At Coast to Coast, we utilize intensive, retreat-style EMDR therapy that empowers you to focus and find healing faster than traditional weekly sessions offer.
Our team consists of highly experienced and qualified therapists with specialized education and skills (with focuses on addiction, foster and adoption issues, first responders, therapists seeking therapy, expressive arts, attachment, inner child work, and relationship issues). Additionally, all of our therapists are EMDRIA Approved Consultants and EMDR Trainers who train therapists nationally.
Coast To Coast utilizes a variety of therapies to help you heal, including Client-Centered Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Mindfulness-Based techniques, Somatic (Body) Therapies, Ego State Interventions, Attachment-Focused techniques, Expressive Arts, Solution-Focused Therapy, and more. However, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is the primary method used to accelerate your treatment and get the most out of the intensive format.
In EMDR treatment clients are first taught coping skills so they can develop more emotional and physical regulation and not feel as nervous about dealing with their trauma. During reprocessing, clients allow their minds to bring up memories, thoughts and feelings while using bilateral stimulation. Bilateral stimulation may be eye movements, holding tappers, or audio sounds. This bilateral stimulation “turns on” the brain’s natural healing system that allows us to adaptively process memories – very much like we do in REM sleep. Clients are in control the entire time and their own brain doing the processing. The processing can continue after session for hours or a couple of days.
EMDR is different than “talk therapy”. Often clients are conflicted between what they know is true and what their “gut” tells them. For example, people who were neglected as children may understand as adults that the lack of care they received was due to their mother’s addiction issues, yet they still suffer from feeling that they are not good enough or deserving, and they often find themselves in poor relationships. Through EMDR, the client gains insight to connect the rational information they know in their brain with the trauma memory and gut feeling to transform it, thereby eliminating the distress and symptoms, and gaining an improved belief about themselves. EMDR does not require homework or verbalizing the details of the trauma.
EMDR therapy enables people to heal their symptoms instead of just learning to cope with them.
There is extensive research on EMDR including over 30 randomized controlled studies showing its effectiveness as well as its effectiveness on a wide ranch of issues and populations (see list). EMDR is designated as effective by the World Health Organization, SAMHSA, The American Psychological Association, and the Department of Defense. Since EMDR works so well with severe and complex trauma, it is easy to image how well it can work on simpler issues associated with more commonplace negative memories (anxiety, relationship issues, anger, phobias, hopelessness, etc). It is used by hundreds of thousands of clinicians world-wide to successfully treat millions of people.
Contact us to learn if EMDR is the right solution for your healing journey.
At Coast to Coast, we have helped our clients find healing through EMDR in many areas.
Below is a list of some of the issues we’ve helped address:
Our therapists work with adults with a range of issues at Coast to Coast. While we treat a variety of populations and issues, we specialize in treating therapists and first responders.
Our intensives are designed like a retreat, as it is a time for you to focus on healing.
The intensive will be an individualized retreat, and the length of your sessions may vary. You may or may not be provided with supplemental homework to complete between sessions as well. Therapy is 4-6 hours per day in the Coast to Coast office, with clients typically staying at a hotel or residence close by.
It is for these reasons, and because EMDR will continue to work after the sessions, that we recommend not staying at home or working, but rather investing in activities you enjoy, such as yoga, walks, massages, etc. We also recommend renting a car so you can partake in local activities and make the most of your journey.
Intensive therapy offers a jumpstart to your healing as months of therapy are compacted into 3-10 days, depending on your needs.
To learn more about an intensive or schedule your visit, please complete the “Contact Me” form here or email us at insightcounselingintensives@gmail.com to schedule a free pre-treatment assessment.
Our team will explore if an intensive is a good fit for you and help you determine how many days may be required based on an online trauma assessment known as the Post-Traumatic Stress Index.
We offer EMDR Intensives at both Coast to Coast offices in Boca Raton, FL, Seattle/Spokane, WA, and Denver, CO.
EMDR has been extensively researched and proven effective for treating many issues (see the list below). It helps us process memories that have created negative beliefs about ourselves and the world and shaped our emotional reactions.
EMDR can produce faster and more long-lasting results than weekly talk therapy sessions because instead of just problem-solving daily symptoms and patterns, EMDR addresses and heals the root of your symptoms.
CTA – Contact us to learn if EMDR is the right solution for your healing journey.
EMDR intensives allow us to condense 9-12 months of individual therapy sessions into a 3-10 day span. They may seem more expensive than traditional weekly sessions but are cost-effective as they require less time overall. We find intensives are a more efficient use of time, as each hour is a full hour, not 50 minutes, and the first 5-20 minutes of each hour isn’t spent on “catching up” or venting about issues that occurred since the last appointment. Our clients are also not dealing with missed appointments due to daily living issues.
Additionally, clients don’t experience therapy fatigue, where they become discouraged by slow progress or frustrated because they have just made progress or opened a traumatic memory only to be told at the end of a weekly 50-minute session that time is up.
To learn more about the benefits of intensives, click here to schedule a consultation with our staff.
Research shows that EMDR accelerates treatment for a variety of issues and that the intensive format is effective. Most people that therapy must be only one hour per week, yet there are no studies indicating this timeframe is effective. EMDR is a therapy that enables your brain to turn on its natural healing system to reprocess memories in a timeframe that lasts at most for three days after your sessions. While everyone reprocesses memories at a different rate and has a difference tolerance level, we find the majority of people can process for 3-5 hours per day. This allows for a great deal of work to be done without interruption – although clients do take breaks as needed.
When you are doing weekly therapy, part of the session is spent on checking in from the previous week and dealing with issues that have arisen. Then the therapist takes time to set up for the processing This may take 10-20 minutes out of the hour session (and consider that most clinical hours are only 45-55 mins). With the intensive format, your brain remains in that optimal processing space for the entire duration of your treatment with no time lost on discussing your week, traffic, work, or other issues that have arisen. Your brain remains in the processing mode is allowed to process the memory uninterrupted to completion. This speeds up your brain’s ability to heal, allowing quicker relief of symptoms and faster return to a healthy, happy, productive life.
Additionally, intensives allow you to remove daily stressors and responsibilities and focus solely on your healing.
While these are not requirements for an intensive, we have found that they are helpful in allowing you to get the most out of this experience.
Before Your Session:
During Your Sessions:
In Between Sessions:
Your intensive is an individualized retreat, as everyone’s needs are different. The length of each session depends on several factors – how you process, how long your brain can process, your self-care in between sessions, and the intensity of the trauma processing itself, to name a few.
Some days will be longer than others – our goal is to have quality over quantity in each session. If your brain becomes over tired, effective processing stops, so sometimes, the most effective tool is to take a break and allow your brain to rest. Our therapy team will meet you where you are each day and determine the best use of time based on your needs and daily capacity.
Unfortunately, EMDR intensives are not currently covered by insurance.
We also don’t use insurance at Coast to Coast for the following reasons, including prioritizing protection of:
Your Information:
Your Diagnosis:
Your Treatment:
At Coast to Coast, we find intensives are a good fit for:
Special considerations we’ve noted:
None of these considerations are disqualifiers, but they should be discussed during your intake call to determine if we are the right fit for your needs. Ensuring your safety is our main concern.
If you need to reschedule your EMDR intensive, you will be put back on the waiting list, and we will provide dates based on availability.
If you need to cancel, you can cancel 30 days before your intensive and will receive your deposit back minus $500. This covers the cost of your pre-treatment assessments, intake calls, and the time your therapist has set aside for your intensive.
If you must cancel less than 30 days before your intensive, your deposit is not refundable.
We do understand that sometimes life and unexpected things happen, so while this is our policy, please contact us so we can discuss this further if necessary.
We typically have a waitlist, so we recommend contacting us sooner rather than later if you want to schedule. If we have a cancellation, we will inform you and try to schedule you sooner.