EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing) is a highly researched, widely respected, and effective approach to treating trauma as well as chronic anxiety and depression. EMDR helps you to quickly process critical incidents or events from your past so that you are no longer having overwhelming emotions, feelings, or thoughts about the event and you are able to function and return to the life you had before the traumatic event or, in some cases, even better than before.

EMDR Intensives are personalized treatment sessions designed to provide EMDR services in a consolidated timeline, to achieve specific goals. They are highly concentrated sessions, occurring for 6-8 hours a day, scheduled in 4 days in the same week. Linq Therapy offers EMDR intensives for current clients when they are needing extra support, as well as new clients who prefer to work intensively.

For many clients, regular therapy can take several years to achieve desired results. This can be frustrating and very expensive over time, often leading the client to quit therapy because it’s “ineffective” or develop more severe mental health symptoms due underlying issues not being addressed quickly enough. This most often occurs with clients suffering from trauma, who often feel stuck and unable to move past the traumatic event.

Research shows that clients completing intensive treatment can make as much progress in the condensed format as in standard weekly sessions. This can eliminate weeks or months of living with trauma symptoms, and with the toll this takes on work, relationships, marriages, parenting and general wellbeing.

We approach EMDR from a somatic and attachment focus. This attachment approach takes into consideration early attachment patterns and experiences, as well as the built-in trauma responses that themselves become patterns. In most therapies these patterns and trauma responses are considered blocks to the therapeutic process.

This recasting of a block into what we call “The Answer” creates a space for the client to approach distressing memories with less resistance. We believe the body and mind are deeply interconnected. That’s why trauma has symptoms, rather than memories. We teach a series of body-based exercises, meant to manage the client’s affect and connection.

When trauma occurs it is natural for the human system to go into defensive resources: fight, flight, freeze, collapse, or submit. These are natural adaptations to trauma and danger, but they become a problem when the trauma is triggered by something that is not life threatening and yet the human system reacts to the trigger as if the trauma is life threatening. When we are in a dangerous situation cortisol is released which shuts down our information processing center. The person is then left with the emotional and physiological response to the experience stuck in their system, unprocessed. Trauma has symptoms instead of memories. This is why talking about trauma doesn’t help.

EMDR is based on the Adaptive Information Processing model (AIP) which proposes that combination of genetic predisposition and life experiences create our memory networks. These networks simplify the encoding and retrieval process forming the basis of our beliefs, attitudes, and perceptions. Most memories are functionally stored in the brain; however, intense or traumatic events tend to be stored without a coherent sense of time. This incorrect storage can lead to experiencing somatic symptoms in the moment rather than episodic recall of the memory.

In EMDR, clients follow a variety of possible stimuli (visual, tactile, audio) to induce bilateral stimulation (BLS) or activation of both sides of the brain/body. This, in combination with the reprocessing and installation phases, appears to place the client into a more relaxed state resulting in decreased emotional and somatic arousal by altering how the memory is represented in the brain.

EMDR Intensives are offered in a customized format, and the personalized plan will be discussed with you and your EMDR Intensive therapist. Intensives are $5,600 self-pay. Insurance does not cover the costs, as intensives are not part of coverage plans.

The costs for the initial intake session is a non-refundable fee of $150. Clients who wish to proceed and book an EMDR Intensive program will be able to use the intake fee towards the total cost of the program.