EMDR Intensives

What is an intensive?

EMDR already accelerates progress in therapy. Because EMDR facilitates connection between trauma memory networks and adaptive information, it can move much more rapidly than talk therapy alone (which yes, is building adaptive information, and yes, talk therapy can connect it to the trauma memory and deeper learning—it just takes a long period of time). An EMDR intensive is where a therapist and a client essentially make this already accelerated processing even more efficient by diving in for hours at a time instead of one hour or 90 minutes at a time.

The really nice thing about an intensive is that we can safely spend several hours diving deep into a trauma, allowing ample time for stabilization and grounding, interweaves, and parts work along the way. While this is also done in typical 55 minute sessions, having several hours at a time increases safety to access deeper and more threatening material. We can also access threatening material in an hour, do partial processing, and then place that memory back in the EMDR container. And in an intensive we can often go ahead and complete that processing.

My philosophy on intensives is in contrast to some other therapists who offer intensives. I see some pretty optimistic marketing out there, and some relatively high pricing. I have mixed emotions, because I think therapists should absolutely “charge what they're worth” and also I think therapy should be more accessible. I also feel protective about offering intensives, because I feel a keen responsibility for keeping my clients safe while processing. If I know you, and I know how resourced (read: safe to process) you are, that lets me know if I can offer an intensive with some expectation of success. I'm not about saying, “pay me for three hours or six hours and let's just see if it works.” Usually I find that after your initial assessment and a couple processing sessions, I have a pretty good idea of whether an intensive is going to be helpful.

I'm also aware that some people need to go really slowly even when they may not want to. It can feel like a part of you wants to just “get it over with,” and yet anytime we get into processing you're suddenly at 10/10 distress, or totally and completely numb or floaty. That's information that tells us we need to a) potentially use modified protocols, and b) do a lot more resourcing and grounding before we even start. I'm not going to say “let's do an intensive!” if we're processing and we go immediately outside your window of tolerance.

So that said, if you feel an intensive may be something you'd want, I'd love to meet you and figure out what your resourcing is like, what your processing is like, and whether we can potentially do this. Either way, I'm definitely happy to help with “normal” EMDR!

Here are my fees for intensives. They are higher fees than my normal rate, because usually I offer an intensive on a day that I don't normally work—this increased fee accounts for me getting childcare for my small kiddo. Therapists justify higher rates for intensives because from their perspective more work goes in—to me it's the same effective strategies for resourcing and processing that I do all day. I'm just doing it for six hours with you vs. six hours with six different people.

My rate for three hours is $485.
My rate for six hours is $960.

We can talk(?) about doing a two-day intensive and having twelve hours of processing, and as that cuts more into my own resourcing time to be a human who is not a therapist, and to do my own stress reduction, that would need to be a conversation.

Typically if we do six hours I'll have us break for thirty minutes or so in the middle so we can eat lunch on our own. I need to eat and take a break or I won't be my best self to help you. So we can do 8-11 and 11:30-2:30 or 9-12 and 12:30-3:30.

And, for transparency, this doesn't account for the first assessment session ($160) and two “normal” EMDR sessions ($135 each) ahead of time. So in total, if you are wanting a three hour intensive including the initial appointments, it will be $915 (so five hours total of processing and resourcing), and for six hours it will be $1390 (so eight hours total of processing and resourcing). If you Google “EMDR intensive pricing” I hope you will find that this pricing is very fair and may even include more than some others include.

Goforth Counseling Services provides EMDR intensives in Huntersville, NC.