Is a Therapy Intensive Right for You?
What are Therapy Intensives?
Feeling stuck or like traditional therapy isn’t moving fast enough? Like an hour never quite feels like enough because you’re just getting to ‘the good stuff’ 10 minutes before it’s over? Maybe you often find yourself in ‘the zone’ often and wish you had more time to keep talking about that one issue, but time is up? Or maybe you actually really enjoy weekly sessions, but it just doesn’t work with your busy work schedule. If any of that sounds familiar, therapy intensives may be a good option.
While there is nothing wrong with the traditional model of therapy which usually consists of 45-60 minute sessions weekly or every other week, they aren’t right for everyone or every issue, and they certainly don’t work with every schedule. What if there was a way to feel better faster? What if, instead of spending 3-6 months in weekly therapy to address one issue, you could work through it in just a few longer sessions? Therapy intensives longer sessions that are highly personalized and can be a powerful, accelerated form of therapy that helps you reach your goals faster and with tools to help you maintain progress.
Who Benefits Most:
Busy professionals who can’t commit to weekly sessions can see significant benefits from therapy intensives. If you have to travel frequently for work, have trouble taking an hour in the middle of the day, or find it difficult to transition from work to therapy and back to work again every week, then therapy intensives can be a great option. Sometimes it can be hard to set aside time for yourself when you are a busy professional, mom or partner who spends all of your time working or taking care of others. Having a few hours to just focus on you, where you feel supported and are taught important skills, instead of always taking care of others, can be life-changing.
Therapy intensives are also a great option for those who prefer to work efficiently at work, and in therapy. Individuals with this drive can find it appealing to set aside a few hours to work through an issue, instead of stepping away from work, spending time getting into ‘therapy mode’, only to disengage and go back to work an hour later like nothing ever happened. Intensives provide dedicated space for you to work through an issue and have time to process and integrate after, without worrying about jumping straight back to work.
Why Therapy Intensives Work:
Therapy intensives are effective for a number of reasons. I often explain that what brought you into [traditional] therapy is usually like a big ball of tangled christmas lights. In order to untangle it we’ll sometimes spend a few sessions working on one knot, and then we’ll spend some sessions working on another knot, all in the purpose of taking apart the one big knot of lights that’s actually a bunch of smaller tangles that all have to be addressed. What’s different with intensives is that we just focus on one specific knot and get it untangled faster. This often provides relief, clarity and confidence and makes it easier to untangle the big one. Sometimes untangling the one knot gets rid of the bigger one altogether, because it helps us deal with the root issue that has been causing the lights to keep getting tangled over and over again.
Another difference between traditional weekly or biweekly therapy and a therapy intensive is the structure. Instead of spending time each session catching up on the events of the last week or two, therapy intensives dive into a specific issue so you can work through it faster and feel better sooner. Sometimes it can feel really good to be able to walk into your therapist’s office and be able to talk about something that’s been really bothering you this week, but it might not leave time to talk about how to set boundaries, which you really wish you could learn how to do now. That’s where therapy intensives come in. Instead of getting side-tracked by other events or issues that arose since the last session (like a different little tangle of christmas lights), we stay focused on the issue you came to work on, like setting boundaries without feeling guilty. Because of this unique structure, intensives provide a dedicated time to fully immerse yourself in the issue, leading to deeper understanding AND giving you time to learn tools to navigate it.
Common outcomes of Therapy Intensives:
Once you are at a place where you are interested in feeling better faster, have the time and resources to really dive into the issue you want to resolve, and have the right environment and the right therapist, progress can happen very quickly. Therapy intensives have been researched and have been shown to be just as effective as months of therapy, but in a much shorter time. In one study, one week of intensives produced the similar results as 3 months of weekly therapy. While intensives are more costly up front, they can save clients time and money in the long-run as 3 or more months of weekly sessions.
In addition to a cost benefit, by focusing on and improving a specific issue, intensives can actually increase the effectiveness of weekly therapy for those already working in this model. For example, therapy intensives for burnout allow clients to understand, interrupt and change the cycle of burnout so that even if they leave their job, they don’t recreate the same patterns wherever they go. Resolving the burnout then frees clients up to focus on other things in weekly therapy, like patterns of people-pleasing or navigating challenging relationships. In therapy intensives for boundaries, clients can learn how to set boundaries and walk away with tangible skills they can use immediately, so they can focus on other things in weekly or biweekly therapy sessions instead of spending the entire hour reviewing skills from last week that have already been forgotten because your brain has had so much going on since you last saw your weekly therapist. Depending on your goals, therapy intensives can be a great option and are worth exploring.
Interested in learning more? Schedule a free consultation today to see if a therapy intensive is right for you!