Safety and suitability

What happens before you get a place

When you have registered your interest, you have not booked anything. You get a reply by email with a link where you book a phone slot, and then one of us calls you. In that conversation we talk about what you are looking for, how you are doing right now, and whether this form and this timing suit you. The conversation is as much for you as it is for us. Do ask everything you want to ask, and notice whether it feels right.

You also fill in a health questionnaire. The course coordinator reads every health questionnaire. The course leaders and the group leaders see them during the course week, on paper that is shredded afterwards. If a medical assessment is needed, a doctor reads the questionnaire, in a copy with your surname removed. Only when both the conversation and the questionnaire are done do we decide whether you get a place.

Once you have a place you also write a life story: some thirty questions about parents, upbringing, relationships, work and what has shaped you, which you send in no later than two weeks before the course starts. The course leadership reads it in advance and goes through every participant at a start meeting before you arrive. No assistant and no one in the kitchen reads it. When the course is over, the papers are shredded on site before we leave the course centre.

Sometimes we come to the conclusion that you should wait a little, or that something else would suit you better right now. It does not happen often, but it happens, and it says nothing about you as a person.

When we say no, or wait

You can take the course also when you are feeling low. Many people come here after a crisis in their life or something hard they have been through, or because they have felt lost and drained for a long time, and that is not what we mean when we say no. What we mean are situations where you need healthcare, and where a week this intensive would be the wrong thing. Risk of psychosis is one of them, and so are concrete thoughts of taking your own life and an ongoing dependency. Then we say no, and we also tell you where you can turn instead.

Sometimes the answer is wait rather than no. It may be that you are in the middle of a psychiatric assessment, or that you have only just started a new medication. Then it is the timing that is wrong, not the course, and you are welcome back later on.

This is how we think in the conversation, not a list for you to test yourself against. If you are sitting with this page and recognise yourself in something, but are not sure whether it really applies to you, ring us and ask rather than guess. That is exactly what the conversation is for.

What is in place during the week

The week is intensive, but can still be adapted to individual needs. The leaders see how each person is doing and shape the work around that, so two participants can attend the same week and still go through it quite differently. If you arrive with little to spare, perhaps because you have been tired for a long time or are afraid of burning out again, that is something we take into account from the start rather than once it shows. We have people on the team who have worked with severe exhaustion and burnout for decades. We treat nothing, but we do know how a week can be arranged so that it becomes possible.

The group leaders are with you all week and move between the smaller groups, and that is on purpose. They are different as people and know different things, so over the week you get to meet several of them rather than one. Around them there are assistants, and there is always someone on the staff on call, at night as well.

A doctor is available to us by phone during the week, if something needs assessing or someone needs referring on. The doctor does not treat anyone on site.

The week asks a lot of you emotionally, and that is the intention. Something becoming difficult does not mean that anything has gone wrong, but you should never have to face it alone, and that is why there are so many of us around you.

Nothing during the week is compulsory. If you hesitate, that stands, and if you say no, that stands. It is the ground for everything else we do. We know how vulnerable a person can be, and your path is your own.

If a feeling becomes too strong

The week asks a lot of you emotionally, and that is the point. Grief, anger or fear sometimes come on more strongly than anyone expected, and that does not mean something has gone wrong with you or with the week. Strong feelings are not dangerous in themselves, and we do not treat them as something to be pushed back down.

What you notice in practice is that somebody is there. If something becomes too much, one of us stays with you, at your pace, until you feel the ground under your feet again. You get support in it, and if you say stop, that is that.

Telling a strong feeling apart from someone beginning to lose contact with the room is something the course leader has done for many years, and that difference decides what happens next. A strong feeling is allowed the space it needs, with someone beside you. If someone does lose contact, we stop instead, and stay until she is back in something safe.

If something needs more than we can give, it is the course leader who decides that, and who makes sure you get help in the right place.

What is said in the room stays there

What you tell us during the week stays there. It is an agreement everyone in the group makes with one another, and it applies to us on the staff just as much. None of us gets in touch with you afterwards, apart from the follow-up call we have agreed on, and we do not seek out participants on social media. If you want contact with one of us, you are the one who makes it, and then you are welcome.

After you have gone home

A few days after you have come home, one of the group or course leaders rings you and asks how you are doing. It is included, and you do not need to ask for it.

What a week sets in motion needs weeks and months to settle, and none of us expects you to have "resolved" anything by the time you travel home. We never say the course works that way. What happens next, with the evening group, the community evenings and coming home, is on the page After the course.

Where the line is

Vitalisera is not healthcare. We make no diagnoses, we do not treat individual conditions or dependency, and we do not replace the healthcare contact you already have. If you have a doctor or a therapist, you keep them. What we do rests on a therapeutic foundation, and those who lead the week have therapeutic training, though of different kinds, and you will find each person under Who we are. It is still about your own experience and not about treatment. There is more about that on the page What we rest on.

If you need healthcare, then healthcare is where you should turn, and that is not a lesser path than this one, only a different one, for a different need.