Maybe you’ve spent years in traditional therapy, but you still feel stuck in fight or flight. You’re ready for a pivot point in your healing journey, but just when you’ve finally started to scratch the surface of a trauma, the many demands of life take priority.
In order to heal, a dedicated, focused space may be what you need to go deeper; a place where you can really focus on the trauma that has been like a constant hum throughout your life.
I’m Jessica Ronyak, LMHC, LPCC. I’m an EMDRIA certified therapist, and I’ve been a therapist since 2018. I began offering intensive therapy in June 2024, and since then, I’ve transitioned to solely offering EMDR intensives at my trauma-focused group practice Lōmii Studio.
When I offered weekly sessions, my clients kept telling me the same thing: they felt like a raw nerve in between sessions. It was tough for them when we had an incomplete session and we weren't able to fully close the target we were working on. My clients’ treatment didn’t fit neatly into weekly 50-minute sessions, so something had to change.
My EMDR colleagues and consultants offered intensives, so I began to work up to multi-day intensives myself. Since witnessing the incredible results of intensive therapy, I haven’t looked back.
In this post, I’ll explain what intensive therapy actually is, questions to ask a therapist who offers intensives, and help you determine whether or not intensive therapy would be a good fit.
If you’re interested in scheduling an EMDR intensive at Lōmii, reach out to book a free intro call. We’ll explain our process and assess if we would be a good fit for intensive therapy.
What Is Intensive Therapy? Understanding How It Works and How It’s Different From Weekly Therapy
Intensive therapy doesn’t have one clear definition. Some therapists consider intensive therapy to be 2 to 3 hour sessions, while other therapists offer multiple days of therapy with each day lasting 5 to 6 hours.
Unlike weekly therapy, where there’s a bit of a dance happening with having to stabilize what’s going on in everyday life, with multi-day intensive therapy, your life outside of therapy is kept separate. We can remove daily stressors, so you can finally focus on healing, not surviving.
With our intensive therapy, you’ve stepped out of your daily life, you’re not at work, and you don’t have all those other responsibilities that are typically taking up parts of your day. By giving yourself this dedicated time and space, we get time to focus on both the present-day triggers that are still showing up and the stuff that’s the constant hum in the background, still affecting your life.
Intensive therapy is different from traditional, weekly therapy because it:
Gives you more time to work through difficult experiences. One of the reasons we started offering intensive therapy at Lomii was because clients told us that sessions felt incomplete. In a therapy intensive, you have more dedicated time.
Conflict at work, relationship challenges, or family emergencies don’t take up the bulk of the sessions. While we’ll still process those concerns, we’re given more time so the deeper work doesn’t get pushed aside to address daily challenges.
Progress doesn’t follow a stop-and-start schedule. The longer sessions and dedicated days help move the needle on reprocessing trauma.
However, we also want people to know intensive therapy doesn’t mean your progress will equate to months or years of weekly therapy in those 5 days. Progress depends on each person and the concerns being addressed. There is no guaranteed timeline for healing.
Who Might Benefit From Intensive Therapy?
You might benefit from intensive therapy if:
You need the space to be “non-functional”
It’s really hard to process trauma when you have to parent or speak at a board meeting later that day. Especially if compartmentalization has been a coping method, it can be challenging to work through trauma in an hour once a week, or even a couple of hours a week. If you have the space to take time away from your work, responsibilities, and daily routines, an intensive can be really helpful.
You’re plateauing in traditional therapy
We often hear people say they’ve been in therapy for years and end up feeling like it isn’t helpful anymore. Often it’s because they say they go to their weekly sessions and just end up talking about their current stressors and how those are showing up, but they’re not looking at the overall theme or pattern. If you’ve been in therapy and feel like it’s no longer supportive or not getting to the root of your distress, intensive therapy can give you that dedicated time to process the current stressors and dig deeper.
You have complex trauma
With complex trauma, chipping away at it weekly is often hard, and can sometimes cause more distress that ends up getting in the way of work, functioning, or other responsibilities. With intensive therapy, we can slow things down rather than rush through the processing and stabilizing, only to end the session while you’re still raw.
You want something more than once a week but don’t want inpatient
We’ve seen a lot of people who need something more than once or twice a week, but don’t need inpatient treatment. Our intensive therapy offers that sweet spot where you get more than an hour a week but without needing a 24 hour facility. It’s also collaborative like inpatient treatment, where we’re often coordinating with your current therapist, prescriber, or doctor.
You want a more compact framework and a pivot point
Some people have already developed a lot of insight into their experiences but don't want to spend another year or two working through them in weekly therapy. Intensives offer an opportunity to reprocess trauma in a more compact framework, dedicating several consecutive days to focused trauma processing.
At Lōmii, we see an intensive as a potential pivot point, a "before and after" in someone's healing journey. But that doesn't mean it's a quick fix. It’s an accelerated approach, yes, but that doesn't mean that you're on an accelerated path to healing. Meaningful change also involves preparation beforehand and integration afterward, including building the habits and continuing the routines built in the intensive.
If you’re tired of feeling the way you’re feeling with little change, our intensive therapy can help take the insight you already have and move toward greater change.
When Might Intensive Therapy Not Be the Right Fit?
Intensive therapy isn’t for everyone. We will always try to have honest, transparent conversations with anyone coming to therapy. We recommend the work we think would be most beneficial for you before the intensive, or explain what we need to see to even safely or ethically do an intensive. With that said, an intensive might not be the right fit you’re experiencing:
An active crisis or active addiction, as trauma processing can bring up a lot of distress. We have to know that you can feel something distressing and come back to being grounded without unsafe or unhealthy behaviors showing up.
OCD-related obsessions or compulsions that are getting in the way of treatment. If that’s the case, we may look at collaborating with an exposure and response therapist first to do some distancing work before the intensive starts.
Dissociative disorders that would hinder treatment. With complex trauma, some dissociation is part of the picture and we screen for it. But with dissociative disorder, we might change the treatment plan to include more “Finding Solid Ground” work, which could benefit from ongoing support.
Another type of therapy would work best. For example, weekly CBT may be a more appropriate treatment. Or maybe you’re going through a tough time—like a divorce—and you want the consistency of weekly sessions.
Scheduling. Not everyone can take 4 or 5 days off of work, away from caregiving or other responsibilities.
All of these factors are important to discuss during consultation. At Lōmii, we put a lot of emphasis on when intensive therapy is most beneficial for someone to do.
What Happens During an Intensive Therapy Experience?
Therapists conduct intensives in their own ways. At Lōmii, we don’t just throw you into intensive therapy. Our screening process is intensive so that we can make sure this work is right for you.
As an example, here’s what to expect from the intensive therapy experience at Lōmii:
1. Before the Intensive: Assessment and Preparation
You’ll start the intake process by getting a lengthy document to complete so that we get a better understanding of what’s bringing you to the intensive process. This intake includes some assessments and evaluations as well. Then myself, and Emmy—our licensed Occupational Therapist—will meet with you to provide recommendations.
We’ll work together to identify trauma targets, goals, and develop appropriate grounding strategies.
2. During the Intensive: Dedicated Space for Deeper Work
During the intensive, we use EMDR, parts work, and somatic interventions with careful attention to pacing and regulation. In our private clinical setting in Fort Lauderdale, you get the opportunity to step away from work and daily responsibilities to focus on you. Our goal isn’t to push you through as much trauma as possible. It’s to create the conditions for meaningful therapeutic work at your pace.
3. After the Intensive: Bringing the Work Into Everyday Life
We see this work as a pivot point, a “before and after,” where we can get through the work in a more compact framework. Within 5 days you can get a lot of processing done, but that doesn’t mean the work ends. You’ll take with you the habits, skills, and routines that Emmy and I work with you to develop.
Why We Include Occupational Therapy in Our Intensives
What makes our approach to intensive therapy different is that we include occupational therapy into the process. Because trauma is also happening in the body. Our licensed occupational therapist, Emmy, will look at how the trauma is impacting your sensory and functional systems.
She does an OT eval and then we work together on your intensive therapy. Emmy helps you by:
Identifying sensory and functional patterns connected to trauma.
Understanding how your nervous system responds to stress.
Building supportive daily habits and routines.
By looking at our intensive therapy through more than one lens, and collaborating on it, we’re not just addressing what happened to you; we’re also addressing how the trauma is impacting your functioning at work, in relationships, and how you’re taking care of yourself.
Questions to ask an intensive therapist
Consultation and assessment are crucial pieces to the intensive process. While you meet with therapists to assess fit (and if intensive therapy would be beneficial), I recommend that you ask the following questions.
How long have you been doing intensives?
How many intensives have you done?
What is the format of your intensives?
How are you tracking success?
What presenting concerns have your clients had?
How are you hosting intensives?
What support do you offer before and after the intensive?
How do you determine pre-intensive and post-intensive support?
What do you screen for?
What does that screening look like?
How do you decide who is and isn't a good fit?
What assessments do you offer during the screening process?
For EMDR intensives, are you EMDRIA certified (at minimum)?*
How long have you been certified?
How long have you done EMDR?
Is EMDR your primary modality, or is it more of an adjunct modality?
What other modalities do you use?
If you are seeking support for early developmental trauma (5 years or young for implicit memories), what training do you have for that?
Are you in consultation with other therapists?
Intensive therapy is a big investment, so take the time you need to find a provider who suits you best.
Make Space to Go Deeper at Lōmii Studio
Many people have spent years showing up for their responsibilities while carrying experiences that constantly hum in the background. Intensive therapy offers a different way of approaching this work.
Our therapy intensives take place in a private setting in Fort Lauderdale. Led by Jessica, a EMDRIA-certified therapist, who has honed her intensive skills to pull from different tool boxes and meet you exactly where you are.
You don't have to keep fitting your healing into whatever time is left over. Sometimes, meaningful change begins when you create the space to give yourself your full attention.
FAQs About Intensive Therapy
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Our intensive therapy is a 3-5 day experience where you get the dedicated time to process what’s currently affecting you, as well as work through the experiences that have been constantly humming in the background. On the other hand, regular therapy is often 45 to 50 minutes once or twice a week. Often with trauma, especially complex trauma, this format gives you less space to process what’s going on underneath and can sometimes leave you feeling raw after sessions.
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Yes, research suggests that intensive trauma focused therapy can reduce PTSD symptoms in a shorter time frame, with fewer people dropping in and out of randomized trials. While much of the research done either isn’t EMDR or is EMDR combined with prolonged exposure, we do know that EMDR is recommended for PTSD. So more intensive therapy is showing positive results, but the research is fairly new.
At Lōmii, we try to do our own research in a way. We track progress with different assessments throughout the therapy process. We use the PCL-5 for PTSD, the GAD7 for anxiety, the YBOCS- 2 to screen for OCD, the DES-II to screen for dissociation, and the MID when appropriate as well. We also use Likert scales to track and the MAIA-2 to assess interoceptive awareness throughout the process.
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At Lōmii, our intensive therapy often lasts 3-5 days. This amount of time gives us the chance to do the deep processing to really get at the heart of what’s contributing to your distress. We also tailor the structure to match your needs, history, and nervous system capacity.
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Yes, intensive therapy is likely to be emotionally overwhelming at times. Trauma work can be emotionally demanding. But we’ll work together through preparation and finding the pacing that feels right for you. We’ll also help you practice and develop tools for managing distress. You don’t go through this alone.
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Yes, intensive therapy can help with complex trauma or C-PTSD because these conditions often require additional preparation and ongoing care. Rather than the start-and-stop nature of weekly therapy, intensive therapy gives you the dedicated time and space to process complex trauma and stabilize before returning to everyday life.
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Prior therapy experience can be helpful, as it may provide insight into what you’re experiencing and help you get to the heart of it during an intensive. However, having done weekly therapy isn’t a requirement. We’ll discuss your goals and expectations and help determine readiness through our screening and assessment process.
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Not at all. At Lōmii, we draw on a wide array of modalities so you’re integrating at every level. Trauma reprocessing is central to the work, but we want to address the cognitive and somatic aspects of your healing too. Breaks are also important—intensives are “intense,” but rest should be a component as well
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While both offer an opportunity to step away from everyday responsibilities, a therapy intensive focuses on clinically guided treatment. A retreat typically focuses more broadly on general wellness and relaxation. These experiences can be beneficial, but they don’t necessarily involve the focused therapeutic work that intensives provide.
Our intensives offer dedicated time away from daily life, but with a specific therapeutic purpose. We're creating space to rest and doing the deeper work, with support before, during, and after the intensive.
Interested in exploring intensive therapy at Lomii?
Schedule a free intro call to learn more about our EMDR intensives. We’ll discuss your background, what brings you to intensives, and if an intensive together makes sense for you.
