I engage depressed, anxious, self critical, or “stuck” individuals in time-limited experiential therapy intensives to give deep focus and concentrated effort toward resolving these problems as deeply and efficiently as possible.
A time-limited intensive might be a great option if you:
are motivated to change or get unstuck, or you struggle with low motivation but really want to put in the work.
are new to therapy, looking to work through a new issue, or one that has recently intensified to the point that you really need to deal with it.
have done a lot of talk therapy and you understand your problems cognitively, but it hasn’t led to the change you want. This work can be especially meaningful for therapists.
are currently dealing with depression; anxiety, including chronic worry, social anxiety, or panic attacks; recurrent relationship problems; obsessive compulsive symptoms; self-criticism or self-sabotaging behavior; or other kinds of problems.
have a long-term therapist you want to keep working with, but you need something different to get through an impasse.
Slower paced, open ended therapy is usually a better fit for people with active PTSD symptoms, or a who have a history of childhood abuse or neglect that is being explored and addressed for the first time.
I am trained in Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy. ISTDP is a present-moment focused model we can use to work with our inner (often unconscious) feelings and conflicts. This approach is experiential, intensive, psychodynamic, and time-limited.
Experiential means working in the here-and-now with feelings, bodily sensations, avoidance habits, and relational patterns. The focus is on one’s holistic experience: we work at the level of experience, rather than solely thoughts about it. This is sort of like the difference between talking about a slice of cake and actually eating it.
Intensive means that the work is calibrated, moment-to-moment, to one’s current level of capacity. This can be challenging and anxiety provoking, but should not be overwhelming. Working at an appropriate level of intensity allows old, life-limiting patterns to come into view and be disrupted, and for new learning to take place at a deep level.
Psychodynamic psychotherapy is a large branch of therapy that works with the unconscious, and is aware of how our early attachment experiences influence our current lives. This often includes the ways these patterns arise in the therapy relationship as an important area of focus.
Time-limited means the work isn’t open ended. After an initial “trial" session to determine together if this kind of work is a good fit, we can mutually commit to a set number of therapy hours (usually 16). This time limit, in my experience, encourages and liberates people to work directly and earnestly toward what they know, at least on some level, needs to be worked through. Perhaps counterintuitively, the short-term aspect of the work often increases rather than limits the depth that is possible.
The typical process is:
A two-hour “trial” session where we can experience how this way of working unfolds together.
Brief video call a few days later to discuss a treatment plan and make an agreement. Committing to the process can greatly energize the work, but of course you are free to end treatment at any time.
A block of sixteen hours of intensive, experiential therapy. Session length and frequency vary depending on circumstance. Sessions are usually between one and two hours occurring on a weekly basis. Other formats are possible as indicated or needed (for example, meeting a few days in a row if you’re traveling from a distance, or meeting bi-weekly or monthly to make the process more affordable).
If, after the trial session, we decide a time-limited intensive isn’t the right fit, we can choose to work together in an open-ended way, or I can to refer you to a colleague for further work.
After the block of therapy ends, a one-hour check-in and integration session is scheduled for about one month later. An optional two- or three-month follow up may also be appropriate.
My fee for time-limited therapy is $115 per hour (~$2,200 total for the format described above). For many people, this finite, known cost is easier to work with than the cost of open ended therapy.
This work is not a silver bullet and it is unlikely to fully resolve everything. What we can reasonably hope for in our work is an experience that disrupts your internal status quo. This can be powerful, and it can also be somewhat disorienting. Like many transformative experiences, important work comes afterwards, as we make meaning of our experiences and integrate change into our selves, relationships, and lives.
Neuroscience has made great advances in understanding how change occurs in the brain. Much change happens through effortfully adopting new habits: to change, we must do things differently enough times to deepen a new neural pathway, leading to new automatic behavior.
There is also exciting science showing the power of intense experiences— psychedelics, spiritual experiences, even traumas— that lead to rapid, profound changes in the brain. I can make no promises about what will or will not happen in our work together. The aim, though, is toward the kind of experiences that catalyze new possibilities. I will support integration, but it will be up to you, with the supports you bring in, to capitalize on these experiences so that they become something real and meaningful in your life, rather than just a memory.