What are EMDR Intensives?

EMDR Intensives offer a faster, deeper, cost-effective approach to healing from difficult life experiences, overcoming your fears for the future, or performance enhancement. EMDR treatment is like giving your brain a deep clean, and an intensive gives you a concentrated dose.

Depending on complexity, you can leave feeling relieved, or you can make significant progress on your journey. You can then be free to focus on building your most fulfilling and meaningful life.

What are EMDR Intensives?

If you’re not already familiar with EMDR, you can learn more about it here.

EMDR Intensives are one of the most exciting, cutting-edge developments in psychotherapy. They provide the space and support to clear out specific complaints from start to finish, or to work on deep healing of more complex issues.

Looking to enhance your performance? An EMDR Intensive will give you a rapid booster of performance enhancement, to remove any mental blocks and optimize your implementation.

Why choose an Intensive?

EMDR Intensives are a great option if:

• Your time is of the essence. You want relief sooner rather than later. You are a busy person who needs to resolve your difficulties quickly so that you can focus on your future, and weekly appointments are not workable.

• You are ready to process past experiences in a deep and profound way. Longer intensives provide you with the space and holding to move through a lot of deeply held material, which is especially helpful for working with difficult early life experiences and complex trauma including experiences prior to your explicit memory.

• You want a cost-effective option. Intensives can be less costly overall, because you save around 20 minutes of each hour spent checking-in and closing down every weekly session. You also stay in the groove of processing for longer and do not get disrupted by the life events that come up each week. Over a half day, this saves you an hour or even more.

• You’re interested in adjunct EMDR. You are already working well with another therapist in a weekly format but you notice some something feels ‘stuck’. We can work with your therapist to agree a focused piece of work to shift the blocks, so that you can get back to making progress with them.

Openforwards EMDR Intensives now available

We offer Intensives ranging from a half day to 3 full days, with the undivided attention of your therapist. In a programme tailored to your individual needs, we will combine skills training to build your inner resources with a deep dive into using EMDR to process past memories and fears about the future.

With other types of therapy it’s important to have a week or so between sessions to digest material and implement learning, but there isn’t always the same need for this with EMDR. It means you can keep going and complete a lot more work in one go.

What sort of problems can you treat with an EMDR Intensive?

A half day Intensive is great for focusing on a single event/scenario, or for performance enhancement. A 1-3 day Intensive is best for working through more material or deeper issues.

We offer a 3 day ‘Life Re-Set’ Intensive, for a comprehensive treatment going from your earliest experiences as a child all the way up to your present circumstances and beyond to your future.

An Intensive may clear out one area of your experience. Alternatively, you can undertake multiple Intensives to address different parts of your experience.

What’s the evidence EMDR Intensives work?

EMDR is a well-established, gold standard, evidence-based therapy for multiple issues including trauma, anxiety, and much more. The research for delivering EMDR intensively is continuing to grow and very exciting for all involved. Outcome studies show that EMDR delivered intensively can achieve the same (possibly better) results as weekly delivery – but faster.

Drop-out rates are lower than weekly EMDR, suggesting that the process is more manageable. It can also be cost-effective, saving on the total sessions necessary, and returning you to full functioning sooner.

Is an Intensive right for me?

Doing intensive work is a wonderful option if you’re in a stable position in your life, with good coping resources/support networks, and you’re really ready to do this for yourself.

It does require a commitment from you, in terms of your energy and greater cost upfront. While some people worry about how tiring it might be, we find it’s cathartic and easier than you might expect. We take lots of breaks and pace work depending on your needs.

Please book an Initial Consultation with a therapist to discuss whether an Intensive is right for you.

Speak to a therapist

As we do not offer a residential treatment, our EMDR Intensives are generally not suitable if:

• Your personal circumstances are unsettled,

• You have few coping resources or support networks,

• You experience a lot of current dissociation.

We recommend working on those things with another of our therapists and returning to the idea of an Intensive at a later date.

If you need to process early attachment experiences or you are experiencing complex PTSD, then you should engage another therapist for weekly therapy before and after your EMDR Intensive, so that they can offer you more wrap-around care.

Half day Intensives are most suitable for processing a single event/scenario or performance enhancement, if you do not need much skills training prior to processing

You can book multiple full-day intensives.  Prices start at £800 per day for a single full day.  To add additional days, you will pay £500 per day.

Full day Intensives provide the space for more skills training and working through more material or deeper issues. We will first work on ensuring you are resourced as needed and aim to get through as much as possible within the time available. In a 3 day Life Reset Intensive we work all the way from your earliest experiences all the way to your present and beyond to your future.

Some clients will travel to Birmingham and stay over for the duration. We recommend that you treat the days around your Intensive like a personal retreat focused on healing. Turn your phone off and schedule activities that support you, such as exercise, massage, and good food.

Call now to book an appointment

Give us a call on tel. 0121 523 1108 or send us a confidential email.

We will get back to you to discuss whether an EMDR Intensive is right for you and which package would be most suitable. We look forward to hearing from you!

We have a choice of qualified skillful therapists. Find the person you’d like to work with below or let us know when you’re available.

You can meet in-person at our offices in central Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter. Or you can arrange an appointment for online therapy using a simple, friendly and secure video platform.

Who offers EMDR Intensives?