We would rather you arrived at an honest answer than a quick one.
The course may be right for you if you want to take a closer look at your patterns, your needs and your relationships, together with others and during an intensive week where you are ready to do the work yourself.
We accompany you through the process and support you in whatever you meet along the way. We make no diagnoses and do not provide healthcare, but we always have a conversation with you before your first course to make sure the process is right for you just now, and we make that judgement together with you.
The week is immersive and intensive, and it builds on what you yourself do and experience together with the group. At the same time the setting is safe, with course leaders who are there the whole week and a conversation with us before you decide. For some the format is exactly right, while others do well to wait a while, and that tends to depend more on how you want to work on your questions than on how large they are.
I want to understand something that keeps recurring in my life and work on it seriously.
I can set aside a whole week and meet other people in a group.
I would like to talk to one of you before I make up my mind.
When we tell someone about the course who is hearing of it for the first time, we are often told that it sounds wonderful, though it is someone else who needs it. It can sound like “my sister should go”, “all of that is what my boss ought to understand” or “imagine if my husband could go, so that he could meet me better afterwards”.
This is a phenomenon we find everywhere in society. We have a tendency to want to adjust something outside us when it feels uncomfortable inside, since we would be spared feeling all of that if only the other person changed. As adults we are nevertheless responsible for our own feelings and needs, and what is ours deserves to be felt and taken seriously by ourselves. So ask yourself what you need to do to feel well, and meet yourself in whatever the answer turns out to be.
There is also the opposite, when someone comes here because a person close to them said something that stuck, and that is perfectly fine. Somewhere between the other person's worry and your own taking part, it still needs to become yours. If you want to look at something yourself there is a great deal to work with, while we recommend that you wait if you come because someone else thinks you ought to change and you would rather have been somewhere else. Do say so plainly in the conversation before you decide, and we will talk it through.
Then that is exactly what Step 1 is built for, and what remains is the timing, which we go through in the conversation before the course.
That is close to the very heart of Step 1, and what remains to talk about is the format and the timing.
Then you may be in the right place, because the week is a way of integrating in the body what you already know in your head. It builds on what you yourself do and experience during the days, together with the others in the group.
You can just as well come with a question as with a problem, and some people seek us out precisely when something is changing, for example after a separation, when the children have moved out, before retirement, at a change of career, or when life works but the question “what do I want now?” has become important.
We start looking at this already in Step 1, where you get to know your inner child and what she or he would have needed while growing up. After that we go further, and with a sharper focus on childhood, in Step 2.
Step 1 and Step 2 lay the foundation, and the relationships of your adult life are then the main matter in Step 3a.
We are so much more than rest and retreat! During the week you work actively on yourself, both in the group and in individual conversations.
Most of the time it works well to do both in parallel, though sometimes we advise you to wait. We talk about that during your conversation with us, and do tell your therapist that you are thinking of coming.
Many people come to us precisely when they are struggling mentally. We need to talk about it in the conversation, because sometimes it is care you need instead. If you need help now you can turn to the healthcare system or call 1177, which is open around the clock, and if a life is in danger you call 112.
That does not rule you out, and a fair number of people come here for exactly that reason, including those who have been diagnosed with burnout. The week is intensive but can be adapted to individual needs, since the leaders shape the work around how you are doing and nothing is compulsory, so if you need to rest in the middle of the day you do. If you are on sick leave or in the middle of treatment we want to know, so that we can talk about the timing in the conversation. If rest is all you are looking for, the week suits you less well.
It is lovely if you both come, at the same time or one course after the other, since it strengthens the relationship when you have been through the same process. Your partner not wanting to come should still not hold you back if you yourself want to. Do bring the question to the conversation, and we will talk about how things look for the two of you.
Ring us and tell us how things are and we will talk it through, or register your interest and book a phone slot that suits you.
Yes, we will. The conversation beforehand is as much for you as it is for us, and sometimes we conclude that you should wait a while, or that it is a different kind of help you need just now. Then we say so, and it says nothing about you as a person.
Of more than 900 answers in our registrations of interest to the question of why people seek us out, 38 per cent are about processing feelings and changing at depth, 28 per cent about understanding oneself better, 16 per cent about a crisis in life, 14 per cent about feeling lost, and 3 per cent about wellbeing and relationships, so this is not a course for one particular situation.
Already at Mullingstorp, where the course has its roots, the groups held everyone from young adults to pensioners, and the occupations ran from people on sick leave to group chief executives. One participant described the course environment as the most status-free and classless he had experienced.
Participants are also at very different stages of life. The twenty-two-year-old comes here wanting to understand her own patterns before adult life sets them in earnest, as does the eighty-year-old who wants to take stock and come to rest with what has been, and they belong in the same group.
One thing sets us apart from most of this field: roughly half of those who come here are men.
The timing varies too. Some register long in advance and carry the thought around for months, while others get in touch just before a course starts because something suddenly gave way. The decision may take as long as it takes, and we never push anyone.
Many of those who come here sense that life holds more than they have seen so far. Nobody arrives here unafraid, and you do not have to be either, since it is enough that the wish to change something and the curiosity about what is in there are a little larger than the fear.
Here you are free to find your way by trying, and this is what the course leader says as the week begins: “It is not possible to say that on day one we work with grief, on day two with anger. It will be all over the place for everyone. It is impossible to compare yourself with anyone else. What shows itself in you, that is your way forward.”
If you recognised yourself in any of this, the next step is a conversation with us, where we answer your questions. Registering your interest commits you to nothing.
The words below are the participants' own, published with name and date. They tell you what individual people went through, and they say nothing about how your own week will be.
Jag har gått flertalet kurser inom personlig utveckling och den här är den bästa jag gått hittills (steg 1). Så proffsigt och genomtänkt upplägg.I have taken several courses in personal development and this is the best one so far (Step 1). So professional, and so well thought through.
Erik Jonsson Så proffsiga och så kunniga. Jag kände sådan trygghet och tillit. Kan verkligen rekommendera VitaliseraSo professional and so knowledgeable. I felt such safety and such trust. I can truly recommend Vitalisera.
Jessica Bornkessel Det finns ett före och ett efter kurserna i Vitaliseras regi. De har gett mig verktyg att lära känna mig själv djupare och djupare.There is a before and an after the courses run by Vitalisera. They gave me the tools to get to know myself, more and more deeply.
Patrik Reje Source note: Published reviews on Vitalisera's references page.
If you go home during the first three days of the course, the course fee is refunded, the registration fee excepted. That is what the terms say.
This is not something you should have to settle on your own in front of a screen, so do get in touch and ask. We would far rather talk to you once too often than once too seldom.