EMDR Intensives
While weekly EMDR therapy can lead to meaningful change for many clients, sometimes the pace of 55 minutes a week can feel like it’s just not providing the shift and relief at the pace they want. For others, it can just be easier to set aside a full day, or maybe even a few days, than it is to fit this deep therapeutic work in-between all of life's daily demands and events.There are a few important conversations we will have before an intensive. The first step is for us to meet for a 45 minute consultation to explore if this is the right fit for you. During this conversation I’ll ask about medications, your previous and current therapy experiences and assess for anything that could blur this focused work, like dissociation. We might still move forward with an intensive, but knowing the landscape will give us an idea of how we each need to prepare.
If an intensive isn’t the right step for you right now, we can identify other options, including weekly EMDR for a little while first. Also, EMDR on a weekly basis can just be a better fit for people for so many reasons.
If we determine that an Intensive is the right step for you, we’ll schedule your Planning Session, and Intensive Dates.
Planning Session:
This is a 2 hour session that happens no more than a week before your intensive. We will identify and map out those experiences that still just feel too close to the surface, and negatively affect the shape you take in your daily life. We put words to the negative beliefs that you might be carrying around since those events, as a way to make sense of the world and what happened.
Some common negative beliefs are:
I’m not important/ I don’t matter
I’m not safe
I have to be perfect
I can’t trust others
I’m bad
I deserved what happened to me
I’m responsible for others emotions
The other side of the experiences that teach us we aren’t fully safe, or accepted as we are, can also teach us that it’s not safe to feel relaxed and at peace. We’ll spend some time building your comfort with being at ease, and being able to let your guard down so that we can get into the work of reprocessing. During our planning session we will identify and develop multiple internal resources that can ensure that we aren’t sending you back down those old hallways alone, again. We want to be sure that this time you can feel supported.
Before an Intensive
We will process for 4-6 hours to resolve goals we have collaboratively identified in our planning session. During this stretch we aren’t just in full crescendo mode the whole time. We will move through the rise and resolution of emotions, and experiences. You will be able to pause and nourish and hydrate yourself at a pace that feels doable for you, maybe include movement, a walk outside, some drawing or painting. We will plan for whatever you need. On a 6 hour day, we’ll also pause for a lunch break (lunch provided).
During an Intensive
Who Can Benefit from an Intensive?
You do NOT have to meet criteria for PTSD to benefit from an EMDR Intensive. This modality can help people move on from those subtle, less clear cut experiences that can eat away at a person's developmental experience, leaving them feeling less than whole, but without a Lifetime Movie scene they can point to. Of course we can also work through any “big T” Traumatic events as well.
An EMDR Intensive can be helpful to anyone who feels like they keep getting blocked from new opportunities, experiences or relationships, with others or self, by old, tired scripts. People who find themselves in the middle of defensiveness, or reacting in other ways that don’t reflect their current values, or hopes for themselves can benefit from this work.
It is important that you can abstain from any psychoactive substances like alcohol, cannabis and benzodiazepines for at least 24 hours before, and ideally after EMDR processing. There is no judgement here, EMDR just doesn’t work if we can’t get full activation of your emotional state.
Expectations:
How many targets we get through depends on who you are, how you process, and how things flow. There isn’t an ideal, or “should” that exists here. If we are only able to get through 1 target in a day, we are still likely making quicker progress than if we met for a standard 55 minutes per week for a month.
Even after full resolution of all of your targets, life isn’t going to be perfect and easy breezy. There will still be plenty of challenges, but I can say, from being on both sides of the therapy room, that your ability to see what is actually happening in front of you without the lens of past experiences distorting things will make navigating the present and future much easier. After doing EMDR work, we are not reacting to past threats, and we are able to see the very real good things in front of us. Being able to fully experience the good things in front of us adds to our resilience to better navigate the present and the future.
An EMDR Intensive is NOT a replacement for a higher level of care. If it is clinically indicated that you attend an IOP or PHP, and EMDR Intensive is not going to replace that. An EMDR Intensive fact requires a high level of stability.
Cost & Other Considerations:
4 Hour Intensive: $1,350
6 Hour Intensive: $1,800
2 Days at 5 hours: $2,400
Includes:
2 hour Planning Meeting
Consultation with primary therapist and med prescriber
1 hour follow up session with client
My planning time
The actual 4 or 6 hours of our processing day(s)
There are many pros and cons to an Intensive. If you’d like to talk about what might be right for you and your goals, reach out!
