Half/Full Day
Intensive Therapy

An immersive therapy experience—without the weekly commitment.

Has anyone said to you, "maybe you should talk to someone?"

The truth is: "talk" therapy has very little effect on traumatic memory, emotional reactivity, and long-held behavioralpatterns.

Half- and Full-Day Intensives are extended sessions designed to help you get more out of therapy.

Tailored to your needs, an Intensive condenses weeks—perhaps months—of therapy into 3-5 hours.

Call to Schedule

Why choose an intensive experience?

Short on time
Many of our clients want to try therapy, but can't meet the routine time-commitment.

An intensive allows you to do targeted work without longterm commitment.

To supplement great therapy
Some intensive clients have a great relationship with a therapist already. They're feeling seen and heard, learning a lot about themselves, and letting go of habits they no longer need, but they seek an intensive for something that their primary therapy hasn't changed.

To encounter multiple modalities in one visit
Most clients come to us for expert-level Brainspotting experience, which we also offer our weekly/traditional therapy clients. Intensives offer the luxury of time so that we can combine Brainspotting with a variety of other approaches like parts-work, mindfulness, grounding, and integration techniques.

Traditional therapy wasn't enough
It's not you. Most talk therapies access only the top front part of the brain where we learn, problem solve, think creatively, apply understanding, and...well...talk. An intensive offers expanded time to access various clinical interventions known to make changes at a deeper level—beyond "mind over matter," past what you know but can't do—somewhere hiding in the midbrain where alarm bells ring, emotion surges, memory is filtered and stored, and where every basic human survival instinct is born.

Choosing the Target

Targets

Specific event
Most of our direct-to-Intensive clients come to us with a specific traumatic event or time period in mind: an accident, community violence, medical procedure, divorce, death of a loved one.

With a sub-specialty in perinatal mental health and reproductive trauma, many are parents who have experienced childbirth complications such as:
Infertility
Perinatal loss
Traumatic birth
NICU stay

Persistent feeling or behavior
Repeating the same old patterns. A sense of guilt, worthlessness, grief, or fear. Fighting with your partner or children. Choosing the wrong types of friends. Bad dreams. People-pleasing. Over-functioning to take care of others while you suffer alone. An awful feeling you can't quite name.

Something private or confidential
Some clients are barred by an employer, legal proceding, ethical code, or governing authority from disclosing information that may also be incredibly troubling to them. Additionally, many survivors of life-threatening or prolonged traumatic experiences find that talking about the experience only makes them feel worse. Although you're welcome to share as much or as little about your target as you'd like, we don't need the details. Guided by your nervous system's natural ability to regulate and self-heal, we'll teach you how to trust it knows what to do.

Not sure?
It's not uncommon for clients to say they've known they needed help for a long time but didn't know where to start, didn't feel worthy of healing, or thought they were "too far gone" for therapy to help. There might not be a specific event that stands out to you. You don't need to know why you feel the way you do. We can target the feeling itself rather than a memory.

How many visits?

We wish we knew the magic number
Single event traumas can resolve in as little as 1 visit. Prior years of prolonged stress or previous traumatic events

If you're already in therapy

Intensives enhance your overall outcome
Let's say you want to let go of trauma but your primary therapy focuses on a different goal (addiction, OCD, mood maintenance, self-confidence, relationships, or something else). We can work in tandem, with separate paths and purposes.

On the other hand, the intensive's goal can also mirror your primary therapy goal. You might try an intensive when something feels stuck: cravings haven't decreased, nightmares persist, you know how to spot a 🚩 relationship yet choose it anyway. You've done a TON of hard work, but a pesky something stands in the way of feeling resolved. Our process targets the roots where talk-therapy cannot reach.

Does that sound like you?

You may have:

Started and stopped therapy multiple times.
Experienced shutdown or dissociation in session.
Felt worse when telling others (even a therapist) your story

But internally:

You feel stuck
You intellectually understand your trauma but don’t feel resolved.
Weekly therapy feels slow or fragmented.
You want meaningful progress without years of weekly sessions.

You don’t have to fear what’s inside — the capacity to heal is there as well.

Afterward

Although your body may be somewhat still during a intensive, your brain is doing a lot of work. In fact, the most common report we hear is that our clients are sleepy!

Although we can't predict how you will feel when you leave, we can prepare.

Intensive day is best reserved for rest, hydration, and minimal responsibilities.

Our primary intensive modality is Brainspotting, which many describe as starting an engine that continues running in the background after the session ends. That could feel like thinking about the intensive session itself, recalling what you experienced or learned, wondering about related topics or feelings, mood swings, vivid dreams, brain fog, short-term changes in sleep or eating habits, or fatigue.

In the days and weeks that follow, you may notice yourself recalling memories differently than before, interacting differently with others, experiencing dreams, and engaging in new behaviors. Sometimes the new behaviors aren't the ones you targeted, yet welcome changes nonetheless. Some clients notice the changes, while others don't realize it until someone else points it out.
We’ll meet online 1–2 weeks later to reflect on what unfolded in and after the Intensive, and to plan next steps.

“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through… But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in.”
- Haruki Murakami

Where To Begin

Like all therapy, Intensive work begins with an initial assessment to determine if this format is best for you.

When you call, we'll briefly discuss your interest in a half- or full-day therapy intensive. Once we've agreed to proceed, we'll:

1. Schedule your initial telehealth visit, the Intensive date, and our follow-up telehealth session.

2. Complete intake paperwork and set up payment.

3. Receive a confirmation email with your link for attending the initial session, and an Intensive Check List to help you prepare.