The Depth Retreat

Understanding the patterns that shape your inner world.

This 3-day retreat is an immersive exploration of the unconscious patterns that shape how you relate—to yourself, to others, and to the world.

Many of us carry deeply embedded emotional templates formed early in life. These patterns quietly organize our reactions, our relationships, our ambitions, and even our sense of identity. We often experience them as “just the way I am.”

In this retreat, we slow down enough to see them clearly.

Through structured teaching, guided reflection, and carefully designed relational exercises, you’ll begin to recognize the core emotional themes and coping styles that drive your behavior—especially under stress.

How the Retreat Works With This Map

Throughout the retreat, we use teaching, reflection, and relational exercises to help you:

• Recognize your core emotional patterns
• Identify your primary coping styles
• Understand the deeper assumptions shaping them
• Reconnect with the unmet needs beneath the patterns

This work is not about pathologizing yourself.

It’s about developing compassionate literacy around the inner systems that shape your life.

The Map We’ll Be Following

To make this work more tangible, we use a simple psychological map to understand how patterns form and why they repeat.

You can think of your inner world like a small city.

Some parts of the system are easy to see—like your emotions, reactions, and behaviors. Other parts run deeper beneath the surface, shaping the direction your life takes.

Over the course of the retreat, we explore four key layers of this inner landscape.

1. Emotional Needs: the motivational core

All humans are born with fundamental emotional needs—such as connection, safety, autonomy, belonging, and self-expression.

When these needs are met, the nervous system feels resourced and stable. When they are unmet, emotional pain emerges as a signal that something important requires care.

2. Core Emotional States: the feeling layer

Over time, repeated life experiences shape recurring emotional patterns—clusters of sadness, fear, anger, shame, or loneliness that tend to activate together.

These “core emotional states” often form early in life and can be triggered automatically in adulthood, especially in moments of stress or relationship activation.

3. Coping Styles: how we learned to adapt

To manage emotional pain, the nervous system develops coping strategies.

Some of us move toward others (appeasing, rescuing, over-giving). Some move away (withdrawing, numbing, avoiding). Some move against (controlling, striving, dominating). Others try to think their way to safety through worry or rumination.

These patterns once helped us adapt—but they continue to shape our adult lives in non-adaptive ways long after the original conditions are gone.

4. Meaning Maps: the hidden assumptions beneath it all

Beneath emotions and coping styles are deeper interpretive frameworks—implicit beliefs about ourselves, others, and the world.

These “meaning maps” form through early relational experience and influence what feels safe or dangerous, possible or impossible, deserved or out of reach.

We rarely see these maps directly—but we can recognize them through the patterns they generate.

How the Retreat Unfolds

  • Prior to attending, you’ll complete several assessments and have a 1-hour debrief with Ryan & Aliceanne.

    Over the course of the retreat, we’ll work with:

    • The early emotional imprints that shape adult experience

    • The coping strategies you developed to adapt and survive

    • The parts of you that over-function, withdraw, appease, control, or collapse

    • The deeper needs that were trying to be met all along

    You’ll learn how patterns form, how they protect, and how they limit. Most importantly, you’ll begin to relate to them differently.

  • This is not a lecture-only retreat.

    The format includes:

    • Clear, psychologically grounded teaching

    • Q&A and live exploration

    • Structured 1:1 exercises

    • Whole-group experiential processes

    • Gentle contemplative practices

    • Time outdoors for integration and reflection

    The work is interactive, embodied, and relational.

    Rather than analyzing yourself from a distance, you’ll have opportunities to observe your patterns as they arise—in real time, in relationship, in dialogue.

  • Many personal growth spaces emphasize positivity or mindset shifts. Depth psychology begins somewhere else.

    We turn toward the parts of ourselves we learned to hide, manage, or overcompensate for. We explore not only what we do, but why we learned to do it.

    When understood with compassion, even our most difficult patterns reveal their intelligence.

    This retreat creates a structured and supportive container for that kind of inquiry.

  • This retreat may be a good fit if:

    • You notice recurring relational patterns you can’t quite explain

    • You tend to overwork, overgive, overcontrol—or withdraw entirely

    • You feel caught between ambition and exhaustion

    • You want deeper self-understanding, not just surface change

    • You are ready to examine the emotional roots of your coping strategies

Still have questions? Take a look at the FAQ or reach out anytime. If you’re feeling ready, go ahead and register for a workshop.

Your Questions, Answered
Register

  • No. This retreat is educational and experiential, but it is not psychotherapy.

    We’ll be exploring psychological frameworks and engaging in structured exercises designed to increase self-understanding. While the work can feel meaningful and personal, it is not a substitute for therapy or clinical care.

  • No one is required to share anything they’re not comfortable sharing.

    Some exercises involve reflection or dialogue, but participation is always invitational. You are encouraged to engage at a level that feels psychologically safe and appropriate for you.

  • The retreat is designed with pacing and support in mind.

    We move gradually, balancing teaching with integration, nature time, and reflective space. You are always welcome to step back, take a break, or regulate in whatever way you need.

    The intention is insight—not emotional flooding.

  • Depth psychology can be illuminating, but this is not an intensive trauma-processing retreat.

    We focus on understanding patterns, coping styles, and relational dynamics—not reliving past experiences.

    Most participants find the work clarifying and relieving rather than destabilizing.

  • No.

    You’ll be introduced to psychological frameworks that help you recognize your own patterns, but nothing is imposed or labeled from the outside.

    The emphasis is on self-recognition, not external interpretation.

  • Many participants share this concern.

    Exercises are structured, time-bound, and facilitated — you won’t be asked to “open up” without context. Reflection, journaling, and quieter forms of participation are always available.

  • No.

    Whether you’ve done years of personal development work or are newer to psychological inquiry, the retreat meets you where you are.

    Frameworks are taught clearly and accessibly.

  • We establish shared agreements around confidentiality at the start of the retreat.

    Participants are asked to respect one another’s privacy and treat what is shared in the space with care and discretion.