Intensive EMDR therapy - Feel better faster and save money

EMDR therapy is grounded in extensive research. It is recommended as an effective treatment for trauma by numerous organizations, including the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies and the World Health Organization.

 Intensive EMDR therapy is an accelerated therapy approach, usually conducted over several longer sessions close together.

 Intensive EMDR therapy offers several additional benefits to regular EMDR.

 1.      It is more a potent and effective means of promoting healing and recovery.

 The condensed format facilitates quicker progress, enabling you to access and process challenging emotions more efficiently. Learn more here and here.

 2.      Less time spent in therapy.

 Unlike ongoing weekly or fortnightly type sessions, intensive EMDR provides a more immersive and focused approach, allowing people to delve deeply into processing without the lengthy intervals between sessions and the distraction of everyday life and stressors.

Reliable improvement in symptoms can be achieved in a very short time frame. Learn more here.

3.      Less money spent on therapy.

The economy of intensive EMDR is compelling.

An intensive format may decrease treatment time, because much less time is spent on:

a) Checking in at the beginning of each session, getting updates from the previous session.

b) Addressing current crises and concerns. Often life gets in the way of good productive therapy.

c) Focusing on stabilizing and coping skills before working on the issue (which can take weeks/months)

d) Time spent on finishing up and regaining composure at the end of each session.

 In many ways, an intensive hour has about double the treatment value of standard treatment hours because there is no time lost checking in, updating, setting up, and ending sessions, which in reality can take up as much of half a standard session.

 Learn more here.

 4.      It is safe and effective.

An intensive program using EMDR therapy is a potentially safe and effective treatment alternative for complex PTSD and relational trauma. Learn more here and here.

Other things to consider

 Most EMDR intensives usually require additional therapy skills and expertise. Some common approaches are attachment informed EMDR, ego-state therapy, internal family systems and resource therapy. Therapists may also combine other therapies like schema therapy, somatic therapies and polyvagal approaches. A good intensive offering will typically include more than basic EMDR.

 I don’t have a specific memory to work on

 You don’t need to have a specific memory or memories that you want to work on. You might have a problem, pattern or theme that you want to address. Your therapist can help you work out what to focus on. It is also possible to work on pre-verbal trauma, chronic stress and trauma, and events that you do not have an autobiographical memory of. Trauma is stored in the body and there is usually a way to work out where to focus the EMDR work.