Our programmes incorporate counselling, coaching and debriefing support, an effective and complementary combination intended to help people identify and work through psychological difficulties as well as find practical solutions for personal and organisational challenges.

The primary aim in counselling is to help individuals and couples address and resolve emotional issues such as anxiety, depression, conflict, and trauma. This is done by creating a safe space to explore present and past challenges and the potentially challenging feelings attached to them. This in turn helps people examine and resolve stuck and repetitive patterns of relating to both self and others in a way that fosters deeper security, stability, and wellbeing.

Coaching takes a more pragmatic future-oriented approach to identifying practical challenges or “stuck places” and working through them. This happens in dialogue with the coach, who will ask thought-provoking questions and reflect back what they are hearing to help individuals reframe ideas, gain fresh perspective and make decisions. Although coaching will certainly include discussion of emotional difficulties, the focus is more on addressing practical challenges or obstacles in order to gain clarity, enhance performance and take meaningful action.

Debriefing is a space to tell your story and process recent events to make sense of them and come to terms with their impact on you. It provides space to reflect on past experience and glean wisdom for the future. This is especially helpful for people who have been through a recent transition or significant event.

Our marriage intensive programme is aimed at couples, but all our other programmes can be taken either as an individual or a couple. All programmes run from Monday to Friday over one or two weeks.

Alongside sessions in our comfortable consulting room, there are also opportunities to take the work outside. “Walk and Talk” sessions combine coaching or counselling with the restorative benefits of time in nature. Weather permitting, the choice of indoors or outdoors is yours!

Please note that there is a short assessment process for everyone who would like to come to High Meadow to determine whether our programmes are a good fit. We do not have the facilities or resources to care for people in extreme crisis, so our assessment is partly aimed at establishing whether people would be better served by longer term therapeutic support where they are or, where applicable, a return to their home country.

Counselling/Coaching Retreat

2 weeks

Our banner programme is the two-week Counselling/Coaching Retreat.

Equivalent to six months of weekly sessions, this is an opportunity to take time away from ordinary routines to undertake an in-depth personal and practical reset. Working alongside you to tailor just the right balance of counselling and coaching support, we aim to facilitate both profound emotional processing and solution-focused planning.

Starting with a thorough and careful assessment of current difficulties, formative past experiences and goals for the future, this retreat is designed to help people work through challenging issues and prepare for what lies ahead. Although the programme is demanding on one level, there is ample opportunity outside sessions to rest, reflect and consolidate the changes that you are making.

Marriage Retreat

1 or 2 weeks

Life in ministry places significant pressure on any marriage. Amid many competing priorities, spouses can gradually drift apart, sometimes without even realizing it.

A two-week marriage intensive programme is designed to help couples enhance their capacity to communicate, deepen their emotional bond and generally revitalize their relationship. This process is particularly helpful for couples who feel they have got stuck in painful and repetitive patterns of relating.

A one-week marriage intensive programme offers a similar structure in a lighter-touch version. This is designed for those who want to invest in their marriage but are unable to take the full two weeks due to constraints such as care for children, which unfortunately we are unable to provide.

Resilience Review

1 week

This programme is for people who want to step away from daily pressures to get some rest, review how they are doing and think through how to strengthen levels of resilience.

A two-hour counselling session is offered on days one to four with the aim of assessing current levels of resilience, exploring potential vulnerabilities and identifying possible resources. On day five, a two-hour coaching session is offered to incorporate that learning into a practical and sustainable resilience plan. The balance of counselling and coaching is flexible and can be altered depending on specific needs and goals.

Critical Incident Review

1 week

Critical incidents can come in many forms, including serious accidents, natural disasters, civil unrest, robbery or assault.

They will often leave those involved feeling destabilised, disoriented and unable to return to normal functioning. This programme gives people the opportunity to pause and reflect on what they have been through, explore their emotional reactions, consider the impact of the incident in order to make sense of it, and move forwards with life.

Post-assignment debrief

1 week

It is well recognized among international workers that the return to their home country can be significantly more challenging than the initial adjustment to life on the field.

Debriefing is a structured process that gives people the opportunity to reflect on different aspects of their time overseas, what they have learned, what they enjoyed and what they perhaps wish had been different. It is also an opportunity to look ahead and plan for the challenges of settling back into life in their home country.

Aftercare

Ongoing

We very much hope that the counselling and coaching sessions here will give you the chance to make profound and lasting changes in your life.

Included in your programme, you will be offered a follow-up online coaching session three months after you leave to reflect on what you gained from your time at High Meadow. This is also an opportunity to consider progress on any changes you were wanting to make. It is important to acknowledge, however, that there are limits to how much can be fully resolved and worked through in a limited period of time. We recognize, therefore, that your retreat may be the beginning of a longer process. Bearing this in mind, we are building a network of Christian therapists and coaches who are available for longer term support. We will discuss ongoing needs with you while you are here with a view to signposting you to continuing care, where requested.

Confidentiality and Safeguarding

You can be assured that we undertake to hold everything you discuss with us at High Meadow in the strictest confidence. In terms of exceptions to this rule, we are obliged by safeguarding legislation and clinical ethics codes to contact the relevant authorities/medical practitioners if you disclose a serious risk of harm to yourself or others.

If you would like a report to be sent to your organisation/company, we would also be happy to do that with your consent.

Please note that we are a small team committed to delivering the highest possible standards of counselling and coaching support with the resources that we have. We do not have the clinical capacity to provide the longer-term speciality care needed for issues such as active addiction, psychosis, self-harm, ongoing eating disorders, suicidality, marital abuse or active affairs. If these are identified during the assessment process, we will provide guidance and advice on where to seek appropriate support.