You need relief and you need it now.
It’s been a while since you’ve felt like yourself. You feel unsettled because you’re disconnected from your mind, body, and true self. Maybe you don’t know who you truly are anymore since you’ve been trapped in this pattern of people-pleasing, ignoring your problems, and feeling overwhelmed by your emotions. You’ve slipped into a cycle of negative thoughts that you can’t seem to find peace from and it’s impacting your sleep, confidence, and self-worth. You’re feeling out of control and you’re not sure how to escape. All you know is that you need relief.
It’s possible to find peace within yourself
Accelerated healing to feel better faster with long-lasting results.
What is a Personal Intensive?
Brainspotting is a form of therapy that taps into our brain and body’s natural ability to heal themselves. Through eye positioning, Brainspotting helps target issues at the root to help you dive deeper and do more powerful work towards healing.
Our bodies and minds know what we need. We just have to relearn how to listen to them. Some of these answers may lie in our subconscious, or it may be hiding underneath our negative self-talk, insecurities, fears, etc. Brainspotting can help us work through these blocks to get to the root of what’s going on within us.
Dr. David Grand, the founder of Brainspotting, states that “what’s in the body is in the brain and what’s in the brain is in the body.” Our mind and body are one. Brainspotting allows us to heal one by healing the other.
You can learn more about brainspotting therapy here.
Intensives offer a unique opportunity to delve deep into issues that may have been lingering unresolved. This extended format allows you to unpack all parts of the issue without worrying about if there is enough time to get to it all. There's no rush to address sensitive topics that you might typically avoid in an hour-long session knowing that you need to get back to your day right after.
Therapy is healthcare. Just like a surgeon wouldn’t say “Well, our time is up, let's keep working on the transplant at the same time next week. Put their old kidney back in for now.” It doesn’t make sense for you to spend the session telling me how your trauma has impacted your life and the ways it still shows up today, dredge up all those feelings within you, just to have you pack it right back up to do the same all over again the following week.
How is Brainspotting different than talk therapy?
A primary goal of counseling is to support clients to move from dysregulation to regulation, from imbalance to homeostasis, from emotional stress to emotional healing. Cognitive based talk therapy approaches activate the part of the brain associated with higher order thinking, logic and reason. Asking questions, processing, and analyzing what happened are part of the cognitive function. Although these functions have a place in therapy, their purpose is not to create regulation. This is one reason cognitive approaches are limiting.
Brainspotting tends to access the midbrain and the nervous system. This is where trauma, emotional stress, habits, repetitive patterns, and sensory experiences are stored. Therefore, this is where changing negative habits and patterns must happen. And this is also where regulation happens. the parts of the brain and the body associated with regulation.
Another way Brainspotting helps move a client from dysregulation to regulation is through the mindful presence of the therapist. By creating a sense of safety and compassion, your Brainspotting therapist acts as a grounding force to help you process feelings and memories down to where you feel calm and at ease.
Benefits of Intensive Therapy:
Focused Treatment Goals: Your therapist will review your goals for treatment and develop a treatment plan that is monitored closely throughout the intensive to support the needs of the individual and the accomplishment of working towards identified goals.
Quick Response: We call our intensives the biggest bang for your buck in therapy. With this structured treatment focus, it supports the individual in gaining symptom relief and healing more quickly.
Emotional and Physical Healing: Brainspotting is a powerful therapeutic technique that supports neurophysiological regulation through emotional healing, expansion towards more positive self-regard, awareness of triggers of disturbing behaviors, and blocks towards personal growth.
FAQs
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Sometimes, a traditional hour-long therapy session is not enough time to address everything on your agenda.
The format of a traditional 50 minute session tend to go as follows:
10-15 minutes is spent checking it and catching up.
30 minutes to do a deep dive.
10 minutes to wrap up at the end.
If you have weekly sessions, that’s only 2 hours a month spent on deeply processing and working through your concerns.
Imagine that the problems you are seeking therapy for is like a giant fire roaring in the background.
Then the wind picks up and blows the fire to the surrounding area causing little fires to form everywhere. This is like week to week issues that present that you also want to discuss in therapy. Sometimes that giant fire in the back feels too overwhelming to tend to and you do still have a lot of little fires everywhere. But when we only focus on trying to put out all the little fires, we aren’t able to make significant enough progress to feel that relief that we are urgently in need of.
An Intensive in addition to your regular talk therapy sessions can help you significantly decrease the size of the giant fire while you also address the little ones everywhere. By controlling the bigger fire through an Intensive session, you can make the most out of talk therapy sessions and better apply what you’ve learned once you’re no longer in crisis mode.
With a Personal Intensive, you have hours to dedicate towards putting out that giant fire roaring in the background at your own pace.
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You can reach out here for a free 20-minute consultation call to determine if you are a good fit for a Brainspotting Intensive.
A Brainspotting Intensive is likely a good fit for you if you:
Have a specific goal in mind that you’d like to achieve.
Desire long-lasting results through a deeper form of treatment
Are looking accelerated results.
Feel stuck in what you’re currently doing and are ready to try something different
A Brainspotting Intensive is likely NOT a good fit for you if you actively struggle with any of the following:
Suicidal intent
Substance use
Self-harm
An eating disorder
Visual or auditory hallucinations
An abusive or unsafe living environment
If you’re still unsure if you’re a good fit for a Personal Intensive, feel free to reach to out and we can discuss further. If you’re not a good fit, we can find other treatment options to help address these concerns before working up to an intensive.
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Yes! A Personal intensive can be an adjunct service to your regular therapy sessions. You will be able to continue processing and doing work with your regular therapist. The Personal intensive can help you dive deeper and process more at one time which can allow talk therapy to be more effective.
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Some insurance plans will reimburse a portion of the cost of an Intensive session. Please understand that the insurance company requires a diagnosis code as a reason for treatment and justification for the extended session. I recommend calling your insurance and asking what your specific plan can cover. You can also use an HSA/FSA card. Alternatively, I am CareCredit provider which can be used to cover intensives.
Authorization of services by insurance is not a guarantee of coverage and most insurance companies are not covering extended services beyond 60-minute sessions. Insurance does not always cover multiple sessions within one day/week span. Insurance will be billed for the first 60 minutes of each session but is not guaranteed. Client will be responsible for any cost insurance does not cover.
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The Process:
First: A thorough intake and treatment plan to establish goals.
Some intake documents will be completed prior to the intensive. Your provider will then assess symptoms and severity with you in your first session. You will discuss with your provider therapeutic goals that include desired states of functioning or being. Review of a timeline of disturbing or traumatic events in childhood and adult lifespan. Assessment of negative beliefs. Identification of resources and the assessment of strengths. This will be a road map to support your processing journey over the span of the intensive and will be regularly reviewed throughout the intensive sessions to continue to monitor growth and healing.
We decide together how much time you want to or may need to spend on processing the issue (90 minutes up to 3 hours a day for one or multiple days in a row-breaks are included).
Next: Dropping into the process to support regulation, healing and growth.
Working towards emotional regulation with the use of the therapeutic technique of Brainspotting. Your provider will guide you through deeper levels of emotional exploration using a variety of Brainspotting techniques that help to clear harbored emotional responses, release somatic responses, and help to eliminate and shift negative thoughts and programmed messages of regard towards self. Sessions will build on strengthening positive beliefs about self and expand into desired states of being.