Extended sessions allow us to do a lot of work in a compacted period of time.

It can sometimes be difficult to attend weekly therapy sessions for myriad reasons. Sometimes it’s as simple as, “I can block time out from work for an appointment once a month, but every WEEK? No way.” Or the thought of adding yet another weekly commitment amidst already overloaded schedules feels more overwhelming than supportive.

Sometimes the things we want to work on in therapy are so complex and painful, it feels impossible to imagine opening them again and again every week, then trying to pack it up to return to work, parenting, life.

Sometimes you just want to feel better, faster.

In a therapy intensive, we compact multiple sessions into one or two days, reducing the amount of time spent opening and closing multiple weekly sessions, thereby dramatically increasing the percentage of our time together spent on active therapeutic work and accelerating your progress and healing.

Benefits of the intensive model:

• Our time together is more focused. While orientation and catch up are an important part of the weekly model, it takes up proportionally less of an intensive session so more of your time is spent focusing on what you want to work on.

• We can often get through a significant piece of work. While weekly sessions require opening and closing a piece of work over a period of weeks or months, intensives allow us plenty of time needed to make significant progress in one session.

• More time to allow deep processing. In 50 minute sessions, the clinician sometimes needs to strategically limit depth of processing if the content might be too difficult to safely close up within the limits of the session (eg we hit the deep work with only 15 minutes left in session and I need to pull you back a bit so you don’t leave session with difficult content left wide open). We do not have this limitation in an intensive, as we have plenty of time to allow whatever processing needs to happen.

• In treatment, sometimes symptoms feel a little worse before they get better. Making more progress in one intensive reduces this part of the treatment process.

  One more note: Some folks feel intimidated by the idea of extended sessions. My priority as a clinician is always on making the process feel sustainable for you and I have a lot of strategies for this. I do not see any value in pushing you into overwhelm or retraumatization. So while intensives are a lot of work and you can expect to feel tired afterward, it should overall be a positive experience and my goal is for you leave the intensive feeling better.

What to expect from an intensive:

1. For new clients only, I send a couple of questionnaires and screenings to be completed by you before we meet. These give me some initial information to focus our initial visit. We then schedule an hour long assessment/planning appointment to get a clearer picture of history and to identify targets we will work on in the intensive. Existing clients will have already completed this and we can schedule the intensive session directly.

2. We schedule the intensive. Options for scheduling are half day (4 hours), full day (6 hours), or two days (12 hours). In an intensive, I will interweave EMDR, Brainspotting, Internal Family Systems and Somatic Experiencing to support your processing and healing. Breaks are integrated as needed and a lunch break is included in full day sessions.

3. We schedule a follow up 50 minute session for integration or intensive for continued processing within a month.

Intensive session pricing:

• Initial hour long intake: $250

• Half-day intensive (4 hours): $1,200

• Full-day intensive (6 hours): $1,800

• Two-day intensive (12 hours): $3,600