Strong Solutions Boulder Therapy

Are You Struggling To Move On From A Traumatic Experience? 

• Has trauma prevented you from becoming the person you’ve always wanted to be? 

• Do you want to stop living in the past and get your life back? 

• Are you looking to improve yourself physically, mentally, spiritually and emotionally?

Maybe there’s a painful event in your past that you never fully recovered from. You’ve tried to be strong and just push through, but the hurt never truly goes away. Perhaps you’ve tried to seek help, but no form of treatment ever seems deep enough or powerful enough to bring about healing and freedom. If this is the case, an EMDR intensive may be right for you. 

You Don’t Have To Keep Spinning Your Wheels Trying To Work Through Trauma

Maybe you’ve tried psychotherapy before, but meeting for one hour a week just doesn’t give you the traction you need. It feels like changing your car tires one weekly appointment at a time instead of all at once. You still find yourself experiencing high levels of distress and struggling to feel confident in who you are. 

At the same time, however, you’re able to function at a normal level and you know that you don’t need an inpatient clinic. As a result, you may feel like you’re stuck between two options that don’t work for you. 

The beauty of an IFS-informed EMDR intensive is that it provides a lovely third option between 50-minute weekly therapy and inpatient care. It’s a great opportunity to take the sacred pause and set aside 3 to 15 days to work on your trauma. Think of an EMDR intensive as a vacation or retreat, but with the purpose of healing your emotional wounds from either a recent or long-standing trauma and unlocking your true purpose, destiny and power.

Trauma Is Hard To Process Using Traditional Therapy Models

When you’ve experienced a traumatic event, the memory of what happened gets frozen or “stuck” in your brain and nervous system. This makes it feel like it’s still happening in the present. EMDR uses bilateral stimulation to help you reprocess disturbing memories and emotions, enabling you to break free from the grip of trauma and work toward a brighter future. 

That said, it can be hard to pack the work of EMDR into standard counseling sessions. It takes about 20 minutes to warm up the brain so that it’s ready for reprocessing, which means that in a traditional one-hour counseling session, there often isn’t much time left for the actual EMDR work. 

The great thing about an IFS-informed EMDR intensive is that we don’t have to scramble to fit our work into 50 minutes. In a therapy intensive, we have time to incorporate a mind-body approach to resourcing, getting to know your inner system, and including your whole body and self in the therapeutic process. We also have up to four to six hours per day to focus on clearing the disturbing memories and setting the adaptive and affirming neuropathways into motion that will last well into the future.

What’s more, you will be my only client during the days of your intensive, ensuring that I can devote all my therapeutic time and attention to you and your healing.

IFS-Informed EMDR Intensives Can Help You Pack Years’ Worth Of Therapy Into A Few Days

Many clients that come to me say: “I don’t want this to take years—I need help and want change to happen sooner than that.” If you feel similarly, an intensive could be right for you. An IFS-informed EMDR intensive can help you break out of patterns that you’ve been stuck in for as long as you can remember—i.e., relying too heavily on alcohol to get through tough feelings, melting down into a child-like state under certain conditions, or always returning to that old feeling of guilt and shame that you just can’t seem to shake off of you. A therapy intensive accelerates the healing process, creates healthier ways of being, and makes it easier to integrate what you’ve learned into your everyday life. 

In the beginning, you and I will have a 90-minute intake session to discuss what you’d like to accomplish and what kind of intensive is most compatible with your life and schedule. Our IFS-EMDR Intensive Program offers two options: the three-day option or the multiple day (often 5-15 days) option. These concentrated sessions give you an immersive experience and enable you to process and integrate painful memories.

Next, you and I will discover your internal strengths and resources, allowing you to support yourself during the work. Over the course of the intensive, I will equip you with a polyvagal toolkit to help you stay grounded and empowered while you’re processing trauma.

Traditional EMDR teaches you to go right to the source of your trauma, but that often creates more disturbance in your nervous system. My approach utilizes the wisdom of Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, helping you get to know and honor your protective parts so that you’re prepared to work through trauma. This way, we can create the support that was missing at the time of the trauma, injury, or neglect.

Much of the intensive will be spent taking the time to get to know your inner system, which parts are holding which traumas, and doing the work to heal those parts. We’ll take breaks throughout the day to keep your body resourced and anchor the new pathways of healing that emerge through our time together. 

After the IFS-informed EMDR work is done, there will be an integration session or two where we’ll focus on implementing what you’ve learned into your life going forward. Together, we’ll create a plan for handling potential stressors and mapping out a path that aligns with your new inner goals and values. There’s also the possibility for ongoing integration work if you’d like to pursue weekly or monthly therapy with me.

The beauty of the intensive is that it literally packs five-to-seven years of therapy into a 3-14-day period. And although there is an upfront investment, in the end, it saves you time and money because it allows for healing in a matter of days versus months or years. This allows you to save the resources that you might otherwise spend trying to address, numb, or avoid your trauma. As one 14-day intensive client put it, “it is time and money saved.”

My Background As An IFS-informed EMDR Therapist

As an EMDR-certified therapist, I’ve been conducting EMDR intensives for clients in Colorado and New York since 2020. In addition to my EMDR training, I learned the intensive model from Ricky Greenwald, one of the founders of the EMDR intensive treatment model through the Trauma Institute and Child Trauma Institute.

I personally experienced IFS in 2021 and immediately began studying the model professionally. I’ve been incorporating IFS into my EMDR work since then. As an IFS-Informed clinician, I have received my training through the IFS Institute as well as the SYZYGY Institute. 

I have used IFS-informed EMDR intensive therapy to help people suffering from depression, anxiety, panic, relationship issues, complex PTSD, physical pain, grief and loss, and many other challenges. I’ve seen this approach work wonders in my clients’ lives, empowering them to improve their relationships, boost their emotional resilience, and live with more confidence, ease, grace and fulfillment. 

*What is EMDR? - EMDR Institute - EYE MOVEMENT DESENSITIZATION AND REPROCESSING THERAPY

The Economic Value of an EMDR Intensive: https://www.ticti.org/economic/

Intensive EMDR to treat patients with CPTSD: https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/springer/emdr/2017/00000011/00000002/art00002%3Bjsessionid=3cq2ibisw457m.x-ic-live-01?utm_source=INTENSIVE%2520EMDR%2520THERAPY%25253A%2520%2520Promising%2520Research&utm_campaign=MIA%2520May%25202018%2520Vol%25206%2520%25257C%2520Issue%25205&utm_medium=email&fbclid=IwAR1KnA4A7tUIQqXpFokTrZ9i8Qa4D8Kt3mMVpQv4_nf9LNJ_mtmYo9LocNU

5 Reasons to do an EMDR Intensive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoOKmFed9UI

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