The Retreat Counseling Center

If you’re married, then might have experienced a challenging time over the last few months with the advancement of COVID-19. For many people, the COVID-19 experience has become a traumatic event triggering heightened emotional stress responses, i.e., flight & flight. Whenever couples are experiencing fight & flight stress responses in a relationship, it can feel emotionally unsafe and wildly conflictual. A fellow therapist friend, Kerry McCoy, LMFT, and I did a 45-minute podcast on how the worldwide collective traumatic experience of COVID-19 is impacting marriages and what we can do to stay connected to our spouse during this challenging time. We talked about the different responses people have to trauma and how this might show up in marriage. Kerry and I both practice a type of therapy called Emotionally Focused Therapy with couples and its main focus is to increase the security and sense of safety in relationships; something that is needed more than ever now. At th...

Great information for anyone struggling with our current quarantine and social distancing situation. MENTAL HEALTH WELLNESS TIPS FOR QUARANTINE Stick to a routine. Go to sleep and wake up at a reasonable time, write a schedule that is varied and includes time for work as well as self-care. Dress for the social life you want, not the social life you have. Get showered and dressed in comfortable clothes, wash your face, brush your teeth. Take the time to do a bath or a facial. Put on some bright colors. It is amazing how our dress can impact our mood. Get out at least once a day, for at least thirty minutes. If you are concerned of contact, try first thing in the morning, or later in the evening, and try less traveled streets and avenues. If you are high risk or living with those who are high risk, open the windows and blast the fan. It is amazing how much fresh air can do for spirits. Find some time to move each day, again daily for at least thirty minutes. If you don’t feel comfortable...

Meet Anna Barsoe, LMFT I help clients to see beyond their symptoms to reach their goals and enhance their sense of well-being. I am extremely proactive and believe in offering the most holistic approach to help people reach the best version of themselves. I provide a safe and down-to-earth environment for my clients to express themselves. I believe that developing new healthy ways of thinking can lead to a healthy mind and body. I specialize in helping people with anxiety, depression, trauma, addiction, grief, & women’s issues. I am 100% committed to the success of my clients and we will work together in your healing process to help you find solutions that work. I am also available for phone or virtual sessions. I look forward to hearing your story. Let’s connect

I recently sat through a lecture on addiction presented by a woman who marketed herself as an industry-expert on the subject of chemical dependency. About ¾ of the way through her lecture, she said something provocative that really piqued my interest. This is what I heard: “The worst form of denial is believing that your addiction is environmental”. She said it again: “The worst form of denial is believing your addiction is environmental”. After hearing it again, I was really paying attention. The industry-expert was expounding on elements of the idea that addiction and alcoholism is purely a biological disease, and that people struggling with addiction are genetically predisposed to the illness, and looking at other elements in one’s life history that may have contributed to the addiction is futile. Her message is common in some facets of the substance abuse treatment world that seems to rely solely on identifying addiction as a genetic illness and that your early childhoo...

Work with our highly-skilled team of marriage therapists trained in the most cutting edge and evidenced based marriage counseling approaches; Gottman Method & Emotionally Focused Therapy. Working with couples and watching relationships grow and blossom is such a gratifying experience. As a team of licensed Marriage Therapists in Orange County, our education, expertise, and professional training revolve around healing and helping couples become unstuck from the painful patterns that many couples fall in. We have so much faith in the potential that most couples are able to work through many of their most difficult situations – even the ones that feel certain they have lost all hope. If this is you, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Couples Counseling can be a powerful experience that unlocks newfound hope and happiness. Being a Couples Counselor in Orange County with a divorce rate close to 70%, we have found it very important to look at struggling marriages within the ...

We are currently offering Phone & FaceTime Sessions at a discounted rate for those financially impacted by COVID-19. Please let us know about your situation and we'll make accommodations for you. Click here   to contact us.

As the summer is beginning to wind down, and wanting to take advantage of the remaining great weather, I decided to take my 7 year old nephew on a camping trip. Before leaving for the trip, my sister (his mother) and I spoke on the phone and she sternly warned me: “Quinn, please be careful with him this weekend – he’s coming to an age where he wants to do everything on his own and doesn’t want any influence from adults”. I said, “OK” a little nervously, and wondered if this was going to be a frightening weekend trying to corral an obstinate, high-energy, 7-year-old? Was my memory of the sweet-natured boy I had seen just a few months earlier completely wrong? Thankfully, my nephew wasn’t nearly as “independent” as I had feared he might have been and we had a wonderful time together. However, he is 7 and just like any 7-year-old, he is at times in need of limits. So the trip offered me a chance to reflect on, and work at implementing healthy limit setting. Throughout the weeken...