COAST TO COAST

We offer EMDR Intensives at Coast to Coast offices in Boca Raton, FL, Fort Lauderdale, FL, and Spokane, WA.

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” 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.

EMDR intensives allow us to condense 9-12 months of individual therapy sessions into a 3-10 day span. The Research shows that EMDR accelerates treatment for a variety of issues and that the intensive format is effective. Most people think 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 different tolerance level, we find the majority of people can process for 4-6 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. This speeds up your brain’s ability to heal, allowing quicker relief of symptoms and a faster return to a healthy, happy, productive life.

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 don’t offer insurance at Coast to Coast for the following reasons, including prioritizing the protection of:

Your Information:
Maintaining your confidentiality is of the utmost importance. When billing insurance, we cannot guarantee the same level of confidentiality as many insurance companies require more disclosure to justify the services provided. Any information that is disclosed ends up on your permanent medical record.
 
Your Diagnosis:
A diagnosis is required for an insurance company to cover the cost of therapeutic services. Whatever diagnosis you receive becomes a part of your permanent record, which can impact areas such as life insurance, health insurance premiums, background checks for certain occupations, and more. If you do meet the criteria for any mental health diagnosis, we want that to stay confidential and protected from outside entities. We believe that a diagnosis should not be a permanent label; instead, it is a tool to best guide your treatment and support the healing of your individualized needs.
 
Your Treatment:
At this time, insurance companies operate within a weekly-therapy model. This means they do not allow providers to do more than one hour of therapy daily. This does not fit with an intensive model, which calls for 4-6 hours of daily therapy.

At Coast to Coast, we find intensives are a good fit for:
- Individuals with busy schedules who struggle to find time for weekly sessions
- Parents who struggle to find consistent childcare for weekly therapy
- Individuals who worry about processing their trauma in small doses amid daily responsibilities, as is the case with weekly therapy
- People who are ready to take a deeper dive into their healing
- Individuals who are looking for a more efficient option for therapy
- Individuals who want to feel better quickly, so they can enjoy life now and not wait a year
 
Special considerations we’ve noted:
- Substance abuse history – for best results, we require a minimum of 30 days of sobriety prior to the beginning of your intensive. EMDR is a brain-based therapy that works with your brain’s ability to heal itself. Substances can interfere with processing.
- Recent or active suicidal intent – because we are not an in-patient treatment center, we need to ensure that you are safe on your own between sessions. History of suicidal thoughts or attempts should be discussed in further detail with your assigned therapist prior to your intensive.
- Must be 18 years old or older to receive treatment with our team.
 
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 up to 30 days before your intensive and will receive your deposit back minus $1,400 (the cost of one day). This covers 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.

If you are interested in scheduling an intensive with us, please complete an inquiry using our form, or email us at info@coasttocoast.com.

We will contact you once we receive your inquiry with information about our intensives and the option to schedule a free 15-minute inquiry call to answer your questions about our program.  Once we determine we are the right fit for you, we will set up your online assessment to help us make a recommendation for the length of your intensive. The cost for this is $200. This charge is non-refundable but will be applied to your total cost if you decide to book with us. 

Once we receive that completed assessment, we will contact you again and schedule an intake call with one of our therapists. On that call we will review the results of your assessment, finalize our recommendation for how many days you’ll need, and discuss your goals for your intensive. 

When you’ve completed all of the steps above, we will work with you to get scheduled with our team. A 50% deposit will be required to secure your appointment dates. The remaining 50% will be paid on the first day of the EMDR intensive.

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.