EMDR Intensive Therapy Seattle | Accelerated Trauma Healing in 1–5 Days
Specialized EMDR intensive programs for PTSD, heartbreak, and loss
You know what happened. You've talked about it. But talking hasn't made it stop. You're functional. You're fine, mostly. But underneath that, something hasn't healed. You're not looking for someone to help you cope better. You're looking for something to actually change.
“This is what I offer, here in Seattle — In 1 to 5 focused days, we work at the level where talk therapy reaches its limit: the stored, unprocessed experience that language alone can't resolve.”
EMDR intensive therapy · North Seattle · 1–5 day programmes · In person · Serving Seattle, Bellevue, Kirkland and surrounding communities
Profound healing in days rather than months.Your path to emotional freedom begins with a single conversation.
What is EMDR intensive therapy
A more powerful path to healing — what EMDR intensives are and how they work
EMDR — Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing — is one of the most extensively researched and widely recommended treatments for trauma available today. Recommended by the World Health Organization, The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), and the American Psychiatric Association, it works not by asking you to talk through what happened, but by working directly with the brain's own capacity to process and integrate difficult experience.
In a standard EMDR session, bilateral stimulation — activates the brain's natural information processing system, allowing traumatic memories that have become frozen in the nervous system to be reprocessed and resolved. The memory does not disappear. But its emotional charge — the intensity, the intrusiveness, the way it pulls you back into the worst of it — diminishes, often significantly, and often permanently.
Standard EMDR
Delivered weekly in fifty-minute sessions. Effective for many people, but the gaps between sessions can slow momentum — just as processing begins, it has to stop and wait another seven days to continue.
EMDR intensives
Delivered across extended sessions over one to five consecutive days. The sustained format allows the nervous system to stay with the process — following threads of memory and emotion all the way through to resolution, without interruption.
The difference
Progress that might take months in weekly therapy can often be reached in days. Not because the work is rushed — but because continuity itself is therapeutic. The brain heals differently when it is given the time and space to go deep.
“A substantial amount of research indicates that adverse life experiences may be the basis for a wide range of psychological and physiologic symptoms. EMDR therapy research has shown that processing memories of such experiences results in the rapid amelioration of negative emotions, beliefs, and physical sensations.”
“70% of participants no longer meet the diagnostic criteria for PTSD after completing an EMDR intensive program — making it one of the most effective trauma treatments currently available.”
“The results indicate that more than 80% of the patients with severe PTSD and multiple co-morbidities showed a clinically meaningful response”
At my North Seattle practice, EMDR intensive therapy is offered across one to five day programs, tailored to the nature of your experience, your history, and where you are in your healing journey. Every intensive begins with a thorough consultation and a preparation phase — building the safety and stabilization needed before any reprocessing begins. The pace is always yours to set.
Whether you are coming to an intensive as a first step, or after years of weekly therapy that has helped but not fully resolved what you are carrying, the format is designed to meet you where you are — and move forward from there, together.
Why the intensive format
Why EMDR intensives work when weekly therapy hasn't been enough
Weekly therapy is valuable — and for many people, it is exactly the right pace. But for others, the stop-start rhythm of fifty minutes once a week creates its own obstacles. Just as something significant begins to move, the session ends. Seven days pass. Life intervenes.
The thread that was almost within reach has to be found again from the beginning.
The intensive format was developed in direct response to this limitation. By extending the therapeutic window — working across full days rather than weekly hours — it removes the interruption that so often slows or stalls progress. What the brain needs to heal is not simply the right technique. It is time, continuity, and safety. Intensives provide all three.
Accelerated progress
Meaningful change in days rather than months. The concentrated format allows for deeper processing and faster breakthrough moments — building momentum that carries forward into daily life. What might take a year of weekly sessions can often be reached in a single intensive program.
Continuous processing
In weekly therapy, just as processing deepens, the session ends. In an intensive, threads of memory and emotion can be followed all the way through — naturally, without interruption — creating deeper integration and more complete resolution. The nervous system is allowed to finish what it starts.
Personalised care
Every intensive is built around you — your history, your needs, your pace. There is no fixed script or rigid structure. Sessions are shaped in real time by what arises, ensuring the work remains responsive to what you actually need, rather than what a schedule dictates.
Flexible scheduling
For people whose work or family commitments make weekly appointments difficult to sustain, the intensive format offers a practical alternative — a concentrated period of focused therapeutic work that fits around a demanding life, rather than requiring it to be reorganised around therapy.
Lasting results
EMDR intensives are not a shortcut — they are a different route to the same destination, reached more directly. The results are durable: the shifts that occur in an intensive tend to hold, integrating into daily life in ways that continue to develop long after the program ends.
"The momentum created in a single intensive can accomplish what might take months in weekly therapy — not because the work is rushed, but because the brain is finally given the space to go all the way through."
What EMDR intensives can help with
The experiences EMDR intensive therapy is designed to treat
EMDR intensive therapy is not limited to a single diagnosis or category of experience. It is effective across a wide range of trauma, loss, and emotional distress — wherever the nervous system has become stuck in something it was unable to fully process at the time.
Below are the areas I specialize in treating through EMDR intensives at my North Seattle practice. Each has its own dedicated page with more detail on the specific experience, the science behind it, and what treatment involves.
Heartbreak & relationship trauma
—Betrayal in close relationships
—Abandonment and rejection
—Emotional abuse and manipulation
—Attachment wounds affecting new relationships
Grief & loss
—Bereavement following illness or sudden death
—Divorce and relationship ending
—Family estrangement and conflict
—Prolonged or complicated grief
PTSD & complex trauma
—Single-incident and complex PTSD
—Childhood neglect or abuse
—Medical trauma and procedures
—Accidents, injuries, and witnessed violence
Anxiety, fears & phobias
—Specific phobias and panic attacks
—Social anxiety and fear of rejection
—Performance anxiety
—Fear of failure and perfectionism
Anxiety & EMDR Intensive Therapy
"Whatever you are carrying — whether it has a name or not — if it is keeping you stuck, EMDR intensive therapy offers a way to begin moving through it."
If you are unsure whether your experience fits one of these categories, or whether EMDR intensives are the right approach for what you are dealing with, the free initial consultation is the place to explore that.
Finding the right format
Which EMDR intensive is right for you
Not all trauma is the same — and not all intensives need to be the same length. The right format depends on the nature of your experience, the depth of your history, and where you are in your healing journey. During your free initial consultation, we will explore this together and find the approach that fits what you are actually carrying.
As a general guide, there are two formats available — each designed for a different kind of work.
1 — 3 days
Focused intensive
Designed for specific incidents, recent trauma, or a clearly defined area of distress. Concentrated and targeted — enough time to go deep without requiring a long history to be worked through.
This format suits you if you
Have a single incident or specific experience to target
Are working through something recent that is affecting daily life
Are navigating prolonged grief or a traumatic loss
Are experiencing ongoing medical trauma needing focused support
Have an adult-onset issue with a relatively contained history
Often helps with
Recent accidents or assaults - Medical trauma-Grief & loss- Vicarious trauma-Specific fears & phobias-Workplace trauma
3 — 5 days
Deep intensive
Designed for complex or long-standing trauma, childhood experiences, or where the history is layered and requires time to build internal resources before deeper processing can begin.
This format suits you if you
Want to work through attachment issues and childhood trauma
Are seeking a full story clearing — all significant targets across your life
Have a substantial trauma history needing resource-building first
Experience dissociation, which requires additional time and care
Have complex PTSD with multiple interconnected experiences
Often helps with
Childhood abuse or neglect- Complex PTSD- Sexual trauma- Betrayal & abandonment-Attachment wounds- Multiple life traumas
"The right intensive is not about how much trauma you have — it is about what the work requires. That is always something we work out together, before anything begins."
If you are unsure which format fits your situation, that uncertainty is entirely normal — and it is precisely what the free initial consultation is designed to resolve. There is no pressure to decide in advance, and no commitment required before you feel ready.
Not sure which format is right for you? A free 20-minute consultation is the natural place to find out.
Results & evidence
What the research shows — and what clients experience
EMDR is one of the most extensively researched psychological treatments available. Its effectiveness for trauma and PTSD is supported by decades of clinical trials, endorsed by the world's leading health bodies, and experienced directly by the people who go through it. The intensive format extends those outcomes — reaching in days what standard weekly delivery achieves over months.
70%
of participants no longer meet PTSD criteria after completing an EMDR intensive program
3×
faster symptom resolution compared to traditional weekly therapy in controlled studies
WHO
World Health Organisation recommends EMDR as a first-line treatment for PTSD in adults and children
WHO & NICE
EMDR is recommended as a first-line treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder by both the World Health Organization and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence — placing it among the most credentialed trauma treatments currently available.
American Psychiatric Association
The APA includes EMDR in its clinical practice guidelines for PTSD, recognising it as an evidence-based treatment with a strong and consistent research base across diverse populations and trauma types.
Intensive vs weekly
Research comparing intensive and weekly EMDR delivery consistently shows that the intensive format produces equivalent or superior outcomes in significantly less time — with the added benefit of reduced dropout, as clients complete the work before life intervenes.
Benefits
Follow-up studies show that EMDR outcomes are durable. Reprocessed memories do not re-traumatize, and the symptom reductions achieved in treatment — including the intensive format — are consistently maintained at three, six, and twelve month follow-up assessments.
Clients who complete EMDR intensive therapy commonly describe:
Significant reduction or elimination of flashbacks and intrusive memories
Sleeping deeply — waking as themselves, not inside the worst of what happened
Release from hypervigilance and chronic physical tension
Freedom from shame and self-blame
Shoulders that drop. Breath that comes more easily. A body that remembers what calm feels like
The ability to be triggered without being flooded — present, not pulled back
Restored trust in themselves and others
Return of emotional range and genuine capacity for joy
Stronger, more secure relationships
A sense of safety in their own body — not as a concept, but as something felt
"I am safe. I am enough. It is over."
"The research is consistent and compelling. But what matters most is what becomes possible in your own life — and that begins with a single session."
Location & access
A peaceful space in North Seattle
Healing requires safety — and the environment in which that work happens matters. My North Seattle practice is designed with that in mind: a quiet, private space away from the noise of daily life, where the conditions for deep therapeutic work can be properly established and sustained across the full duration of an intensive.
Serving clients throughout the Greater Seattle area
North Seattle
Redmond
Bothel
Seattle
Kirkland
Edmonds
Bellevue
Shoreline
Kenmore
"The intensive format works in part because the environment holds you. A full day of focused work requires a space that feels genuinely safe — private, calm, and unhurried."
Location
North Seattle, Washington
Format
In person & hybrid
Program length
1 – 5 consecutive days
Frequently asked questions
Questions people ask before beginning
If you are new to EMDR intensive therapy, or unsure whether it is the right fit for what you are carrying, the questions below cover what most people want to understand before they reach out. If something is not answered here, the free initial consultation is always the place to ask.
What is EMDR therapy and how does it work?
EMDR — Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing — uses bilateral stimulation, typically guided eye movements, to help the brain reprocess traumatic memories that have become frozen in the nervous system. It works below the level of narrative, with the part of the brain where trauma is actually stored — which is why it can reach experiences that talking alone has not been able to resolve.
Will I have to relive what happened?
No. EMDR does not require you to recount your trauma in detail or to re-experience it fully. It works with the memory at a manageable level of distance — and that distance is always negotiated together, at your pace. Many people are surprised by how little talking is required.
Is EMDR evidence-based?
Yes. EMDR is recommended as a first-line treatment for PTSD by the World Health Organization, NICE, and the American Psychiatric Association. It is one of the most extensively researched trauma treatments available, with consistent evidence of effectiveness across diverse populations and trauma types.
About the intensive format
How long does an EMDR intensive last?
Intensives are available in 1–3 day and 3–5 day formats. Sessions typically run three to six hours per day, with regular breaks built in. The right length depends on the nature of your experience and what the work requires — something we assess together during the free initial consultation.
How is an intensive different from weekly therapy?
Weekly therapy requires the nervous system to open, begin processing, and then stop — with seven days between each session. An intensive removes that interruption, allowing threads of memory and emotion to be followed all the way through to resolution. Progress that might take months in weekly therapy can often be reached in a matter of days.
Do I need to have tried weekly therapy first?
Not at all. Some people come to an intensive as a first step in their healing journey. Others arrive after years of weekly therapy that helped but did not fully resolve what they are carrying. Both are entirely valid starting points — and the consultation will clarify which approach makes most sense for you.
Are the results of an intensive lasting?
Yes. Research consistently shows that EMDR outcomes are durable — reprocessed memories do not re-traumatize, and symptom reductions achieved in intensive treatment are maintained at three, six, and twelve month follow-up. The shifts that occur in an intensive tend to integrate into daily life and continue to develop long after the program ends.
About the process
What happens in the free initial consultation?
The consultation is a 20-minute conversation to understand your history, your goals, and whether an EMDR intensive is the right fit for what you are carrying. There is no obligation and no pressure to commit. It is simply a place to begin working out what you need.
Is EMDR intensive therapy safe for complex trauma or C-PTSD?
Yes, when delivered by a trained and experienced therapist. For complex PTSD, the intensive includes additional preparation and stabilization work before reprocessing begins — ensuring the nervous system has sufficient resources to engage with the process safely. The 3–5 day format is typically recommended for complex or long-standing trauma histories.
What if I feel overwhelmed during a session?
This is something we prepare for together, before the intensive begins. Stabilization skills — techniques to regulate the nervous system during and between sessions — are built into every program. The pace is always led by what feels manageable, and sessions can be adjusted in real time based on what arises.
Location
Where is the practice located?
The practice is based in North Seattle, and serves clients throughout the Greater Seattle area — including Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond, Shoreline, Edmonds, Bothell, and Kenmore.
Begin your healing journey
You have already waited long enough.
Something different is available — and it starts here.
Most people who reach out are not certain they are ready. They are exhausted, uncertain, and carrying something they have been managing for longer than they care to admit. That is not a barrier to beginning. It is exactly where most people start.
The free initial consultation is a 20-minute conversation with no obligation and no expectation that you arrive with answers. It is simply a place to talk about what you are carrying, understand whether an EMDR intensive is the right fit, and take the first step at a pace that feels manageable.
"Healing does not require you to be ready. It requires only that you show up — and allow the work to begin."
Ready to find out if an EMDR intensive is right for you? Book a free 20 minute virtual consultation. No commitment required. Just a conversation, at your pace.