Ep 18: EMDR Intensives- the benefits for both clients and therapists

Hello and welcome to Unmasked Minds, the podcast hosted by me, Sarah Wills. I'm a registered psychologist and I work predominantly with millennial women going through all of the things that this chapter of life brings for us. Now, one thing that I've been asked to record a podcast on multiple times is my EMDR intensives. And the people who are asking me to do this, number one, are clients or potential clients, or just women who have heard a little bit about EMDR, who are seeing this movement toward intensives— because I'm not the only one doing it— and, and just want to know a bit more about what even are they, what is EMDR, why are people running these intensives. And secondly, I've been getting a lot of questions from other therapists and psychologists who are thinking about incorporating this model into their business and have questions or a little nervous to do it. So I just thought I'm going to jump on here and try and answer all of the questions that I've been asked lately. So let's start with what is an EMDR intensive, or what is EMDR? EMDR is a type of therapy. It actually stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, and trust me, that is the only time I'm gonna say that because it sounds so complex and a little bit wanky, to be honest, compared to what it actually is. EMDR is a type of therapy that has been designed, it is evidence-based, and it is well known to be effective in treating trauma. So if you have been through a traumatic incident, then EMDR is usually the go-to that most psychologists or therapists will use to help desensitize how that trauma is stored in your system, in your body, and in your memory network. Now, a question that gets asked all the time is, do I have to have one specific trauma? You know, does that— do I have to have been in a car accident or had someone pass away or been abused or neglected? And the answer is absolutely not. I would say that most of the people I do EMDR intensive work with have experienced more of a complex trauma. And what we mean by that is in their childhood or in previous relationships or in previous environments, they have had multiple, multiple, multiple events or times when their needs weren't met or when they were unsafe or they were scared. And the impact on the brain is significant. So if you are raised or exposed to environments that aren't safe or your needs aren't met time and time again, your brain will wire to that and might start to develop coping mechanisms or beliefs about yourself that then become maladaptive when you're an adult, or right now, um, or they can just feel really terrible, right? You might be having panic attacks, you might be having flashbacks, you might have a lack of confidence or belief in yourself. You may not be able to set boundaries, you may be a chronic people pleaser, you may care too much about what other people think. You might know here are my values and here is the type of life I want to live, but every time this happens, maybe conflict or setting a boundary, I get pulled right back into this version of me or these parts of me that were affected by the trauma or conditioning that I've been exposed to. So that is what EMDR is. There are Several sort of different types of EMDR. There is what we call a standard protocol. Now, I am not— the intention of this podcast is not to educate you specifically on the details, so I'm going to take a pretty, you know, general overview of this, and it is only my interpretation of it. Um, we, we all learn— EMDR therapists undergo extensive training to be able to offer this type of therapy, because when you are dealing with people with trauma, we need to be trauma-informed. We need to understand the nervous system. We need to understand dissociation. We need to know the risks. And there are quite a lot of risks when you're doing this kind of work. But essentially, we have all been trained in what we call the standard protocol, which is a standard way of desensitizing traumatic memories in one's system. Some of us then go on to do more specialized types of EMDR, and the types of EMDR that I am trained in, one of them is called Attachment-Informed EMDR, which is basically where we are looking at childhood attachment wounds and how what did or didn't happen to you within the first years of your life and how that has affected the way your brain responds to people and life and situations and how your nervous system is wired. So that is the attachment-informed EMDR. The other one that I use predominantly is resource-informed EMDR, and I did this training— just to do a shout out— the women at SEVA Training, S-E-V-A House in Maitland. Incredible, incredible training programs on, um, resource-informed EMDR. I have done all of their trainings, and their trainings gave me an enormous amount of confidence and courage to do this work. When I had completed my initial standard protocol training, I had actually made the decision that I wasn't going to do EMDR work because I found it terrifying. I was so worried about making a mistake and not sticking to the script, and there was a lot of fear. And doing this resource-informed, um, EMDR really, really helped me with that. Actually, they might call it relational EMDR, not resource, but same thing. It's about resources and that kind of thing. So sorry if I got that wrong. Um, but anyway, that is the second amount of training that I did, and that really helped me to sort of work out the type of EMDR therapist that I am. Um, and then after that, I did a lot of training and direct supervision with Tracy Lynch, who is also incredible, on how to run EMDR in intensive formats. So I like to explain all of that because it wasn't that I just woke up one day and went, let's do standard protocol in these intensive formats. As I learned the type of therapist that I am, and I found the types of EMDR that really worked for me and my clients, I started to surround myself with other clinicians who do this work. And that's how the EMDR intensives started to develop. So what is an intensive? Essentially, like, historically therapy was delivered in 50 to 60 minute blocks. And absolutely yes, EMDR can be done that way. And I would probably say that majority of people who do EMDR do it within your standard sessions. Now, the challenge that I was finding with that was that we weren't able to go too deep. And just as you would get deep into childhood memory networks, because that's what we do with the type of EMDR I do, we start at something that's affecting you now, right? I'm responding to certain situations this way. I'm getting triggered in when I'm parenting, whatever it is that's happening now. We then go back through your memory networks using bilateral stimulation, and we go essentially back into where the original wounds were formed. And we're generally looking for where in childhood were these wounds formed, and we're working on desensitizing and healing those parts of you. This is the Parts Informed work, those parts of you that are carrying those wounds. So we're going back into childhood and really sort of changing how these memories are stored in your brain. We're moving them to a different part of the brain that's not as activated or connected to the nervous system, but we're also changing the felt sense of these memories and often the story that goes with them. And if I try and give a really quick example there, let's say your needs weren't met as a child. Maybe your parents worked too much or had addiction problems or were just too focused on other things that they weren't really attentive and weren't there for you. And Essentially, that created this wound that you're not worthy or you're not enough. And you might be noticing that showing up in today, um, by feeling not enough, by, you know, not feeling worthy in your relationship, not feeling worthy at work, not putting yourself out there for opportunities, all of those types of things. And we look at what's happening now and we go back and say, hey, yeah, there's some childhood wounds there, there's some parts of you that are holding on to the trauma of what did or didn't happen to you. And essentially, we're going back into those memories and working with that part of you. It might be 2 years old, it might be 6 years old, and healing those, those parts of you. Um, I could do a whole episode on what that looks like. Um, as an example, I use a lot of resourcing um, we build an entire resource team and we can take that back with you into those memories, and that really helps to desensitize them. And what I mean by desensitization is the memories will still exist, but because we have gone in and worked on the memories, they will feel different, right? So many people that come and see me for this EMDR intensive work have been in therapy for years. They have done the work, they have done the cognitive work, the cognitive behavioral therapy, the DBT, all the acronyms. They've done the work, and intellectually and rationally, they understand their trauma. They understand that what happened to them wasn't their fault. They know that it, it wasn't about them not being worthy, for example, but their body is holding on to it. You know, there's a famous book called The Body Keeps the Score where we talk about trauma being actually stored within your body, not just your mind. And for me, EMDR provides that bridge. EMDR is the bridge between the somatic, the somatic work in your body and the cognitive work in your brain. And often people who have done sometimes decades worth of therapy will come and do an EMDR intensive, and it can be that thing that just unlocks the whole system to feel differently. So back to why I run it in an intensive format is because that's a lot of work to do. And if you're doing a 50-minute session with someone, then you're spending about 5 minutes just saying hi and checking in, and then you're gonna, you know, check where you were up to last session. And so within 10 minutes, you might be starting to get into the deep desensitization part of EMDR. There are 8 stages of EMDR, and the actual part where we're using either eye movements or bilateral tapping is stage 4. So, and you've got to sort of prime all of those stages at the start of every session. So essentially, in a 50-minute session, by the time you get deep into those childhood wounds, often I find just when we're about to unlock something really important, I've got to start pulling the client back out. It's like, there we are, we're so close, okay, I better start closing you so that we can safely resolve this session and leave you to feel okay and not too heightened or not too triggered. And I just find with the types of clients I work with, we need more time. We need to gently be able to hold the space for the client to go back into those spaces without being rushed and to do the deep healing work. The other reason why I prefer intensives is because it creates a whole healing container. Essentially, the healing starts the day you book it, right? The day you commit to it and you know that it's coming, that is a part of the process for you— investing in yourself, investing time and money, because there is a significant cost to these intensives. You are working one-on-one with a trained professional professional for an entire day. That's the format I use. And this type of therapy, like I said, requires extensive training, extensive supervision, extensive peer support. So I am charging at the moment $2,500 for a 5-hour, 1-day intensive. So for a lot of people, locking that in and working towards that is a huge part signaling to themselves that they are worthy and that they deserve this healing and that it is— that, that it's important to them. The other thing is, when they arrive, we get to stay in that container for a whole 5 or 6 hours, or for some people they do multiple days at once. And what I mean by that is, like, how often do you go to therapy and you feel really great, or we just start to unlock something that starts to feel different, or you start to see something through a different lens. And then bam, the session's over and we say goodbye, and then you walk out the door straight into your normal life, straight into kids, into work, into family, into all of the stuff. And it's almost like you've just gotta lock that back up until you can get back in to see your therapist in a couple of weeks or a month. And What I'm finding is people who can get into an intensive format, for some of them, being able to just stay in that space for that amount of time is so beneficial because we're not being sort of, you know, it almost sometimes people say in a standard way, you know, in 50-minute sessions, it's like 3 steps forward, 2 steps back, 3 steps forward, 2 steps back. So we really get to stay in that. Container. Another benefit that I find is that when I'm working one-on-one with a client face to face, it allows me as a therapist to sit with them in everything that we're going through. It allows me, if they have any ab reactions, like emotional responses or even dissociative responses— I've had clients that will completely dissociate during our sessions and I have the time and the space to then sit with them in it. I can gently show them how to regulate themselves, how to notice what is happening for them. And whilst you can do that online and in normal sessions, the power of being right there and energetically and intuitively Being able to respond to your client in real time is so, so powerful. And I know clients who have had the biggest breakthrough moments after they have completely dissociated for 45 minutes, right? That protective part of them, that shutdown part comes in, it comes in hard and strong. And if I can sit with it and support it or resource it, then that's when the healing follows. And I just find you don't get that kind of depth unless you're doing these deeper intensive kind of formats. Um, another reason why I find intensives really beneficial is my background is in running retreats and creating healing spaces for women and men. I believe that all healing therapy should be holistic. And when you are here with me doing an intensive, we're doing the, you know, evidence-based EMDR psychology work, but I'm also doing somatic work with you the entire time. I'm helping you with your breathing. I can use breathwork, we can use meditations, I can use sound, I can use all of that stuff with you to help you heal. And another huge part for me is nature. I will always try to hold my intensives in locations where we can get outside, where there is stillness, where there is sunshine or beautiful rain, where there is water, where there is fresh air. Because I wholeheartedly believe that if I can work with a client in an intensive and get them outside and show them how to regulate on country, and to incorporate nature and somatic practices into their healing, then it is going to be more effective and more sustainable for them as well. So one of the biggest questions I do get asked is around, um, how do people have the capacity for an intensive? There seems to be this notion that um, clients won't be able to have the mental capacity to sustain 5 hours of deep therapy. And, you know, to begin with, that is the case for some clients. I will always do like a pre-screener with people and sort of gauge where they are at and whether an intensive would be appropriate for them. I often will meet people and say to them, yes, an intensive would be great for you, but not for 6 months. Let's get into the, um, routine of having therapy, of learning the skills, learning the language, of building trust and rapport, of me getting to know all of your parts that are likely to show up in the EMDR space. Let's build some time to do that and then jump into an intensive when it feels right. So that is absolutely something that we need to manage. But as therapists, that's what we do all the time, you know. We need to trust ourselves that we will be able to manage that. Now, Now I will often have someone who goes into a really deep place and is exhausted 2 or 3 hours into the session, and that's where I will use somatic work or grounding or mindfulness with that client to help them sort of recalibrate or reset or regulate themselves. And I have like an ice bath on site, I have a sauna on site, and when I am traveling around Australia, I choose locations that have, you know, facilities that I can use for things like that. Otherwise, it's just a nice walk out in nature. You know, there are so many things we can do, and I think that that shows our clients how they can do this in the real world as well, you know, when we're not there sitting with them. So that's probably the biggest question I get asked. The second one is around how are people affording it, um, and I guess, you know, that is a huge barrier to accessing therapy to begin with, let alone this intense kind of therapy. I was really worried to begin with that the sort of demographic of the women I work with just wouldn't be able to afford or access this therapy. And in order for me to make it worthwhile financially for me, you know, and to value and honor all of the training and the expertise I have in holding these spaces for women, I set my price at $2,500, so essentially $500 an hour for this type of work. Um, and just this year alone in 2026, I have booked and will hold 42 days of intensives. So yes, it's expensive for some people. However, there is such a need out there, and I believe that if people see an offer that speaks to them and they think that it is going to maybe replace all the things they've been trying that haven't been working for them, then they often will find a way to access the money. Or even sometimes, you know, again, I will allow a client to book it in 6 or 12 months in advance and to work towards that. I also know a few therapists who offer reduced rate EMDR intensives, and that is something I do as well. I don't advertise it, but if I do have a client who really, really needs the work and I personally know their situation, then of course I will offer a bit of a sliding scale on pricing. And because I charge my value and honor my worth, it gives me space to do that kind of thing for clients who really need it as well. Another question I get asked a lot is, how do I have the capacity to sit with someone for like 5 or 6 hours going deep, deep into therapy? And my answer is, I love it. It is not like you are in this peak dysregulated processing zone the entire time. It ebbs and flows from an energy perspective. But for me, I would prefer any day to be sitting with one client for 5 or 6 hours than to see 5 or 6 separate clients. I'm 44 years old this year and I'm perimenopausal and my executive functioning isn't what it used to be. So for me, showing up and remembering 6 clients, I mean, we have our notes and we do remember our clients. Please don't take that the wrong way. But if you're seeing 6 clients in a day, you are jumping into 6 lives, 6 scenarios, and they can be so different. And you as a therapist have to adjust and have to regulate yourself and have to be prepared for that. And for me, in this chapter of my life, that is no longer sustainable to do every day. So I usually plan to do 3 days of client work and then 1 to 2 days of intensive work. And if I'm completely honest, I have more energy after an intensive than I do after, um, regular back-to-back clients. It's a burnout thing for me. If I continue to just see 6 clients a day every day, I will burn out and I will start to not love the work that I do. So for me, adding intensives to my business model has been a beautiful thing because I can now offer this wonderful service to my clients, but it is also serving me and my family as well, because I love the work I do. I have the space for it, and, um, it makes it more sustainable for me. Another question I get asked all the time is, how do you choose locations for this? And I will start by saying I'm in a very privileged position in that both the house that I used to live in before here at Glen Eden Estate and the house I'm on on the Central Coast, I have purpose-built as, um, retreat-type venues. So I have this little cottage here where I run my trauma intensives, and I do have a sauna and an ice bath outside. So that is— that makes it really easy for me to whack on an intensive. People are coming to me, I don't even need to go anywhere. But that's taken a lot of planning and a lot of investment and sort of values-led choices for me to be in this position. However, I'm getting more and more requests to run intensives intensives all around Australia. I am an online psychologist, so predominantly the work I do is over telehealth, and I have clients all over Australia. So when I go to different states to run retreats, or even on holidays, I often will then put it out to my clients in that area that I'm in town and does anyone want to do an intensive. And if that's the case, then I try to find venues that I can hire I've hired before, like, yoga studios because they've had saunas or just really beautiful vibes. I think it's so important for me to move out of the clinic space. I think it's important to have a healing space that is more holistic and incorporates nature. And like, you know, the lighting is important and the music is important. All of that sort of comes into creating a space for these intense um, I've— yeah, I've held them at yoga studios. There's a place in Victoria called Sana Recovery where I hold them. They've got really little room, but they've got this beautiful outdoor area. And other than that, when I'm in Tamworth and when I was in Bribie Island, I've hired Airbnbs. So I will go, I'll hire an Airbnb that looks beautiful, has a nice vibe, and I will rent it for a couple of days and run the intensives out of there. I don't think it needs to be too complicated, but it needs to be intentional. What is the energy of the space? How can you set it up? I will always set it up with candles, with music, with incense, all of the things, um, also depending on the client, that I think will help really set the scene. Um, just as a side note as well, So when we are doing Phase 3, which is target selection, I will always do an element of Phase 3 before the day. So if I was to— I guess if the question is what does one whole day look like, usually I will do a, like, a get to know them if they're not a current client already. So I'll do Phase 1, which is initial history taking on the phone beforehand, and I will, I will start to dabble a little bit in target selection as well, which is sort of Stage 3. So where are we going? I like to use this analogy that my supervisor Tracy Lynch shared with me, and I'll say it to my clients this way. I'll say, so think of this block of therapy or this intensive like you're coming to me and I'm a dentist. And when you're coming to me, you're saying, my whole mouth is sore. And you can see that there's maybe some broken teeth, some infections, some things like that. And we suspect there might be the need for some root canal therapy, right? So going deep into the wounds, but at first glance, we can't quite see where that is. And so we also have to acknowledge that in one block of therapy, depending on what the client is experiencing, we can't fix everything. We can't look at all the teeth every time, but the aim is to go deep into one or two of those teeth, right into the root canal and repair or desensitize so that the client can at least experience some relief from the work we've done on those teeth, right? So in that initial session, I will get an idea as to where we're going with that client, what the focus of that day is going to be. And then the client will arrive and I will usually spend the first hour resourcing, building a resource team, mapping parts, because I do parts-informed EMDR. Mapping their parts, noticing what parts of them have shown up to therapy, noticing if there's any resistance, noticing if there's any fear, any dissociation, any child parts that really need to be acknowledged because they're going to show up in the therapy room. They will always show up. And that's why I love this type of, um, EMDR, because it allows us to acknowledge that. So I will always spend the first sort of hour or two resourcing assessing, and then moving into clear target selection, right? So what are the things that are happening for you now that you would like to work on, or you would like to feel differently about by the end of this therapy? And then we go into stage 4, which is desensitization, the bilateral stimulation. I tend to mostly use tapping across the body, um, but some clients will prefer the eye movements, and sometimes I'll get feet involved and do a version of EMDR 2.0, um, if needed. Um, I am also trained in intergenerational EMDR and DREAMS, EMDR on dreams. So I'll usually have a bit of an idea if we're going into any of those spaces based on our target selection. Um, but you know, we have the time to go wherever it takes us, you know. So if you go into one tooth and find the infection is massive in another tooth, we do space in an intensive to sort of pivot and move into different areas if we need to, which is fantastic. Um, so then depending on how deep we go with, um, you know, the desensitization, whether we work on one memory network that might be quite complex, or whether we are focusing on several memory networks, will depend how the, the rest of the day is used. Um, it will also depend on the client's reaction and the client's experience. And it's unlikely I'll finish like all 8 stages of EMDR in one day, but often I'll sort of get to, um, you know, 6 or 7, and then, um, 6, 7— I wonder if everybody understands that. Anyone who's a parent of small children must understand that. Anyway, um, and often there'll be a follow-up call afterwards if we need to sort of finish out phase Step 7 or 8 or anything like that. But, you know, often I will have clients fly from all over Australia and come and spend like 2 or 3 days with me. And just wow, the— when you can send someone home, or I can leave for the day and they can stay in on my site here, I have accommodation, beautiful little cottage accommodation in the middle of nowhere, you know, kind of disconnected, where they can sit in their healing, light a fire, go and pat some animals, all that kind of stuff really adds to the ability to integrate what you've done. You know, even when I have clients that need to go back and pick up kids or something straight after this, I'll say, please, please, please, can someone else do that today? Is there any way that you can extend this space for you to continue to integrate? Because the work isn't just what happens in the intensive. Your brain will continue to integrate for hours afterwards, for days afterwards. In your sleep, you will notice integration happening in your dreams in so many ways. So when people can invest in the time to actually come away for a couple of days, then the next day we will pick up where we left off. Do we need to go deep into any other negative beliefs or wounds, or are we moving forward with the ones that we have created and doing like some forward EMDR. So that's my EMDR intensives, and I hope that that is useful for people who are maybe considering either doing intensives as part of their own healing journey or running intensives as a therapist. There are just so many benefits, in my opinion, on both sides. Um, there obviously are risks. It's not a one-size-fits-all, um, but you know, that's up to the therapist to work through and risk assess and manage for you. But overall, there are so many more therapists moving into this space. I see a lot of therapists, um, doing intensives where they might do like 2 hours one day, 2 hours the next day, 2 hours the next day, and they might do that for 2 weeks. Um, and I think that really benefits some clients, maybe clients who don't have as much capacity to go as deep straight away, or clients who don't have access to the time to spend a whole day. Um, and also for therapists who don't have a venue or a location where they can do the, the sort of deeper, longer intensives. But there are so many versions of this happening at the moment, and I think it's a wonderful thing. I think a lot of therapists are scared to do it, and there's a lot of worry about judgment from other therapists because we're doing something kind of different. But honestly, there is also this incredible community of people doing this, and, um, I will post some of those people in the show notes or in the Instagram Reels when this goes out. So thank you for listening. Um, pop on over to my Instagram page page for Unmasked Minds, the podcast. If you have any more questions, I'm more than happy to do a follow-up episode, um, answering questions about EMDR intensives. Um, so yeah, thank you for being here, and see you in the next episode.