An EMDR Intensive gives you focused, extended time to work through a specific memory, event, or pattern — without the stop-and-start of weekly sessions. Instead of spreading the work out over months, you meet for a longer, dedicated block of time and move through it together, start to finish.
This isn't for everyone, and it isn't a shortcut. It's a different way to do deep work — for people who are ready, and who want to get somewhere faster than a once-a-week pace allows.
The format
A small number of long blocks rather than one hour a week.
Session length
Three sessions, 6 hours: 90 minutes, 3 hours, 90 minutes.
What it costs
$750 for the whole package, whether the six hours run in one day or across several.
Where
In person only, at our office on Shoal Creek, across from Pease Park.
When
We try to fit the blocks inside a week, since keeping them close together is what makes the format worth doing.
At Decades, we offer EMDR Intensives as a structured, three-part experience — designed to give your nervous system time to prepare, process, and integrate. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a research-backed approach that uses gentle bilateral stimulation (eye movements, tapping, or sounds) to help your brain process and integrate experiences that feel unresolved. The intensive package includes three sessions across three days.
A thoughtful, supportive session where we clarify your goals, identify treatment targets and underlying patterns, assess readiness, build grounding and regulation tools, and offer guidance for caring for yourself between sessions. This step allows us to move into the intensive with clarity, safety, and intention.
This is where deeper processing unfolds — with support, flexibility, and space to move at a pace that feels right for you. Includes guided EMDR processing using bilateral stimulation, support working through memories, patterns, or triggers that feel unresolved, ongoing attunement to your pace and nervous system, breaks as needed, and time for reflection, integration, and gentle closing.
This phase helps support the shifts from your intensive so they can carry more fully into everyday life. We reflect on what has shifted emotionally, mentally, and physically, make meaning of your experience, strengthen new supportive beliefs, build tools for continued regulation and growth, and discuss next steps.
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Cassi Fitch
MA, LPC Associate
Supervised by
Sarah Osmer, LPC-S
EMDR Intensives at Decades are led by Cassi, an EMDR-trained clinician, with a passion for trauma work in this format. She works with clients ready to go deeper than a standard weekly session allows. She brings the same warmth and steadiness to intensives that she brings to ongoing therapy — just with more room to move. Before your intensive, you'll connect with Cassi to talk through what you're hoping to work on and make sure it's the right fit.
Weekly therapy is built for the long haul — steady, gradual, a little at a time. That's exactly what a lot of people need. But it's not the only way to do this work.
An intensive compresses things. Instead of 50 minutes once a week, you're in it for hours, working through one thing with real focus. There's no warming up and then running out of time just as it gets real. No losing momentum between sessions while life gets in the way. You go in, you do the work, and you come out the other side.
For some people, that's exactly what makes weekly sessions feel impossible — the stopping and starting, the having to hold something painful open for a week between appointments, the slow pace when what they actually want is to be done with it. If that's you, an intensive might be a better fit than anything weekly therapy can offer.
This tends to appeal to people who:
Have a specific memory or event they want to target, not an open-ended process
Are short on time and want meaningful progress without a months-long commitment
Have done therapy before and are ready to move faster
Feel like they're "too in it" between sessions to function, and want concentrated time instead
Want to walk into a big life moment — a wedding, a birth, a diagnosis — without an old wound still running the show.
Start wider
If you are less certain about the method than about what you are carrying, start here. Weekly work is where most people begin, and it is not the lesser option.
Trauma and PTSD therapy
Go weekly
The same approach at an ordinary pace, one hour at a time.
About EMDR therapy
Often, yes. Weekly sessions spend time re-orienting each week — catching up, settling back in. An intensive skips that, so focused work can move faster in less total time. It's not a race, though, and it's not right for everything. Some healing needs the slow rhythm of weekly sessions. Intensives work best for a specific memory, event, or pattern you're ready to move through in a concentrated way.
That's a fair worry — “intensive” is right there in the name. But intense doesn't mean overwhelming. We pace the work based on what you can actually hold, and a big part of preparation is making sure your system has the resources to handle it before you go deep. You won't be pushed past what you're ready for. If anything, many people find it feels more manageable than weekly sessions — because you're not left holding something painful open for a week before you get back to it.
No. Many people come to an intensive as their first time doing EMDR. Cassi will walk you through how it works and make sure you feel oriented before you start — no prior experience needed.
Dates are set in advance around your schedule, not dropped into a weekly slot. We try to fit the whole thing inside a week, since the blocks work better close together, but we'll flex if your week can't take it. Tell us what's possible and we'll work backward from that.
That's the more common route, and it's not a lesser one. You can start with weekly sessions and decide later to try an intensive, or the other way around.
In person, at our office on Shoal Creek, across from Pease Park, in Central Austin. Intensives are not something we do virtually, even though plenty of our weekly work is.
No. The practice does not bill insurance directly. We can check your out of network benefits for you, by hand, before you commit to anything.
Say so on the consultation. It is a normal thing to ask about rather than an awkward one, and we would rather talk it through than have you rule it out quietly.
Twenty free minutes, and you're not committing to anything. We'll talk through whether an intensive makes sense for you, and if it doesn't, we'll say so and help you figure out what would.
Book a free consultationYou tell us what is going on, in whatever words you have for it.
We talk through whether an intensive fits, and what would come before it.
You leave with a plan, or with somewhere else to look. Either way you are not back at the search bar.
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