Intensive trauma therapy IN New Jersey

trauma therapy monmouth county, nj

Trauma therapy in Monmouth County offers you unhurried time for healing. During intensives you can process a traumatic event, heal negative beliefs, improve self-esteem, get unstuck and change the way you feel.

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Do any of these sound like you?

🤔 You’ve been in therapy and you can’t put a finger on why but you’re thinking 50 minutes a week or twice a month isn’t working.

🤔 You like your weekly therapy, and feel good immediately after, but you’re often frustrated or confused about why all the work you’ve been doing in therapy isn’t getting you where you want to go.

🤔 You understand so much more than you used to about why you react or believe certain ways, but you still don’t FEEL any different. Like part of you gets it but part of you can’t make the changes you know you want to make.

🤔 You feel like you spend your weekly sessions catching up on all that happened in the week so you don’t have time to address the big problem you came for therapy in the first place.

🤔 You have wanted the support of therapy for a while now, but you just can’t make sessions work with all that is in your schedule.

🤔 You want relief right now, not after weeks or even months in traditional therapy sessions.

🤔 You are new to this whole therapy thing and the idea of working intensively, with time for a variety of mind-body interventions in a weekend is more appealing to you than traditional weekly 50 minute sessions.

Traditional therapy is helpful for many. Intensive sessions are simply an evolution that will help meet the needs of more. We need flexible options for how we get support. Life is complicated. Getting help shouldn’t be.

What are Therapy Intensives?

Intensive therapy includes highly curated treatment plans that will give you faster access to treatment and will support your preferred timeline and schedule.

Intensives allow you to progress through concerns in a more focused way without the interruption of a 50-minute session.

An intensive format may decrease overall treatment time because of time not spent on:

checking in at the beginning of each session
addressing current crises and concerns
focusing on stabilizing and coping skills repeatedly

How do Intensives work?

Before we meet in person for the Intensive session for processing, we’ll meet online for a pre-interview to discuss your goals for our time together. We’ll look at your life now, including your stressors, big emotions, and physical sensations that may be related. We’ll also look at your current coping skills and any support you have now. We’ll talk a bit about where you’ve come from and we’ll determine the places you want relief or growth or both.
During the intensive session, we’ll use a variety of interventions curated for your personal goals. We’ll work to both decrease current discomfort while also increasing your ability to access more ease and even joy in both memory, thoughts and feelings. We do this by identifying and then training with coping skills that work best for you.
This may include processing relationships or events from your past, present or worries for your future. All of this will depend on you and your personal goals. All therapy is personal. Intensives are even more so. Think of this as bespoke therapy, fully designed with you and your joy in mind.
After the Intensive session, we’ll meet again via a secure online video chat for a follow-up interview to reflect on the work we’ve done and project into the future as we take your new insights and learnings and help shift them into your life moving forward.

Why should I do an Intensive? Can’t I just come to weekly therapy?

Yes, you can come to weekly therapy. If that’s working for you already, then great! Intensives are probably not a fit for you.

However, if you:

✓ want to experience deep therapeutic work in a compressed amount of time that could lead to quicker life changes

✓ had a painful or uncomfortable experience that is still impacting you today and you want focused help now

✓ have some time off of work or school, and you want to use some of your time for a mental spa day

✓ have done EMDR or other trauma focused therapy before, found it helpful for healing and want that type of experience again

✓ want to prepare yourself for a big life event or transition to a new stage of life

✓ already go to weekly therapy and you feel stuck in some area and you want to try an intensive session as a supplement to your weekly therapy

✓ find the idea of a weekend dedicated only to you and your healing very appealing and something you think you both need and deserve to try

Then let’s set up an intensive session today.

Is Intensive Therapy legit?

Much of the research highlighting Intensive Trauma-focused therapy focuses on PTSD and the studies show generally positive outcomes, including in some cases enabling faster and often greater reduction of symptoms than traditional talk-therapy. This is possibly due to the compact time frame that reduces the risk of clients dropping out or losing steam before true healing happens.

Learn more here and here and here.

Why are you doing this now, Cristie?

Maybe this is the question you most want to ask. Here’s the thing, I can show you all the research I can find. I can tell you all the extra certifications and training I have to make me qualified to do this, but I’m guessing all you really want to know is why am I offering this now.

So, I’ll tell ya.

Trying to eliminate a waitlist. I get more calls from people looking for therapy than I could ever possibly serve in a timely way. There just isn’t enough of me (or my referring therapists) or hours in any of our days to provide what people need. So, I started looking for alternatives. I have the support groups I lead, and the WOW Community for support, but for more individualized help, Intensives are the most effective option to get you the help you need quickly.
I’ve seen from talking with current and potential future clients that this service is what people need now. I work with busy people. They have jobs and kids and roles in the community. They have built incredible lives that unfortunately leave little room for self-care. We don’t always have the time for what we need. We have to make time, and I wanted to provide a service that made it easier for folks to make that time for themselves.
Part of this decision is selfish. I love being a therapist, but sometimes I don’t love the traditional model of therapy. I get frustrated on behalf of my clients when schedules don’t work to ensure continuity of healing for them, or 50 minutes in session passes before it feels like we’ve gotten to all we need to address. Also, I have trained in a variety of awesome therapeutic interventions, that include mind and body healing, and often I feel like there isn’t time to utilize them in a way that would be most helpful to my clients. Finally, after pandemic life crushed any plans for in-person retreats for a few years, I am itching to get back to the in-person, in-depth work that happens when you have extended time together like retreats and Intensive sessions allow.

Therapy Intensives