Personalized EMDR Intensives: A Flexible, Customized Approach to Trauma Therapy
Customized EMDR Intensives in Colorado
EMDR Intensives are a short-term, accelerated form of therapy designed to help you process and resolve difficult experiences in a focused way
But Intensives aren’t just about pushing faster - they’re about creating the right conditions for meaningful healing.
EMDR Intensives bypass the ongoing commitment of weekly therapy over months or years, but they still require a significant commitment. Many people wonder - How do I know if an Intensive is right for me? What if I commit to the process but it’s not a fit?
How EMDR intensives are structured
An EMDR Intensive is a structured, short-term format of EMDR therapy that uses extended sessions to support deeper, more focused trauma processing.
EMDR Intensives involve 5 simple steps, and each one is meant to ensure that what we’re doing is aligned with your goals, and stays on track towards meaningful progress.
Step 1: A complimentary phone or Zoom consultation so that I can hear what you’re looking for help with, see if the short-term accelerated format of an Intensive could be a fit, and answer any questions you have. This step is ordinarily enough for us to know if moving forward makes sense, and if another approach to therapy seems better for your needs I’ll share those recommendations.
Step 2: We’ll meet for a 60 minute intake session to review your history, goals for your Intensive, and make a specific plan for what we’ll process during our extended EMDR sessions. The intake is billed separately, and the fee is applied to any Intensive package you book. This gives us both a chance to make sure we feel good about the plan we create and have confidence it can move you towards your goals before you commit to a bigger investment of time, energy, and finances.
Step 3: Solid preparation helps pave the way for a positive EMDR experience. Our next step is a 60 minute pre-intensive preparation session where you’ll learn how EMDR works, identify and strengthen coping skills, and “practice” with positive resources before opening up difficult memories or experiences.
Step 4: This is where we do the work of reprocessing in extended 3 hour sessions. These sessions can take place over consecutive days, or be spread across different weeks or months. Most Intensives are completed with 2 to 3 extended processing sessions.
Step 5: The Intensive concludes with a post-intensive debrief session. We’ll review your progress, revisit anything that needs further work, and assess if there are any future needs for us to address. Most people are finished with the goals they set out to achieve at this point, but if additional work is desired we’ll create a plan for next steps.
This is the basic structure - but it is highly flexible and can be customized to your specific needs and goals.
How EMDR Intensives can be customized to your specific needs and goals
One of the biggest advantages of EMDR intensives is that they are not one-size-fits-all - they can be fully customized to your goals, schedule, and capacity.
EMDR intensives can be a good fit for people looking for a more focused, personalized approach to trauma therapy. Here are just a few examples of how I’ve adapted Intensives to the individual needs of specific clients…
Extended intake for comfort: For someone who felt a longer intake session was needed to provide enough comfort for opening up, we extended it to 2 hours
Additional preparation sessions: For an individual who wanted to do an Intensive but needed extra preparation to be ready, we added an additional pre-intensive session - this gave extra time in between preparation sessions to practice skills and feel confident they could be used successfully during trauma processing
Shorter processing sessions: When 3-hour sessions felt like too much, we divided them up into three 2-hour sessions instead of two 3-hour sessions
Travel-based scheduling: A particular client who travelled from out of town for an Intensive needed a very specific schedule on consecutive days in between travel, so we met at flexible times
Adapted format: Another client couldn’t come on consecutive days due to other commitments, so we scheduled extended processing sessions over the course of a month
Non-EMDR Intensive: For a client who needed very short-term, focused work for a clear goal, but wasn’t interested in EMDR at all, we designed a customized Intensive using a completely different approach
Personalization can happen around each of these unique needs…
Length & pacing (shorter vs longer sessions)
Schedules & timing (consecutive days vs spread over weeks or months)
Preparation needs (more resourcing vs ready to process)
Target focus (single event vs layered trauma)
Nervous system capacity (what best maintains a window of tolerance)
Who benefits most from personalized EMDR Intensives
Intensives are a great alternative to traditional, weekly therapy for…
People who feel “stuck” in weekly therapy: Maybe you’ve hit a plateau in your progress. You know there’s more to resolve but you’re not sure how to get to it. An Intensive can offer a focused approach to reduce the feeling of “just talking” that often sets in with long-term therapy.
People with time constraints: If it’s hard to plan regular time for ongoing therapy, an Intensive can allow you to accomplish in a matter of days what may take months or years in traditional therapy. The tailored approach of Intensives also means that sessions are scheduled around your availability.
People wanting focused, accelerated trauma resolution: If you have specific things that continue to weigh on you, show up in dreams or flashbacks, are attached to strong triggers, and seem to feel the same no matter how much time passes - an Intensive offers focused, targeted treatment that can resolve these things at the root.
People who have a problem that needs help now: Sometimes persistent problems impact your quality of life, and the cost of continuing to live with it is too great - it’s affecting your professional life, your personal life, or both. When this is the case, the Intensive format can be completed from start to finish within a month. No more waiting - you can get your life back.
With EMDR Intensives, you don’t have to fit the model - the model fits you.
