Thoughts on EMDR Intensives
EMDR Intensive Experiment – Summer 2021
EMDR Intensives are extended therapy sessions, typically two to three hours long where we can make accelerated progress toward a specific therapy goal using EMDR. Read more in depth about EMDR Intensive Programs that I offer here.
While it has been a goal of mine for a long time to begin offering EMDR Intensive Programs, I decided to implement it and make it happen this year. At the beginning of summer 2021 my goal was to book ONE EMDR Intensive appointment. Yes, small goal… ONE intensive for the entire summer.
I have been blown away at both the light speed progress EMDR intensives have enabled and at prospective clients willingness to dive deep with me so quickly.
Goal Accomplished!
This summer I have surpassed my tiny goal of 1 EMDR intensive session and have held 14 EMDR intensive sessions. FOURTEEN! Reflecting back on these EMDR intensive sessions, there were a few things in common.
1) Every single person felt better when they left my office than when they came in. Even if the work was not complete, substantial progress was made and there was a significant reduction in distress about the trauma we focused on.
2) The longer sessions (2-3 hours vs. 1 hour) followed a very natural arc and came to a more intuitive place to pause. This happens some in 1 hour EMDR sessions, but often we are trying to find the best place to stop and feel like we’re truncating the brain’s progress due to time constraints.
3) Both the client and I felt very positive about the progress we made during the session by the end of that day’s intensive. My favorite analogy here is that it feels like we were running a marathon and crossed the finish line.
My Takeaways
While I was optimistic and thought that offering EMDR intensive programs would be a more productive and efficient way to bring clients relief faster, my expectations were blown away. In hours we healed trauma that would have taken weeks to months of therapy in the traditional one hour appointment framework.
I am 1,000% continuing to offer EMDR Intensive Programs and continuing to work on refining my process as the therapist with them. If you are a fellow EMDR therapist I encourage you to experiment with offering EMDR intensives. If you’d like support with how to do that, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. If you are a person seeking EMDR therapy, I highly recommend creating space for an amazing transformation to happen by participating in an EMDR intensive program.