Healing in Fast Forward: How EMDR and Somatic Therapy Intensives Can Help You Heal and Befriend Your Nervous System in Lasting Ways and Less Time
I love the traditional therapy model of seeing clients weekly or bi-weekly over time so that we can slowly unravel the emotional, mental, and somatic knots that are keeping them stuck in the same patterns. But it has its limits and the longer I do therapy the more I have seen these limits. Often times by the time you have found a therapist you really connect with and you have decided that you are really ready to do the work you have been suffering for years with the same patterns. This is especially true if your particular struggle is constant nervous system dysregulation and nervous system dysregulation. Check out the video below for more information on what dysregulation really is, what causes it, and what a regulated and healthy nervous system really looks and feels like.
When you have been living dysregulation for years you often cannot wait for months and months for breakthrough, relief, or change. You need a change, shift, a move forward and a lightening of your load and you need it now so that you can engage in the rest of your healing work with more spaciousness, clarity, and ease. Imagine your nervous system is like a closet that is so full of heavy stuff and junk that it is ready to absolutely burst. We can try taking out and sifting through a few items a week but in the meantime you are dealing with all that pressure until months in the future the stuff is more manageable and it feels okay to be sorting, sifting, and cleaning it out at this pace. But those months leading up to that can feel so hard that they are undoable.
EMDR and somatic therapy intensives are like opening up that closet and sorting through boxes and boxes over the course of a few days or a few weeks intentionally and with lots of care so that it is no longer full or bursting, clearing out enough space that you can walk inside and look around with more ease, and you can now take your time looking around and gently doing the rest of the unpacking.
What Are Therapy Intensives?
Therapy intensives are extended therapy sessions offered over a few days or even a week. Instead of the standard 50-minute appointment once a week, you might spend three to six hours a day in focused therapeutic work. Intensives are flexible so they can look like 5-hour sessions for 4 days in a row or 3-hour sessions twice a week for 3 weeks or lots of other arrangements. It’s like giving yourself a retreat — but instead of just rest and relaxation, you’re creating powerful, lasting emotional change.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) intensives and somatic therapy intensives are two of the most popular types of this work. Both modalities help address the root causes of emotional pain — and both work through the body’s nervous system to create lasting regulation and resilience.
How EMDR and Somatic Therapy Heal the Nervous System
Our nervous systems are brilliant, complex, and highly adaptive. When we experience trauma, stress, or emotional injury, our systems often stay stuck in survival mode: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Over time, this can lead to chronic anxiety, emotional outbursts, numbness, or even physical symptoms like fatigue and illness.
EMDR helps by targeting the brain's natural ability to process and integrate painful memories. Through bilateral stimulation (often using eye movements, tapping, or auditory tones), EMDR helps "unstick" traumatic memories so they can be reprocessed in a way that no longer hijacks the nervous system. Over time, painful triggers lose their emotional charge, and the body can finally rest.
Somatic therapy, on the other hand, focuses directly on the body's stored tension and trauma. Rather than just talking about what happened, somatic therapy helps you feel and release trauma through body awareness, gentle movement, resourcing, using the body’s natural calming abilities, and mindful tracking of sensation. It's a way of teaching your nervous system that it's safe to relax again.
Both approaches offer a profound shift: not just managing symptoms, but actually recalibrating the nervous system for safety, connection, and peace.
Why Intensives Work Faster
One of the biggest advantages of an intensive is the momentum you build. In traditional therapy, each session can feel like starting and stopping a story — getting into deep emotional work only to hit pause until next week. It’s effective, but slow.
In an intensive, you have uninterrupted time to move through multiple layers of healing without that stop-start dynamic. Your nervous system can stay in the healing process longer, allowing deeper integration in a shorter period of time. Plus, with a skilled therapist guiding you, the experience is tailored to your unique needs, pacing, and readiness — no wasted sessions, no one-size-fits-all protocols.
Many clients report that they make months' or even years' worth of progress in just a few days.
What Lasting Results Look Like
After an EMDR or somatic therapy intensive, you can notice progress through:
A greater sense of calm and resilience
Reduced anxiety, flashbacks, or intrusive thoughts
Better emotional regulation
Greater connection to themselves and others
Increased ability to manage stress and adversity
Physical improvements, like better sleep, digestion, and energy
Importantly, these changes aren’t just fleeting. Because intensives focus on root healing — not just coping skills — the nervous system learns a new baseline of safety. Many clients describe it as "finally feeling like myself again" or "feeling at home in my body for the first time."
Is an Intensive Right for You?
Therapy intensives aren’t for everyone, and that’s okay. They’re best for people who are motivated and ready to engage deeply in their healing journey. If you’re feeling stuck in traditional therapy, struggling to manage symptoms or patterns that won’t budge, or simply longing for a breakthrough, an intensive might be the right next step.
We can work together to determine what is a good fit. I offer a hybrid model — combining intensive work with follow-up sessions to ensure ongoing support if that is what you need.
Final Thoughts: You Deserve Deep Healing
Your nervous system is not broken. It’s doing exactly what it was designed to do: protect you. With the right kind of support, you can teach it that it's safe to relax, to trust, and to thrive again.
Whether through EMDR, somatic therapy, or a blend of both, therapy intensives offer a beautiful, powerful opportunity to heal in a way that honors both your body and your spirit. It’s never too late — and it doesn’t have to take forever — to reclaim the peace that’s already within you.
If you are interested in what intensives can do for you schedule a consultation
