crucial part in my own therapy experience.
Given that this is a weekly podcast there are a lot of episodes and I know that can be overwhelming. Here are a few episodes that I would suggest starting out with in no particular order. Listen to what you feel drawn to but please don’t skip the Harriet Lerner episode. Her book “Dance of Anger” changed my life and I hope you’ll read it. You can buy it from my shop if you want to support a small shop.
Enjoy!
What to Look for in a Therapist and Therapy
Finding You, Finding Connection, and Finding Family: What is right for me?
Attunement vs. Codependence
Healthy Boundaries and Harriet Lerner’s “The Dance of Anger”
Changing Seasons: Learning to Let Go of Old Ideas, Relationships, and Contexts
If you like what you hear and want to buy Dr. Brad Reedy’s book, which I highly recommend, you can find them both in my shop.