The Retreat Counseling Center

Hi my name is  Vanessa Cain  and I specialize in helping my clients develop healthy relationships with themselves and their partners. I have nearly a decade of experience working with parents, couples and their children. With intensive training in couples therapy, attachment theory, interpersonal neurobiology, and communication I have cultivated an integrated approach to helping people heal in relationship. Additionally, love to help single people prepare for love and define what they are looking for in a relationship, and as such work as a dating coach too! Areas of expertise include, couples therapy, mindful parenting, premarital counseling, communication, love addiction, codependency, uncoupling, and attachment theory. Connect with Vanessa now .

Phone & Skype Sessions available today! Don’t let COVID-19 keep you from getting the support you need! To learn more, visit:  theretreatcounselingcenter.com

To learn more, visit:   theretreatcounselingcenter.com

Struggling with substance abuse can have devastating consequences on the lives of individuals and their families involved. Through my work as a licensed Therapist in Orange County treating thousands of addicts and alcoholics, I have a clear understanding of what’s needed (and what’s not needed) for individuals and families to recover from the devastation of drugs and alcohol.  If you’re tired of the short-term successes you’ve achieved in sobriety, only to relapse again, please contact me.  I truly believe freedom from addiction is very achievable with the right tools and the right process. Therapy & Addiction Counseling Maintaining sobriety and recovering from drugs and alcohol is an extremely complex treatment process and needs to be treated as such for the best hope of sustained sobriety and recovery. Addiction counseling is an important part in the early stages of the recovery process where people are looking for first-steps & basic tools to maintain sobrie...

Big-T Trauma & Small-t Trauma Blatant forms of trauma in the family include being subjected to and/or witnessing physical and sexual abuse is considered Big T Trauma. Trauma also occurs in more subtle forms — for example, living with fear on an ongoing basis, such as the fear of not knowing if or when a parent is coming home; or the fear that comes with listening to one’s parents argue night after night; or the fear of not being able to rely on a parent attending a significant event. This type of trauma is called small-t Trauma.To live with chronic fear during the vulnerable childhood and adolescent years — when one is developing beliefs about oneself and the world at large — is traumatic to emotional, psychological and spiritual development. In addition to the more blatant forms of abuse, these children are often subjected to covert forms of sexual abuse; being called sexual names such as, “whore,” “slut,” or being asked if he or she got “laid” last night and then being la...

What does it take for the modern family to be successful? Statistics paint a fairly gloomy picture for the modern family. We hear stories about divorce, out-of-control teens, infidelity, “broken homes”, and sometimes even physical and emotional abuse. Definitions of a successful family vary, but most sociologists and family therapists agree on a few key fundamentals that differentiate successful families from unsuccessful families. So, how do we define success in a family? This is the definition of a successful family that we’ve come to adopt in our family therapy practice: A successful family promotes a sense of positive family and individual identity, fosters satisfying and fulfilling interactions among all members, and copes with stress in a way that results in more flexibility and cohesiveness in the family. I recently gave a presentation at Hoag Hospital to expecting/prenatal couples on what’s needed for couples to transition to family-hood in a way that can be identif...

My name is Quentin Hafner and I am a licensed Marriage & Family Therapist & Executive Coach where I specialize in helping people solve relationship challenges. I consider being a therapist & Executive Coach in Orange County an absolute privilege, and I feel so blessed and honored to be with my clients as I watch them change. My story of becoming a therapist began with my own therapy, so I am fondly aware with how special the therapy relationship can be. Prior to working as a therapist and Executive Coach in Orange County, I spent many years in the corporate world before I realized how much I enjoyed helping people — and made the decision to pursue being a therapist. It was the best decision I’ve ever made. I believe that true, lasting change happens in the context of trusting relationship with another person, and that is what I hope to gain with all my clients. I have spent thousands of hours doing therapy and coaching, and many more thousands of hours learning, re...

If you’re interested in reading this blog, chances are you’re in a relationship with someone you find to be emotionally unavailable. Great. I’m glad you’re here. By the end of this blog, I’m certain you’ll have a different perspective on your man. You’ll probably feel a little more hopeful about the future too. I take it you might need that. So what is this thing called  emotionally unavailable ? It’s become a popularized term in pop-psychology without a clear and agreeable definition. So for the sake of this blog, I’m going to offer you my own definition of the term. My definition is defining the typical male in the modern American marriage. Emotionally Unavailable Man: Men who create barriers to intimacy, which can make their partners feel unloved or unwanted. Pretty straight forward. Pretty simple. In case you didn’t notice, I purposefully didn’t slam men in that definition. Culture at large does a fine enough job depicting men as pathetic losers incapabl...