Therapy Intensives for Highly Sensitive Adults

A therapy intensive is a focused, extended session - or series of sessions - that gives you significantly more time and space than a standard 50-minute weekly appointment.

Instead of touching something difficult and then stopping when the clock runs out, you get enough uninterrupted time to actually go deeper, process what comes up, and start to move it - not just identify it.

Intensives can range from 90 minutes to several hours in a single day, over one or more days, depending on what you're working on and what your nervous system needs.

Weekly therapy is a slow build - it's useful for a lot of things and the right fit for ongoing support. But for some people and some patterns, the stop-and-start rhythm of weekly sessions actually gets in the way. You spend the first ten minutes catching up, go somewhere real, and then have to stop just as something is opening up.

An intensive removes that constraint. You stay in the work long enough to go somewhere you usually can't reach in 50 minutes, and you have time to actually integrate what surfaces before you leave. Many people find they accomplish meaningful shifts in a concentrated intensive that would have taken months - or never quite happened - in a weekly format.

No - and this distinction matters. An Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP) is a higher level of clinical care designed for people who are in active crisis or acute distress. IOPs typically involve group therapy multiple times per week, psychiatric evaluation, medication management, and case management. They're designed for stabilization.

A therapy intensive is something different entirely. It's designed for people who are generally stable and functioning, and who want to do targeted, deeper work on a specific pattern, stuck point, or long-standing emotional response that hasn't shifted in weekly therapy. If you're experiencing active suicidal ideation, are in crisis, or feel unsafe day-to-day, an intensive isn't the right fit - and I'll be direct about that in our consult.

My intensives tend to work best for people who are ready to go deeper, not people who need immediate stabilization.

A therapy intensive tends to be a good fit if:

• You're generally stable and functional, but feel stuck in a specific pattern - anxiety, chronic self-criticism, perfectionism, people-pleasing, emotional overwhelm - that weekly therapy hasn't fully moved

• You're highly sensitive and lose momentum in the week between sessions, making it hard to go deep and stay there

• You want focused, concentrated work on one thing rather than open-ended ongoing therapy

• You've done some therapy before and have a basic sense of your patterns - you're not starting from zero

• You're ready to actually feel things, not just talk about them

An intensive is probably not the right fit if you're currently in crisis, need immediate stabilization, or are in the very early stages of understanding your mental health history. If you're not sure where you fall, that's exactly what the free consult is for - we figure it out together before anything is scheduled.

Yes, and it can work really well. Some people use an intensive to go deeper on a specific pattern or stuck point while continuing their regular ongoing therapy elsewhere. Others use it as a standalone experience between therapy chapters. Either way works.

If you have a current therapist, I'm happy to coordinate with them if that would be useful - we can talk through what makes sense during our consult.

The goal is for the intensive to complement whatever else is supporting you, not work against it.

Both Brainspotting and EMDR are brain-body modalities that use eye positioning to help access and process stored emotional experience - the kind that lives in the nervous system rather than in conscious thought. They're more similar than they are different, and both are effective for trauma responses, anxiety, and patterns that haven't budged in talk therapy alone.

The main difference is in how they work. EMDR uses bilateral stimulation - typically side-to-side eye movements or taps - to help the brain reprocess specific memories following a structured protocol.

Brainspotting, developed by EMDR therapist David Grand, works differently: it uses a fixed eye position (a "brainspot") to access and release what's stored, and it tends to be less protocol-driven and more attuned to what's happening in your body moment to moment. Many people describe Brainspotting as feeling more organic and less structured than EMDR - which can be particularly useful for highly sensitive nervous systems that do better with a slower, more responsive pace.

I use Brainspotting rather than EMDR because it fits the way I work -relational, body-attuned, and responsive to what your system needs in real time rather than following a fixed sequence.

IFS, developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz, is a way of understanding the mind as made up of different "parts" - not one unified self, but a whole internal system of voices, responses, and protectors that developed over time, often in response to painful experiences.

You might recognize these as the relentless inner critic, the part that people-pleases to stay safe, the one that's exhausted from holding everything together, or the part that shuts down when things get hard.

Rather than fighting those parts or trying to eliminate them, IFS gets curious about them - what they're protecting, what they're carrying, and what they actually need. When parts feel understood instead of overridden, the internal system tends to settle.

That's when real, lasting change becomes possible - not because you forced it, but because the parts doing the protecting finally felt safe enough to stand down. In intensives, IFS pairs beautifully with Brainspotting: one helps you understand what's happening internally, the other helps your body actually release what's been stored.

Every intensive is built around your specific goals - there's no one-size-fits-all format. Here's the general shape of how it works:

Before the intensive: We start with a pre-intensive consultation where we talk about what you're working on, what you've tried before, and what you're hoping to shift. I put together a treatment plan tailored to your goals and your nervous system's capacity.

During the intensive: Sessions typically include a combination of Brainspotting and IFS parts work, grounding and regulation tools woven throughout, and built-in breaks - this isn't about pushing through, it's about going deep in a way that's actually sustainable. We build in integration time before you leave so you're not walking out raw.

After the intensive: Every package includes a follow-up session to help the work land, process what came up, and make sure you have what you need to carry it forward.

Typical formats include 90–120 minute extended single sessions, 3–4 hour half-day intensives, or multi-day deep dives of 2–6 hours per day. We design the structure together based on what makes sense for you.

Therapy intensives are private pay, meaning they're not billed directly to insurance. Sessions start at $400/hour, and full packages typically start at $800.

That said, you may be eligible for partial reimbursement through your out-of-network benefits, depending on your plan. I provide superbills (itemized receipts with the clinical codes your insurance needs) that you can submit to your insurer directly.

Before your intensive, it's worth calling the member services number on the back of your insurance card and asking specifically about out-of-network reimbursement for extended therapy sessions - you may be surprised by what's covered.

Check out my FAQ page for more info about utilizing out of network benefits.