What Exactly Is An Intensive?

I try and share this with my clients using a metaphor. If one has never been to the ocean and I show pictures of it, or share the sound of it, or if one flies over it in an airplane, all of these things are helpful and yet not the same as experiencing it for oneself. When one goes to the ocean and feels the vastness, or experiences what the undertow feels like, they have their own experience of the ocean. I haven’t been able to do the ocean justice because it’s so personal and powerful. I would say that’s true about intensives as well. So much can happen weekly in therapy and when you put several of those sessions together in the form of 2 to 4 days it gets personal, powerful, maybe even mystical.

Speaking into what an intensive looks like, the client is encouraged to participate where they don’t have to return home in the afternoon and answer emails or take care of children or tend to any household chores. This gives the nervous system a chance to relax and begin integrating all that happened in the day.

This deep intentional amount of time in the work and a purposeful pause from always doing stuff, allows for change to truly happen.

The intensives that I offer have other therapists in training participating in the experience. This has a profound impact for the clients as they are seen and heard, or witnessed throughout their work. The other therapists are in the process for the client playing roles, and providing support. They are not sitting in the corner, observing and taking notes on their phones. So often we get wounded in secret and we heal in community. So having other people in the room to play the role of a distant mother or angry father adds a richness that a stuffed animal or pillow from the couch does not compare. The client is seen and heard and able to repair what has been a block or an obstacle for many years.

I am so pleased and proud to offer intensives with an additional two or three therapists in the room. After having done intensive’s by myself for at least 15 years I can say without a doubt, that doing this healing work in community is the only way I plan to do this going forward. Facilitating with other therapists in the room is in it’s 2nd year and the feedback from clients has been stellar. Leading this way also serves as a powerful way to teach other therapists how to do this work. It can also be away for a therapist to witness their client’s work.

An intensive like this is the ideal intervention for anyone who feels stuck, or sick and tired I’m feeling sick and tired.

In the work we uncover repetitive themes and injurious behavior that despite all of our intelligence continue to show up and hurt current relationships with self and others.

If intelligence and thought could change our behavior no one would need therapy or an intensive. Dropping into the body and feeling the feelings as frightening as they are is how we create the emotional healing that inspires new and healthier ways to treat oneself and loved ones.

If a person goes to 90 minutes of therapy every other week for a year that would be roughly 39 hours of time. This doesn’t include travel back-and-forth, time away from work and what one has to set aside to go to the session. And when a client gets to a place in their therapy where it’s not enough or it’s more hurtful than helpful to try to peel back the layers and then close everything back up in an hour and a half, this is when an intensive makes more sense. And putting those same 39 hours in a concentrated time frame one really does have time to connect many of the dots. In other words it’s difficult to hide from oneself in that amount of time.

If this appeals to you and if you’re curious about this process I hope you’ll reach out. In my own journey when I have given myself the gift of doing an intensive I’ve experienced healing and self care beyond my wildest dreams.

Sheila Maitland, LCMHC, LCAS