When you are struggling

From the outside it works. You go to work, you do what you are meant to do, and you answer that you are fine when somebody asks. Inside it is empty, or heavy, or so restless that you cannot sit still for a whole evening. You sleep badly. Things that used to mean something no longer do, and you feel lost in a life you do not quite remember choosing.

Perhaps you have already looked for help, talked to somebody, read the books, taken the holiday. Perhaps it worked for a while. And then you are back in the same feeling again. It is not your fault. What you need to reach sits deeper than everyday life leaves room for.

The advice tends to be to rest more, think positively and set boundaries, and that helps for a while. But if you do not understand why you end up where you end up, you will end up there again. The patterns that steer took shape early, long before you could choose them, and they sit in how you relate to yourself and to what other people expect. That is not something you can think your way out of on a walk.

To see what is actually going on, you need to stop for longer than everyday life allows, in a place that is not constantly pulling you back into the usual, and preferably together with people who have seen this before and are not frightened by it.

With us you get seven days and eight nights at Aspö kursgård, on an island in lake Båven. You hand in your phone for the week. Outside the course room it is quiet, and that may sound uncomfortable if you are already carrying something heavy, but the quiet is not there to leave you alone with it. It is there so that you can hear yourself without the noise of everyday life settling over the top.

The group is about twenty people, and the course leaders are there all week. Step 1 requires no previous experience, and you do not have to feel that you are well in order to take it.

Most people who get in touch with us want it to stop hurting, and that is a perfectly reasonable reason to ring. But struggling is also a signal, rather like an ache you cannot think away, that something in your life or inside you is not as it should be. For as long as you do not know what, it is simply unpleasant.

During the week you get to look at things such as the demands you place on yourself, the needs you have learned not to count, and the fear that sometimes chooses for you. You do it in the group and in individual conversations. We are not health care, we make no diagnoses and we treat nothing.

Are you wondering whether you are in too poor a state right now to take a course? Ring us and ask, because that is exactly what the conversation beforehand is for.