The Psychodrama Retreat
There is a particular kind of change that needs more than an hour.
Most of the work I do with people happens in fifty-minute sessions, and a great deal is possible in fifty minutes. But some things need room — a longer runway, a group around you, and enough time that you stop performing and start actually being in it. That’s what a day retreat is for.
From October, The Coolum Institute runs one Sunday a month.
The day
Ten in the morning until four in the afternoon, at the Coolum Lions Club on Russell Street. Eight people. Lunch together in the middle. Three hundred dollars, which includes the lunch and everything else — there’s nothing else to buy.
We work with psychodrama and action methods: putting the thing you’re carrying out into the room where it can be seen, looked at from the outside, and tried differently. Underneath it sits the framework I’ve spent years developing — metacognition, metaxis, meta-emotion, the three moves that let a person step out of their own story long enough to change it. You won’t need the vocabulary. You’ll just do the work.
No acting. No performing. Nothing you can fail at.
By four o’clock people generally look different from how they looked at ten. That is not a promise, but it is what tends to happen.
How you get a seat
You can’t book one, and that’s deliberate.
Seats at the Retreat are offered by invitation, to people who’ve come along to the free Psychodrama Club on Monday evenings and are ready for a longer day. A group of eight doing deep work together needs to be composed rather than assembled — I need to know who’s in the room, and you deserve to be there with people who are ready for it too.
So the door is the Club: every Monday, 6:30–8:30pm at the Coolum Lions Club, free, no experience needed. Come along, see how the work feels, and if it’s yours, we’ll talk about the Retreat.
Dates
- Sunday 18 October 2026
- Sunday 22 November 2026
- Sunday 13 December 2026
All 10am–4pm, Coolum Lions Club, 15 Russell St, Coolum Beach.
Coming from further away
A one-day retreat is easier to reach than it sounds. People drive up from Brisbane, and some fly in. If you’re coming from out of town, come the Saturday — there’s plenty in Coolum to make an evening of, and I’m happy to point you at somewhere to stay so the Sunday feels like the retreat it is rather than a long drive with a workshop in the middle.
Dr Patrick Pheasant is Founder & Principal Counsellor of The Coolum Institute at Coolum Beach — ACA Registered Counsellor and PACFA Certified Practising Counsellor.
