What is a therapy intensive?
A therapy intensive is an extended therapy session designed to provide the time and continuity that deeper emotional work often requires.
Rather than meeting for one hour each week, we meet for three, four, six, or multiple days, depending on your needs.
This allows us to move beyond simply talking about your patterns and begin working with them in a more meaningful way.
Many clients describe the experience as feeling less rushed, more connected, and more productive than months of traditional therapy.
Therapy intensives can be especially helpful if you’ve been feeling stuck or overwhelmed in your life, or frustrated by the stop-and-start rhythm of weekly sessions.
—— YOU MAY BE HERE BECAUSE
You're not starting from zero.
You're ready to go further.
Anxiety & Nervous System Dysregulation
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You've done a lot of work on yourself. You know the tools and still your nervous system runs ahead of your intentions. Anxiety this entrenched doesn't respond to insight alone but to sustained, somatic, relational work. An intensive gives your nervous system time to actually settle into a new pattern.
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"I've been managing it my whole life. I want to actually feel different."
Perimenopause & Identity Transition
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Perimenopause is a threshold that often cracks open everything that was waiting underneath, including old pain, unresolved grief, questions about who you are now and what the second half of life is supposed to feel like. An intensive creates the space to move through this period of your more intentionally, rather than just surviving it.
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"I feel like I'm losing myself and I don't know how to find my way back."
Burnout & Life at a Crossroads
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You've spent years pouring yourself into your family, career, the endless to-do lists. The exhaustion you're feeling right now is not something a vacation or a better schedule is going to fix. It's asking you to get real about what you've been running your life around, and what it might actually look like to start building it around yourself instead.​
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"I don't even know what I want anymore. I just know this is not it."
Trauma & Complex PTSD
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Trauma work has a rhythm. You approach, you stabilize, you integrate. A therapy intensive allows us to go all the way through. To sit with what's hard until it actually shifts, and to do the integration work before you walk back into your life. For complex, childhood, or relationship trauma, this format can accomplish in days what might take months.
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"I keep starting to open things in therapy and then running out of time."
Relationship Crisis: Pre-Divorce & Post-Betrayal
If you're facing the end of a marriage, trying to make sense of a betrayal, or standing at a crossroads in a long-term relationship, an extended session gives you focused time to process what happened, get clear on what you need, and begin rebuilding from solid ground, whether or not the relationship continues.
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"Everything I thought I knew about my life just stopped being true."
Preparing for or Processing a Major Transition
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Job change, move, loss, diagnosis, marriage, divorce — some transitions need dedicated, uninterrupted space. An intensive is a chance to step away from the everyday chaos, get out of survival mode, and actually be with yourself long enough to figure out what you want, what you need, and where you really want to go from here.
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"I want to go into this next chapter differently than I went into the last one."
Why Therapy Intensives Work
There's a reason certain things can't shift in weekly therapy even with a good therapist, even when you're trying. The format itself has limits.
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Many women come to me after years of reading, journaling, listening to podcasts, and attending therapy.
They understand themselves really well.
They know why they people-please.
They know where the anxiety began.
They know why they struggle to trust themselves.
And yet something still feels stuck.
Knowing is not the same as experiencing.
A therapy intensive creates the conditions for your nervous system to experience something new.
Instead of repeatedly talking about the same pattern, we have the opportunity to stay with it long enough for something different to happen.
That difference often becomes the beginning of lasting change.
Therapy intensive is particularly effective for:
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— Trauma that has resisted traditional weekly work
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— Anxiety rooted in early nervous system patterning
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— Low self-worth, shame, and inner criticism
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— Relationship grief and post-betrayal processing
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— Perimenopause and identity threshold work
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— Burnout recovery and values clarification—————————————————————————————
— Pre-divorce clarity and/or preparation—————————————————————————————
— Grief, loss, or complicated family patterns—————————————————————————————
— Anyone who needs extended time for processing and healing
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Intensives are not crisis intervention and are not a substitute for ongoing therapy They are most effective when you are stable enough to do deep work, and are seeking focused, more concentrated progress.
Who Therapy Intensives Are For
Therapy intensives are not simply for people who want “more therapy.”
They are for people who feel ready to give themselves the time and space that meaningful change often requires.
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You might be a good fit for a therapy intensive if:
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You’ve been in therapy but still feel stuck in the same patterns.
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You understand your history intellectually but struggle to feel different emotionally.
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Anxiety has become more difficult to manage.
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You have experienced childhood trauma or complex PTSD.
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You’re navigating perimenopause or another major life transition.
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You feel emotionally overwhelmed or burned out.
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You notice yourself people-pleasing, over-functioning, or constantly taking care of everyone else.
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ADHD symptoms have become more difficult to manage during midlife.
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You want focused, uninterrupted time to understand yourself more deeply.
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You simply know that something needs to change.
Therapy approaches
used in intensives.
There is no single therapy technique that works for every woman.
Each person arrives with a unique history, nervous system, relationships, strengths, and challenges.
Rather than following a rigid protocol or structure, I tailor our work to your needs while drawing from approaches that are grounded in both neuroscience and compassion.
What matters most is not the name of the therapy model, but creating an experience where you feel safe enough to become curious about yourself.
Somatic & Body-Based Therapy
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Trauma, anxiety, and chronic stress live in the body before they live in thought. We work with sensation, breath, and nervous system activation to access and shift what cognitive approaches can't always reach. This is especially foundational in anxiety and trauma intensives.
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Attachment & Relational Therapy
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Much of what brings people to intensives including anxiety, burnout, trauma, relationship crisis, has roots in early relational patterns. We explore how you learned to attach, what strategies you developed to feel safe, and how those patterns show up now in your relationship with yourself and others. The therapeutic relationship itself becomes part of the healing.
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Mindfulness & Nervous System Regulation
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Integrated throughout every intensive, mindfulness and regulation practices create the conditions for deeper work. You can't process what you can't be present with. We build the capacity to stay in contact with difficult material without becoming overwhelmed or dissociating, so the work can actually complete.
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Internal Family Systems (Parts Work)
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IFS understands the mind as made up of parts — each with its own role, history, and protective intention. The part that overachieves, the part that goes numb, the part that can't stop replaying what happened... all of them make sense when you understand what they're protecting. We work with them directly, with curiosity rather than judgment.
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Psychodynamic & Depth-Oriented Work
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We explore the meaning you've made, the beliefs formed early, the patterns that have organized your life without your full awareness. This includes the larger systems that shaped you: the culture you were raised in, the gender roles you absorbed before you had words for them, the collective expectations that told you who you were supposed to be and what you were supposed to want.
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Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB)
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IPNB draws on neuroscience, attachment theory, and relational psychology to understand how the mind, brain, and relationships shape one another. The core insight is that the brain is a social organ. It develops in relationship, and it heals in relationship. In our work, this means attending to how your nervous system responds in connection, how early relationships wired certain patterns of protection, and how a safe therapeutic relationship can create the conditions for actual change how you experience yourself and others.
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—— INVESTMENT​
​Choose what fits for
where you are right now. ​​​​​​​​​​​
​Extended Session
2 HOURS — ONLINE
$525
Best for targeted work on one specific pattern, block, or moment when you need more than a standard session can hold. This is a good entry point.
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Grounding & nervous system check-in
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Core therapy work — trauma processing, parts work, somatic practices
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Integration, reflection & aftercare tools
​Half Day Session
4 HOURS — ONLINE
$1050
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Best for exploring patterns in depth, doing sustained processing, and anchoring real shifts. Enough time to go somewhere new without the commitment of a full day.
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Grounding & goal/intention-setting
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2.5–3 hours deep, focused therapy with short breaks
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Integration session & personalized coping plan
Full Day Intensive
6 HOURS — ONLINE
$1570
Best for exploring patterns in depth, doing sustained processing, and anchoring real shifts. Enough time to go somewhere new without the commitment of a full day.
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Grounding & goal/intention-setting
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4–5 hours deep, focused therapy with short breaks
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Integration session & personalized coping plan
Multi-Day Intensive
12—15 HOURS — ONLINE
$2990 - $3650
Best for: profound, layered healing across multiple days. Paced to allow deep work while giving your nervous system time to integrate between sessions.
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Customized across 2–4 days (weekends, weekdays, or spread over 3–4 weeks)
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Progressive depth: processing, parts work, somatic regulation, attachment repair
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Daily integration periods & practical forward plan
Pricing is based on the scope we design together.
To get a sense of investment for your situation, the consultation call is the right place to start.
—— TAKE THE NEXT STEP​​
Let's explore what support
feels most aligned with what you need.
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The free consultation is a no-pressure conversation. We'll talk about what's bringing you here,
what you're hoping to shift, and if an intensive is the right fit... And if so, which one.
AFTER AN INTENSIVE
"The anxiety is still there but it's not running everything anymore."
"I actually said no to something this week and I didn't spend three days feeling guilty about it."
"My body just feels calmer. Like I'm not constantly waiting for something to go wrong."
"Things that would have sent me into a spiral just don't hit the same way."
Frequently asked questions
If something you're wondering is not here, you're welcome to bring it to the consultation call.
What is therapy intensive? A therapy intensive is a longer, immersive session, or series of sessions, that creates space for deeper work than a standard 50 to 50-minute session allows. Instead of spreading things out week to week, we go further in one focused stretch. Intensives can start at 2 hours and extend all the way to 15 hours spread across 3 or 4 days. For those who want depth without full immersion, it's also possible to stretch the work across several weeks — intensive sessions with integration time built in between. The structure is designed around what you need, not a predetermined package.
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How is this different from regular weekly therapy? Weekly therapy is a slow build. It works, but it takes time. An intensive is for when you want to actually dig in without waiting months to get somewhere meaningful. The longer format creates momentum. Things surface faster. You leave with real clarity, not just a homework assignment. Intensives also draw more heavily on somatic work, parts work, and interpersonal neurobiology — approaches that benefit especially from uninterrupted time. The pacing is different. The depth is different. The integration happens within the container itself, not in the gap between sessions.
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Is a therapy intensive right for me? It might be if you're navigating a big transition, feeling stuck, burned out, or disconnected from yourself. Or if there's a specific relationship dynamic, work situation, or life decision you want to really excavate. Or maybe it's not a big life event at all. Maybe you've just been in therapy for a while and feel like you keep circling the same stuff without ever really cracking it. You're not broken, the process just needs more room. An intensive gives you enough time to actually go deep, stay there, and come out the other side with something that finally feels different. If you're still unsure, the consultation call is the place to explore that honestly.
Do I need to already be in therapy to book an intensive? No. Intensives are available to new clients. Many people come specifically for an intensive without an ongoing therapy relationship, often because they want to go deeper faster, or because the intensive format suits their current needs better than weekly work would. If you're already working with another therapist, intensives can also be a powerful complement to that ongoing work.
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How do I know if I need an intensive or regular weekly therapy? Weekly therapy is a good fit when you're looking for ongoing support, gradual growth, and continuity over time. An intensive is a better fit when you're at a crossroads, navigating something acute, feeling stuck after months or years of weekly work, or when you simply want to go deeper faster. Many people do both using an intensive to break through a particular layer, then returning to weekly work to integrate and continue.
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What should I expect to feel during and after an intensive? During: a range of things. Relief, heaviness, grief, clarity, tiredness, spaciousness. Deep work can move through all of these in a single day. This is normal, and we hold it together. After: most people feel tired in the first 24–48 hours. This is your nervous system integrating. You may also feel lighter, more settled, or like something has quietly shifted. Some people feel emotional for a few days as the processing continues. I'll give you specific integration support to work with during this time. This is why I ask that you protect the day or two following your intensive, not scheduling demanding obligations, giving yourself space to rest and be.
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Are therapy intensives covered by insurance? No, therapy intensives are not covered by insurance. They are a private-pay service. Upon request, I can provide a superbill that you may submit to your insurance provider for possible out-of-network reimbursement, though reimbursement is not guaranteed and varies by plan. I accept all major credit cards and HSA/FSA cards.
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Are therapy intensives available online? Yes. All intensives are conducted via a HIPAA-compliant video platform and are available to residents of Illinois. You'll need a private, comfortable space where you won't be interrupted and a reliable internet connection. I'll send preparation materials beforehand to help you set up your space in a way that supports the work.
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What is the investment and payment policy? A 50% deposit is due at booking (non-refundable) and the remaining balance is due on the day of the intensive. If you need to cancel, please do so at least 1 week before your start date — cancellations within that window are charged the full amount. Payment plans for larger packages can be discussed during the consultation call. Reach out to discuss specific pricing for your situation.
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What happens after I reach out? We'll connect for a complimentary consultation to talk through what you're hoping to address and whether an intensive makes sense for your situation. There's no pressure and no commitment required from that call. If it feels like a fit, we'll design the structure around you, including any preparation materials or reflections to complete beforehand.
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—— READY TO BEGIN​
Schedule a consultation with me
Most women wait longer than they need to. You keep thinking you should be able to figure this out alone, or that things aren't that bad. Or that you will wait until there's finally more time in the schedule, except that time doesn't usually come.
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You already know this. That's probably part of why you're reading this right now.