Why the Retreat in Nine Perfect Strangers Season 2 Represents Everything You Should Avoid in a Retreat
For me, retreats should be places of healing, reflection, and genuine personal growth. When I watched Nine Perfect Strangers season 2, I couldn’t help but think: this is a masterclass in what not to look for. The fictional retreat is packed with red flags—and I’ve pulled out nine that, in real life, would make me walk away fast.
1. Charismatic Leaders Who Demand Total Obedience
What stood out to me straight away was the pressure to surrender to one person’s authority. For me, a healthy retreat should empower, not create dependency on a leader’s personality or power. If it feels cult-like, that’s my cue to leave.
2. Secretive or Extreme Methods
I noticed participants being exposed to practices without full transparency, and often against their better judgment. Personally, I’d never join a retreat unless I have some kind of idea of what was involved – without wishing to lose some of the joy of uncertainty. Any place that relies on secrecy or shock tactics is a no from me.
3. Blurred Boundaries and Ethics
The facilitators in the show get far too entangled in people’s struggles. I value retreats that hold strong professional boundaries; they’re what make a space feel safe and respectful.
4. One-Size-Fits-All Healing
Watching everyone pushed through the same intense processes, regardless of their history, really stood out to me as a problem. Healing is so personal. For me, a good retreat recognises that and honours each person’s pace and needs.
5. Quick-Fix Promises
The seductive promise of instant transformation might work in fiction, but I know from experience it doesn’t in real life. Growth takes time, integration, and gentleness. Any retreat offering instant enlightenment would instantly lose my trust.
6. Isolation and Pressure
In the series, participants are cut off from the outside world with little room to say no. I actually love the idea of unplugging, but only when it’s a choice. For me, a safe retreat must give participants freedom, not take it away.
7. Emotional Manipulation
Whilst it makes for good drama, guilt and shame were used to keep people compliant. For me, a genuine retreat supports autonomy and emotional safety—it never exploits vulnerability.
8. Lack of Support for Integration
I found it striking how intense experiences were left hanging, with no real guidance for participants afterwards. Integration is everything. Without it, insights just get lost—or worse, they can feel destabilising.
9. Focus on Drama over Healing
Ultimately, the retreat on screen was driven more by spectacle and conflict than by real growth. For me, the best retreats are about creating gentle, reflective, and truly supportive environments. And Masha’s approach to psychedelics – that’s another nine red flags and watch this space for further reflections on this.
9 Signs You’re in a Retreat That Truly Honours You
Eppie Wells, Retreat leader
1. Presence and Care from the Leader
You deserve a retreat leader who can hold all parts of you—the shining, the struggling, and the unspoken—with attention, warmth, and steadiness. As Simon Yugler writes, “Creating intentional space is an art that has everything to do with the presence of the person holding it…” Unlike Masha, a good retreat leader will meet and welcome you at the door.
2. Safety for Inner Exploration
A retreat should provide emotional and physical safety, giving you the freedom to explore inner states without fear, judgment, or pressure. It’s helpful if the leader has training in holding people’s troubles and traumas, such as a counsellor or psychotherapist.
3. Flexibility and Individual Respect
Healing is not one-size-fits-all. Look for retreats that honour your pace, needs, and readiness, allowing each participant to engage authentically.
4. Integration Support
True growth happens when experiences are integrated. A good retreat offers guidance and reflection to help you bring insights into everyday life.
5. Attunement to Group Dynamics
The facilitator needs to be responsive to the group, noticing shifts in energy, tension, or need, and adjusting the experience to maintain care and connection. yet also recognising their own humanity and flaws and own when they don’t get things just right.
6. Depth Beyond Words
While conversation is valuable, the retreat should also honour non-verbal, somatic, or altered states of consciousness; breath, movement, meditation, or inner work – to connect more deeply to the self.
7. Professional Integrity and Ethics
A retreat leader grounded in supervision, training, and reflective practice ensures ethical boundaries, accountability, and a trustworthy container for participants.
8. Openness, Transparency, and Communication
From the outset, a clear outline of the retreat’s vision, plan, and practices sets expectations and builds trust for both participants and the team.
9. Invitation to Empowerment, Not Fixing
The best retreats don’t “fix” you—they invite you to discover your own power-from-within. This reflects Carl Rogers’ principles of empathy, unconditional positive regard, and congruence, supporting each participant to explore safely, with curiosity and self-compassion.
Eppie Wells is a Pluralistic Person-Centred Psychotherapist, Breathworker and Brainspotting Consultant who also runs Tekifa breathwork and Brainspotting Retreats, including retreats for therapists and psychotherapists. She runs a private practice in Tunbridge Wells and On-line
