Who this retreat is for

This retreat is built for active and retired first responders whose work has caught up with them. Some people arrive after a single call that will not let go, and others arrive after twenty years of calls that never had anywhere to land. Both belong here, and the treatment looks different for each.

We work with firefighters and wildland crews, police officers and deputies, paramedics and EMTs, dispatchers, and corrections officers. We also work with responders whose difficulty is not a diagnosis at all but a steady sense that they are no longer the person their family recognizes. You do not need a diagnosis to come here, and you do not need to be in crisis. Many of the people we treat are still working full shifts and performing well, which is often the very thing that makes the situation so hard to name out loud.

If you are actively suicidal or in medical withdrawal, an intensive retreat is not the right level of care for you right now, and we will help you find the setting that is.

What makes this different from a weekend program

Most programs marketed to first responders run three or four days, which is long enough to feel something and rarely long enough to change anything. Our intensives run six to twenty one days, and the length is set by what your treatment actually requires rather than by what fits a weekend.

We cap the property at eight people, and clinical cohorts are four or fewer. That is a deliberate constraint rather than a scheduling accident. Trauma work in a room of twelve turns into education, and education is not what you came for. In a group of four, the clinician can follow what is happening in your nervous system in real time instead of managing a room.

You are also treated by a team rather than by one therapist, and over the course of an intensive you will work with more than one clinician. That structure is why we can move faster than weekly outpatient therapy without cutting anything short, and it is why the work does not stall when one approach turns out not to be the right fit for you.

The clinicians who will be treating you

Our clinicians have years of experience treating first responders specifically, which is a narrower claim than it sounds and a more useful one. Cultural competence with this population is not something a therapist picks up in a weekend training. It is understanding why you will not say certain things out loud, why humor arrives exactly when the subject gets close, why the word victim ends a conversation, and why you have already decided how much you are going to tell us before you walk through the door.

The practical result is that you will not spend your first three days explaining your job. That time goes into the work instead, which is a meaningful share of a six day intensive.

Certifications and credentials

Certification carries more weight in this field than it should have to, because anyone can call a program a retreat and very few of the people doing so are accountable to anyone.

The Resiliency Co. holds California Department of Health Care Services certification number 450024BP, and we are a contracted provider for CAL FIRE personnel under an agreement with the State of California. Neither of those is something a program can simply assert about itself, which is the reason they are worth naming.

Your clinical work here is delivered by licensed clinicians rather than by coaches, facilitators or technicians, which is a real distinction in a field where a great deal of what is sold as a retreat involves no licensed clinical care at all. Our founder, Jill Clark, and our Clinical Director, Candyce Braker, are both master's level licensed Marriage and Family Therapists, holding license numbers 106007 and 119076, and those numbers are published on our team page rather than left vague.

What the days actually look like

Treatment begins early rather than after a long stabilization period. ART, an evidence based bilateral stimulation approach, generally begins within the first few days, and it sometimes starts with physical sensation rather than with images or narrative, because the body often has more to say about what happened than the story does.

From there the days combine clinical sessions with nervous system work in The Resiliency Lab. Sessions include ART, EMDR, and trauma informed individual and group work. The Lab adds neurofeedback, PEMF, red light therapy, BrainTap, vagus nerve stimulation, haptic and vibration work, and somatic stretching. Alongside the clinical hours there is nutrition and gut health education, and skills work covering boundaries, relational communication, and identifying and expressing emotion, because the responders who do best are the ones who go home with something to practice rather than only something to remember.

There is also time outside, time to sleep, and time that is not scheduled at all. Recovery is not a productivity exercise, and a nervous system that never gets a quiet hour does not consolidate anything it learned. For many people the work also reaches questions of identity and meaning, including who they are when they are not on duty and what they are connected to beyond the job, and there is room here for that whether or not faith is part of how you frame it.

Confidentiality and what your department sees

This is the question that stops most responders from calling, so we are going to answer it directly instead of telling you that we are confidential and leaving it at that.

When your department holds a contract with us, what the department receives is confirmation of your attendance dates and nothing more. They do not receive your diagnosis, what you worked on, what you said in a session, or our clinical opinion about how you are doing. That is not a policy we adopted because it sounded good in a brochure, it is the condition that makes the work possible at all, because a responder who believes his chief will read the file does not tell the truth in the room.

A workers compensation claim works the same way. Your adjuster or nurse case manager receives your attendance dates, and they receive your file only if you sign a release authorising it, which is a decision that stays with you.

If there is something specific you need to know before you can say yes to this, ask on the consultation call and you will get a direct answer rather than a reassurance.

How the retreat gets paid for

There are three paths, and most responders qualify for one of them without ever having been told it existed.

Workers compensation covers the intensive in some cases where the psychiatric injury is work related under California Labor Code section 3208.3. We write the request for authorization, and we appeal when a utilization review denies the admission or approves a length of stay that is shorter than the clinical picture calls for. If your request has already been denied, that is not necessarily the end of the conversation.

Department and agency contracts are the second path. We hold a State of California contract for CAL FIRE personnel, and we work with agencies including Sacramento Metro Fire and Roseville Fire. If your department does not yet have an agreement with us, we are glad to speak with your chief or your peer support coordinator directly.

Private pay is the third path, and some responders choose it specifically because it keeps the entire matter their own.

Intensives are priced by the day, and the length we recommend depends on what you are working on. The consultation call gives you a specific figure before you commit to anything, along with an honest read on which of the three paths above is most likely to apply to you.

The work continues after you go home

We measure outcomes, which is not standard practice in this field. We administer the PCL-5, the PHQ-9, and the GAD-7 at intake, at discharge, and again at follow up, and we look at what those scores actually do rather than relying only on how people describe feeling.

Every intensive also includes four clinical aftercare sessions, and family involvement is built into the intensive itself rather than offered as an afterthought once you have already gone home.

Frequently asked questions

How long is the retreat?
Intensives run six to twenty one days. The length is set during your consultation based on what you are working on, and it is not padded to fill a calendar.

How many people will be there?
No more than eight people are on the property at once, and clinical cohorts are four or fewer.

Will my department find out what I talked about?
No. Where your department holds a contract with us, it receives confirmation of your attendance dates and nothing else. Your diagnosis, your sessions and our clinical opinion do not go to your employer.

What does the retreat cost?
Intensives are priced by the day and the total depends on the length we recommend. Most first responders we treat do not pay out of pocket, and the consultation call gives you a specific figure along with which payment path applies to you.

Does workers compensation pay for this?
Often yes, where the psychiatric injury is work related under California Labor Code section 3208.3. We write the request for authorization and we appeal denials, including denials of the length of stay.

Do I need a diagnosis to come?
No. Many of the responders we treat are still working full shifts and would not describe themselves as being in crisis.

Can my spouse be involved?
Yes. Family involvement is part of the intensive itself rather than a separate program you attend afterward.

Where is the retreat?
Redding, California, in Shasta County, roughly one hundred and sixty miles north of Sacramento on Interstate 5.

What if I am still on duty?
Most people coordinate the time through workers compensation, department leave, or their own scheduled time off, and we can talk through which applies to you on the consultation call.

The first step is a conversation, not an admission

On the consultation call we will tell you whether this is the right level of care for you, what length of stay we would recommend, what it would cost, and how it would most likely be paid for. If the answer is that you belong somewhere else, we will tell you that too, and we will help you get there.

Call 530-338-0087 or request a consultation at www.resiliencyco.net.