Emotional Retreats
For Healing Stuck Feelings
Led by Jon Terrell, MA

Our emotional retreats are for people who are feeling stuck and/or trapped in uncomfortable feelings. Emotions, such as anger, grief, anxiety and jealousy can steal a huge amount of our life force and awareness, leaving little left over for living a fulfilling life.

Suppressing and avoiding emotions can lead to depression, negativity and anxiety. We can avoid our feelings by numbing out, closing down and losing touch with ourselves. And once a pattern of suppression starts, it tends to perpetuate itself in a hard to break cycle.

On the other hand, some feelings, such as anger and rage can run out of control, causing damage to others and ourselves. It's hard to control these uncomfortable feelings! We can judge ourselves harshly for the damage we've caused when we are under their influence.

Sometimes emotional healing is needed because of a specific tragic event, while for others it is needed because of a long period of pain. For some it’s working through the pain of their childhood, for others an abusive relationship, for another it could be an illness or accident that brings them to a retreat.

We can help you heal emotions and find peace and joy. Emotional healing can give you a new lease on life, a new beginning.

Do you find yourself trapped in uncomfortable and destructive feelings? Have you had difficulty freeing yourself from anger or grief or blame? If so, our retreats may be for you.

Why talk therapy often doesn’t work well

Many approaches to healing emotions are slow going and often don’t achieve the results people need. Psychotherapy can be very helpful but is less effective with anger, depression and other stuck emotions. That is because talk therapy operates at the thought level…you discuss with your therapist what is going on in your life…your thoughts, perspectives, memories, hopes and dreams. But we get stuck at another level entirely…in the realm of feelings. Feelings can be very uncomfortable, so we’ve learned to avoid them (suppression or denial) or vent them at others or ourselves. Talking about feelings does little good…feelings need to be consciously experienced, consciously felt and moved through. This can best be done in a group setting.

The emotional retreats we offer have been a turning point for hundreds of people who have tried a lot of other approaches and were still struggling with finding a way to heal their chronic emotion pain or stuck-ness.

What happens at an emotional retreat?

A small group of people come together (depending on the type of retreat, 6-24) to form a healing community. Group community building activities that are designed to create a sense of ease, safety and support. A healing model based on the Skills and Principles of Loving is presented. Each person then has the opportunity to do individual work, supported by the loving awareness of the group.

Now that describes the action that takes place on the outside. Inside, which is where we live, it’s different. What really happens is that people open up to each other, tell their stories and let their wounding rise up to be healed, to be transformed. In the safety of the event, people express real feelings and connect to the real pain they have been experiencing in their lives. Emotional healing takes place and joy, excitement and deep love is experienced and expressed. Insights come, as a result of personal work. There is great relief, awe, openness. Everything looks clearer, simpler, more alive, fresher.

Why healing occurs

I’ve been leading emotional retreats for the past 10 years and see first hand how quickly and effortlessly healing occurs. Why can we accomplish so much so quickly? I attribute this to the power of a loving community to heal the darkest pain. I just don’t get the same level of results one on one. The processes I use gently guide people into and out of stuck places and allow a deeper healing of emotions. Once people uncover some of the repressed energy and transform it, they very quickly improve their emotional intelligence or EQ, This is because the key to growth is not so much insights or new perspectives but truly transforming these stuck feelings. In our emotional healing retreats we don’t focus on the thought level. It is not about talking so much as it is about working at the core energetic level of emotional healing.

Even if you are used to avoiding your feelings – the process we use can guide you to actually experience those feelings in a pure and productive manner. This is not about indulging the emotions, but rather allowing them to breathe. When you breathe into the pure energy of the emotion, you shine a light, the light of awareness, on it. It becomes safer, easier to handle and accept. Then you can gently but thoroughly work through past pain. When you can do that, emotional healing occurs and you have more energy and awareness…the life energy and awareness that was trapped in what you were avoiding. You experience relief.

At these emotional retreats, some people arrive knowing where they are stuck. Others don’t know exactly what is wrong but feel like they are stuck or missing out on fully living. For them, they may be going into unknown territory to reveal what they need to find.

We all need help with stuck emotions. For some folks they are on an emotional roller coaster, experiencing anger, grief and other feelings, going up and down. For others, they our out of touch with their feelings.

For more on sadness and grief go to Handling Grief.

For more on working with anger go to How To Deal With Anger.

Client example: Secretly Angry Alisa

One client, Alisa, came to the emotional healing retreat and said “But I don’t want to feel my rage. Why should I let up such an ugly emotion?” I explained that NOT feeling it was making her numb. She had cut off her feelings, and she had no pleasure in her body. She was going through the motions of life, but not really living. Alisa said she felt numb in every area of her life, and even the things that used to bring her pleasure felt flat. She said “I’m only half alive.” After the emotional retreat she said she felt like she was getting her whole life back. “I feel like I haven’t smiled like this in years,” she said.

Client example II: Sad, Depressed Chris

Chris came to one of our emotional retreats after giving up on numerous attempts at medications for his deep depression and despair. He had no energy for anything. In the retreat we discovered it was taking a huge amount of effort and energy to push away uncomfortable feelings from childhood, even though he was in his forties. It takes a lot of energy to suppress emotions. He wasn’t getting up in the morning with any sense of verve or appreciation for life. He gained back a lot of energy after the first retreat. After his second retreat, he was able to see that his depression was just his stuck energy and he was finally getting his life back It had been robbing him of the joy of life.

Client example III: Negative Mary

Mary had all the energy in the world. Unfortunately, it was all negative energy,,,she complained endlessly about everything and everybody. Every event on the news caused her to feel destructive and hopeless. She had been struck for twelve years in this cycle of negativity, feeding her despair with more and more research on the negative fate of the world. Her life force was distorted and deviated from its true nature which is to express joy and love. In the retreat she came to understand that she was literally running her life powered by negativity. After the first retreat, she began to see a new way. She realized the despair came from her childhood and she was ready to see a hopeful way to live. After the retreat she could work with a therapist to construct a new story for her life, a more hopeful and safer one.

For more examples go to Client Testimonials.

I generally recommend that a client attend at least three emotional retreats. We’ve all accumulated a lot to work on, and three emotional retreats can give people enough momentum to change their life story. More that on can really help heal lifelong patterns.

But even attending one of the emotional retreats can make a huge difference.

As people reclaim their life energy they are able to make significant changes in their lives. When stuck energy is reclaimed, you can create a new story for yourself. Out of the phoenix of the old story becomes the seed of new potential and energy. It is always inspiring to see people who attend my emotional healing retreats discover whole new possibilities for their lives.

Emotional Retreats Offered

I currently lead two retreats for healing emotions.

For healing emotions related to Grief and Loss go to

Grief and Loss Retreat.

For a slightly longer retreat working with all types of emotional pain, go to Breaking Free Of The Old Story Retreat.

Jon Terrell offers Psychotherapy for individuals and couples at his office in western Massachusetts. He does not take insurance, but has a sliding scale fee. For more information or if you have a question, contact him using the form below.

Jon Terrell, M.A.

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