EMDR intensives are specialized treatment plans for healing that give you all of the benefits of EMDR therapy condensed into 3-5 days of targeted support. This model is an excellent supplement to the traditional 45-60 minute session and offers numerous benefits:

• Accelerated Healing: Intensive sessions allow for deeper and more sustained therapeutic work, often leading to faster progress.
• Reduced Overall Therapy Time: With concentrated effort, you may achieve your therapeutic goals in a shorter overall time frame.
• Focused and Personalized: Intensive sessions are tailored to your unique needs, allowing for a highly individualized approach.
• Deeper Connections: Extended sessions foster a stronger therapeutic relationship and a more profound connection with the healing process.

If you’ve been in therapy and value the insights it brings but still feel stuck—like something just isn’t clicking fast enough—you’re probably right AND you’re not alone. Here’s why an EMDR Intensive might be the solution you’ve been looking for:

1. Insight alone isn’t enough.
   Many people find that traditional therapy gives them deep insight into their issues, but that insight doesn’t always lead to change. Why? Because while understanding why you’re struggling is important, it doesn’t always update the emotional and physical reactions that keep you feeling stuck.
2. Therapy on your lunch break isn’t cutting it.
   Picture this: You head to therapy during your lunch break, and just as you’re getting into the good stuff—bam! Time’s up. You feel stressed out, emotionally drained, and now you’ve got to walk back into work and deal with a supervisor who has no idea you’re paying for therapy to heal from the stress they cause in the first place. (It’s okay to laugh; we get it!)
3. 60-minute sessions aren’t designed for deep healing.
   Standard therapy sessions are often 60 minutes because that’s what insurance companies like, but deep healing isn’t confined to an hour. Longer, focused sessions allow for the accelerated results that many people want and need to truly move forward.
4. Therapists aren’t at fault—the system is.
   Many therapists are doing great work, but the system is broken. Insurance companies dictate short, fragmented sessions, leaving little time for integrated therapy that follows what the brain really needs to heal. What’s worse, clinical programs don’t often train therapists on how to provide healing that goes deeper than gaining insight or coping skills. As a result, therapist is required to seek out costly, specialized training in order to be more effective–which is not always accessible for therapists whose income is often limited by meager insurance reimbursement rates.

Who is an Ideal candidate for EMDR Intensives?

Our EMDR intensives are designed for individuals who are ready to make significant progress in their healing journey. You might be an ideal candidate for EMDR intensives if:

• You Have a Busy Schedule: Intensives can be more accommodating for those with demanding schedules who prefer to dedicate specific periods to their healing. We offer 90 minute, half day, and 3-day programs to address your needs.
• You’re Facing Specific Issues: If you have targeted concerns or specific issues you want to address comprehensively, EMDR intensives can provide the necessary focus.
• You’ve Experienced Trauma: Whether it’s a single event or complex, ongoing trauma, EMDR can help process and integrate these experiences in an intensive format, meaning you can experience relief
• You’re Stuck in Traditional Therapy: If you feel like traditional weekly sessions aren’t moving you forward quickly enough, an intensive might be the catalyst you need. Plus you don’t have to fire your therapist! Many individuals receive adjunct therapy intensives, allowing you to keep your primary therapy while using intensives to address a specific goal or aspect of your healing.

Why EMDR Intensives Work: A Holistic Approach to Healing

An EMDR intensive isn’t just about quick fixes. It’s about getting to the root causes of your challenges so you can make meaningful, lasting changes in your life. Here’s what makes it different:

• Comprehensive assessment: You’ll go through a thorough evaluation to create a targeted plan that addresses the challenges causing the biggest disruption in your life—not just offering coping skills for the daily whirlwind.
• Integrated therapy: EMDR works by addressing all aspects of memory (thoughts, images, emotions, body sensations), which is key to updating the emotional and physical responses that control your reactions when you’re stressed or triggered.
• Focused, extended sessions: Unlike standard therapy sessions, which often end right when you’re getting to the core of your problem, EMDR intensives offer longer sessions to deeply process and integrate your healing, leaving you with a sense of closure after each step.

Evidence Base: Research in support of EMDR Intensives

• Intensive application of trauma-focused therapy seems to be well tolerated in patients with PTSD, enabling faster symptom reduction with similar, or even better, results, while reducing the risk that patients drop out prematurely. Learn more here and here. 
• Intensive EMDR treatment is feasible and is indicative of reliable improvement in PTSD symptoms in a very short time frame. Learn more here. 
• An intensive program using EMDR therapy is a potentially safe and effective treatment alternative for complex PTSD. Learn more here. 
• The economy is compelling: even compared to other trauma therapy, the intensive format may decrease treatment time, because of time not spent on
  • a) checking in at the beginning of each session,
  • b) addressing current crises and concerns,
  • c) focusing on stabilizing and coping skills that the client won’t need after trauma healing, or
  • d) assisting the client in regaining composure at the end of the session.
  • Learn more here.