A Therapist’s Unique Approach to Couples Counseling Involves a Weekend Getaway

The Short Version: Every couple encounters obstacles in their relationship. Why not face them on a weekend getaway? Dr. Dana McNeil offers Therapy Getaway Intensives through her practice at The Relationship Place. When you’re away from home, you and your partner can address your problems and receive important conflict resolution tools from Dana. 

Dr. Dana McNeil helped people overcome different types of obstacles in her former career as an insurance claims adjuster. Dana witnessed entire towns endure life-changing tragedies from natural disasters like destructive hurricanes and tornadoes. She channeled her impulse to help people into a new career as a psychologist and licensed marriage and family therapist. 

Dana’s main goal as a therapist can be summed up in one question: “How do we all navigate and validate each other’s needs, but then also find a way to compromise?” The whole “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus” thing doesn’t fly at The Relationship Place, the name of Dana’s practice. She tries to get her clients “on the same page,” she said, because it’s the best path to clarity and resolution. 

She advises couples who are looking for a therapist to choose someone who “actually understands how to help you make changes in couples, not individuals.”  

As a therapist with elite clientele, Dana’s methods are directive and evidence based. She’s not one to beat around the bush; clients need answers and sound advice, and Dana wants to give it to them quickly and efficiently. 

The Relationship Place offers Therapy Getaway Intensives, which are retreats for couples who want to tackle their relationship problems in the span of a weekend. Dana calls them “intensives” because, well, they’re intense. 

“Some of the clients I work with … are high profile, short on time, and results driven,” she explained. A Therapy Getaway Intensive packs a therapeutic punch in just three days.

When a couple’s world is overflowing with career obligations, parenting, and countless adult responsibilities, taking a weekend to focus solely on themselves is a great show of dedication and love. It’s a meaningful gesture that says, “I’m willing to put everything else aside to focus on our relationship.”

As Dana told us, “[Couples are] coming in with the intention of really rolling up their sleeves and working on the problems that have probably been in their relationships for years or decades.” 

Traditional therapy can be broken down into 90-minute segments or less— “How is your day going? What do you want to talk about today?” — which can interrupt productivity. “Sometimes, in traditional therapy, I can’t get any work in because we’re dysregulated for an hour,” Dana explained. By “dysregulated,” she means that the client is experiencing mood swings, anxiety, or outbursts that impede the therapeutic process. 
An intensive gives her the chance to take a deeper dive into your relationship. 

“If I have a whole day with you … I can help you individually regulate and then come back together and figure out what your needs are,” she said. This way, “We can get so much more traction.”

There’s time for you to focus on your relationship with your therapist, but also with just your partner. “So it’s also like a vacation for you, because at nighttime, after you’ve been working on your relationships, you can go on a date,” Dana explained. Have a post-therapy date night and discuss the experience over cocktails. 

More importantly, take this time to emotionally support each other. This is especially important when you consider how often we shrug off our emotions throughout the day. 

How many times have I felt sad or frustrated or worried about something and simply pushed the feeling aside because I didn’t have time to analyze it? When you push these feelings away, they aren’t really going anywhere; they’re just getting buried beneath all the other emotions you’ve pushed down in the past. Dana can help couples lighten the load. 

“You get to go through all the emotions, learn tools, and take a stab at something that has been a problem for a while,” she explained. 

Therapy Getaway Intensives are especially helpful if you and your partner are in crisis. 

“High-conflict couples need a lot of support about how to take any steps forward,” Dana told us. We know ignoring the crisis won’t help, and will probably make it worse in the long run. An intense weekend spent confronting your problems head-on with the help of a licensed therapist is a more straightforward path to resolution.

Or, if not to resolution, then to rebuilding trust, or at least the foundation for trust. You and your partner can leave one of Dana’s intensives with a more well-rounded therapeutic vocabulary. “Do you know the difference between boundaries and agreements? What’s OK and what’s not okay?” she asked. Do you know the difference, reader? 

Intensives, as well as The Relationship Place’s other counseling services, can help any couple willing to put in the work — “We cater the intensive to who you are as a couple” — but Dana highlighted a few specific types of services.

One of the more popular counseling services is for people 50+ years of age. “The highest population of people who are getting divorced right now are those clients over 50 years old … there are much higher stakes when you’re over 50,” Dana said. 

“High-conflict couples need a lot of support about how to take any steps forward.”

With retirement, real estate, finances, and health issues to contend with, marital problems after decades of marriage can be a doozy to overcome. This is especially true when there are children in the mix. “When you’ve lived a whole life together, untangling it makes the stakes so much higher.” 

Spending time together at one of Dana’s intensives can help untangle those problems once and for all, even if those problems are uber-specific.

There’s an intensive for couples who have grown apart, too. Maybe you operate well as a team, but what happened to your spark? Dana helps these couples figure out if they’re still compatible. A question she helps clients answer is, “Is there enough there to work on?” 

Whether they’re attending an intensive retreat or standard counseling sessions, couples have to put in the necessary time and effort to improve their relationship. An important question couples should ask themselves, Dana told us, is, “Have I done everything I can do to make this relationship better?” 

Of course, the intensives don’t work miracles. “We’re not going to resolve [everything] in a weekend,” Dana said. You’re given the tools, language, and knowledge to work on your relationship with a renewed perspective. “I give [couples] a pamphlet with all of the interventions that we worked on with some instructions,” she told us. 

With Dana’s help, you never have to be in the dark. 

According to Dana, the difference between a frustrated couple and a satisfied couple could be the phrase, “It makes sense why you got mad.” 

Validation goes a long way to making each person feel heard and acknowledged in a serious relationship. Take the time to put yourself in your partner’s shoes and understand their point of view. It means acknowledging their emotions, not necessarily agreeing with them. 

“It doesn’t mean I agree with my partner if I validate them,” Dana pointed out. “It is not going to give you any traction if you sit and say, ‘Convince me.’” As someone who can be stubborn and defensive, this advice resonated with me. 

Acknowledging someone’s feelings doesn’t mean they’re right or wrong; they’re just feelings, not facts, but they hold the power to change relationships forever. 

So does the effort you and your partner put into therapy. If one or both of you aren’t fully invested in improving your relationship, then what’s the point of going to therapy at all? “I don’t think we all come in prepared to work,” Dana said. “It’s not Disneyland, it’s not fun times,” she reminded us. 

Dana assured us that complex emotions are to be expected when you’re bringing relationship issues to the surface. “Some days you’re going to love your partner, and other days you’re not going to love your partner,” she said. “But if you made a commitment, then you have to follow through on your commitment.”

“When you have the tools, you have to dig deep, and you have to find the ability to do hard things.”

Of course, some couples decide that splitting up is the best route. Overall, though, Dana cautioned against giving up too easily. No one wants to look back on a relationship and wonder, “Could this have worked out if I’d tried harder?”

“When you have the tools, you have to dig deep, and you have to find the ability to do hard things,” she told us. After all, you’re dealing “with someone’s heart,” Dana explained. With intensives and/or weekly couples therapy sessions under your belt, there’s no reason why you and your partner shouldn’t trust each other with your hearts.