Intensive Trauma Therapy

Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.
– Peter Levine

Beyond Trauma—An Intensive Program Designed To Expedite The Healing Process And Provide Lasting Changes

Are you looking for a deeper, more intense way of treating trauma than weekly therapy sessions can provide? Do you struggle with guilt, shame, fear, anger, ruminating thoughts, or panic attacks that impact your capacity to live your best life?

Perhaps you’re a first responder who’s endured and witnessed horrible things, and you need a place where you can work through your experiences quickly, privately, and effectively.

Or maybe you were exposed to abuse, neglect, or toxic environments as a child and you’re hoping that intensive trauma therapy will finally help you heal these longstanding emotional wounds.

Trauma Can Affect You In Deep And Unseen Ways

On the surface everything may seem fine, but underneath, is the hypervigilance, fear, and catastrophic thinking wearing at your mental and physical well-being? Perhaps you’re so irritable and on edge all the time that you have trouble managing your anger and other strong emotions, and it’s threatening your relationships—maybe even your career.

You may be experiencing anxiety, depression, or a lack of motivation that’s preventing you from performing at your best. And you probably get stuck rehashing painful memories and worrying about the past repeating itself, so you feel like you can never truly move forward.

At Crossroads Counseling, we have developed our Beyond Trauma Intensives for individuals wanting to understand their experience, learn tools, and heal in a shorter period of time. So if you’re looking for a brief yet effective way of managing symptoms and healing your pain, we’ll offer you the space, support, and guidance needed to discover your best life.

Trauma And PTSD Often Require A More In-Depth Approach To Healing

Unfortunately, time constraints, finances, and the lack of knowledge regarding what intensives entail prevent many people from seeking intensive therapy for trauma and PTSD. However, it’s often less time-consuming, more effective, and cheaper than weekly therapy sessions (in the long run) because it gets to the core of what is going on and even facilitates healing on a neurological level.

The return on the investment of time and money pays off with the benefits gained. For instance, you can reduce stress and anxiety, challenge feelings of shame and guilt, improve emotional regulation, and connect with a greater sense of joy and fulfillment in life. So regardless of how mild or severe your symptoms are, intensive trauma therapy can offer you results that last a lifetime.

How Our Trauma-Focused Therapy Intensives Work

Our therapists at Crossroads Counseling offer intensive trauma therapy retreats typically two weekends per month, so it’s important to call in advance to ensure booking. Usually, we meet on the first and third weekend of the month for two days (Friday and Saturday) from 9 AM to 4 PM. Depending on your preference and what we gather from our initial assessment, you’ll have the option of booking one or two weekends of intensives.

Friday’s and Saturday’s schedule:

• 9 AM to 10:15 (followed by a 15-minute break)
• 10:30 to 11:45 (followed by a 75-minute lunch)
• 1 PM to 2:15 (followed by a 15-minute break)
• 2:30 to 3:45 (ending around 4 PM)

Even though we have a structure in place, you’ll still have the agency to control the pace of sessions, what we talk about, and how deep we go. If you ever need to take a step back for a second, you’re completely within your right to do so. And if you think you would benefit from some additional counseling on the side, we can provide weekly trauma therapy sessions at an hourly rate.

Beyond Trauma Group Therapy Program

In addition to the private 1:1 intensive trauma therapy, there is the option to participate in group trauma therapy.  The Beyond Trauma Group Therapy Program is set to begin on 4/30/2024 and last 6 weeks until 6/7/2024.  The group will take place on Tuesdays in our Scottsdale location.  The cost per session is $45.00.  Commitment to all 6 weeks is required.  To enroll please contact our office at the number listed below.  If you are not a current client of Crossroads, please be advised you will need to complete a brief intake to participate in our group therapy.

Who Is Best Suited For Intensive Trauma Therapy?

This brief, yet effective therapeutic intervention is a powerful way to address trauma in all of its forms in a shorter period of time. It’s particularly helpful for those who are highly motivated to heal and need to find lasting relief quickly. Our trauma-focused intensives are also perfect for individuals dealing with a more complicated history of trauma who find weekly sessions more challenging and time-consuming.

Although weekly sessions certainly have their place, in some cases, they can be somewhat limited. That’s because they often involve more checking in, talking about the week, and dealing with important (yet distracting) matters that come up between sessions. So clients meeting weekly can end up spending more time addressing secondary issues and less time actually processing trauma.

In contrast, trauma-focused intensive therapy provides longer, back-to-back sessions over a shorter period of time, which helps accelerate recovery. They can enable you to move beyond trauma and experience sustainable healing in a relatively brief time—even if you’ve tried traditional therapy before.

What Can You Expect To Experience In Sessions?

We’ll start by taking a thorough history of your life, identifying negative patterns, themes, and narratives. We’ll explore triggers, symptoms, and how your experience affects you day to day. There’s also a psycho-educational component to our intensives that involves discussing trauma: what it is, how it impacts a person’s mind, body, and spirit—and, most importantly, how treatment works.

In a way, we’re trying to bridge the gap between the scientific and holistic, so we use a spectrum of evidence-based and eclectic techniques:

• Attachment-Focused EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy is all about giving the brain another resource to view the situation through. This approach is our primary treatment method for trauma intensives. It’s both research-driven and eclectic, which means it integrates well with other healing strategies.
• Internal Family Systems (IFS)—also known as Parts Work—helps you reconcile the wounded and protective parts of the self. IFS often works through a relational, trauma/attachment-based lens, and it pairs very well with EMDR.
• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) allows you to challenge negative thoughts, themes, and patterns related to your experience so that you can make conscious changes and improvements to how you think, feel, and behave.
• Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) focuses on taking self-inventory, cultivating mindfulness, and building stronger skills for regulating emotions and improving interpersonal relationships.

We also draw from somatic-based therapies, attachment theory, and spiritual work—using things important to you to create the most dynamic treatment plan possible. You’ll learn how trauma affects everything from your brain and body to your thoughts and behaviors.

We’ll take inventory of your life and counter negative cognitions that are holding you back. You’ll gain access to practical coping skills, like visualization, breathwork, meditation, and mindfulness exercises. And you can cultivate greater self-awareness and self-compassion as you learn to look at yourself in a new way.

So whatever you are going through—no matter how painful your experience— working with an intensive trauma therapist makes it possible to heal and transform yourself on every level. Instead of being held back by the past, you can finally move forward and discover all that life has to offer.