Busy Schedule? Get Therapy That Works with Your Lifestyle.

Intensive therapy offers a focused and accelerated approach to mental health treatment, designed for individuals seeking rapid progress in a supportive environment. Unlike traditional therapy, which may extend over several months or even years, intensive therapy condenses the healing process into a much shorter timeframe. Through tailored interventions, including EMDR therapy, we work on processing trauma and negative core beliefs. Whether you're grappling with past experiences or feeling overwhelmed by daily stressors, as your psychologist, I guide you every step of the way, ensuring you feel safe and understood.

Intensive format

  • Flexible 3-hour blocks of therapy

  • Schedule it over 1, 2 or 3 days.

  • Work through 3 to 9 hours of therapy in ONE week (instead of 1x50min session weekly for 3 - 9 weeks).

Flexible Therapy Options

The traditional model of weekly therapy is now shifting to meet your needs. Now more than ever, we need flexibility in how we get support.

EMDR Intensive Therapy personalises treatment plans that allow you to get faster access, designed to support your preferred schedule and timeline, and to specifically target your treatment goals.

Stress, Trauma and PTSD

Stress, trauma, and PTSD are interconnected experiences that significantly affect an individual's mental health. Stress can arise from various life situations, and when those situations are overwhelming, they may lead to traumatic experiences. Trauma can disrupt the way a person processes emotions and memories, often resulting in symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), such as flashbacks, anxiety, and avoidance behaviours.

Any incident or environment that had a significant negative impact on how you think, feel or sense in your body can be called “traumatic”. The same distressing events can be experienced differently by each person. It’s what changes on the inside that really matters.

Trauma-focused therapy helps to not only make sense of experiences, but to understand why you feel the way you do even long after the events have passed. Finding some relief from the past may be the only way forward.

Understanding the relationship between these elements is crucial for developing effective therapeutic approaches to help individuals heal and regain a sense of control over their lives.

What is trauma-focused intensive therapy?

One of the effective ways to work through distressing or traumatic events is through EMDR therapy. Other complementary therapies will also be used to tailor an individualised treatment plan that targets specific issues and to ensure the best possible outcomes. These include Attachment-Informed EMDR, EMDR 2.0, Internal Family Systems, Resource Therapy, Deep Brain Reorienting and more.

Therapy involves bringing together a variety of tools and techniques into an intensive format. Intensive therapy can supercharge your therapeutic journey in a short amount of time so you can get on with living your life. We’re calling this EMDR Intensive Therapy or EMDR Intensives. It’s simply more therapy over a shorter period of time.

What is EMDR Intensive Therapy?

Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a type of therapy that is backed by scientific evidence, endorsed by WHO, Medicare and Department of Veteran Affairs as an effective treatment for PTSD and stress-related problems. EMDR is efficient, effective and can result in significant shifts on those deeper core beliefs.

Exciting and new research continues to emerge from Europe and Australia showing EMDR intensives to be just as effective, or even better than weekly sessions as it reduces the probability of premature drop out when “life” tends to get in the way.

You can learn more about EMDR here.

Intensive application of trauma-focused therapy seems to be well tolerated for people who have experienced trauma or highly stressful events with positive results, and a reduction of dropping out prematurely.

The economic value of intensive therapy

Case series: Intensive EMDR to treat patients with complex PTSD (2017)

Effective Treatment of Veterans With PTSD: Comparison Between Intensive Daily and Weekly EMDR Approaches (2018)

EMDR Intensives right for you?

EMDR Intensives can be helpful for:

  • Single incident trauma (e.g. car accident or assault)

  • Repeated distressing events (e.g. abuse or bullying)

  • Social anxiety, general anxiety, health anxiety, panic attacks, phobias and OCD

  • Depression and low self-esteem

  • Individuals with a stable home environment, predictable work/study, helpful coping strategies and a supportive network

  • Clients may be in therapy but are looking to work on a specific issue to then return to their regular psychologist / counsellor

For safety reasons, EMDR Intensives that are offered with us may not be suitable for some individuals. If you are experiencing any of the following, you may be best supported by traditional forms of therapy that offers ongoing care:

  • very frequent and severe dissociation

  • unstable home situation, work and/or social support

  • recent hospitalisation

  • high risk behaviours or unmanaged substance use issues and acute manic episodes

Meet Your Psychologist

Angela Pak

PSYCHOLOGIST

Angela is an AHPRA registered, an Accredited EMDR Practitioner and member of EMDR Association of Australia, EMDR International Association, Resource Therapy International and the Australian Association of Psychologsts Inc. Angela is an experienced psychologist with a special interest in Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR).

She is deeply compassionate and non-judgemental when working with adults and older teens and often combines other therapeutic modalities to suit the client’s needs.

She has attended training in attachment-informed EMDR, EMDR Intensives, EMDR 2.0, IFS-informed EMDR, Resource Therapy, Deep Brain Reorienting, flash technique, CBT, ACT, Schema therapy and more.

Angela is a SIRA-approved allied health provider and welcomes CTP and workers compensation claimants to access much needed therapy so they can return to their former life before the accident.

Angela offers standard 1:1 50min sessions and 3-hour intensive therapy sessions.

 FAQs

  • EMDR is a way to help the brain’s natural ability to process traumatic or stressful events in an efficient and transformative way. Intensive application of EMDR is a safe and effective treatment and can be well tolerated in people with PTSD, enabling faster symptom reduction.

  • Perhaps you’re needing help — and a lot of it—right now, and you don’t want to spend months in the traditional weekly model of therapy to feel better. You may be a new client who prefers to work intensively. Or perhaps you’re working with a psychologist or counsellor and you’re needing to do a specific piece of trauma processing work before returning to your regular sessions.

    This type of therapy would not be suitable for those who experience a high level of dissociation and require more stabilisation. Regular sessions over a longer period of time would be safer and appropriate.

  • Book in an initial FREE 10min confidential call with the psychologist.

    If it is a good fit, you can book in your first 55min assessment session, agree on therapy goals and program.

    Once you’re ready, schedule intensive sessions and follow up session.

    Return questionnaires prior to the intensive sessions.

    Wear comfy clothes and bring your favourite snacks s we can get to work!

  • The session will cover psycho-education, checking for readiness, and then we start working through the 8 phases of EMDR. This will include setting up resources, creating a list of “target” memories then processing the traumatic / stressful memories.

    Short breaks can be taken during the 3 hour intensives as needed. Clients should be available for 3.5 hours.

    The 6-hour full day intensive will include regular short breaks and a 1 hour lunch break. Clients should be available for 7.5 hours that day.

  • Unfortunately medicare rebates are based on traditional weekly therapy sessions and does not allow for higher rebates for intensive sessions. If you have a mental health treatment plan from your GP, you can claim for one medicare rebate per day, which means there will be a larger gap to be paid by you.

    Please speak to your health fund to find out how they might cover for intensive therapy and the caps per day before signing up.

  • You can return at a later date and book in for more intensive sessions or return to your existing psychologist / counsellor for ongoing support.

  • Unfortunately telehealth sessions are not available for EMDR intensives.

  • Pre-assessment (55mins) and follow up (55mins) sessions are paid on the day of the appointment.

    To secure your EMDR intensive block, a deposit of $200 must be made. This deposit can be deducted from the package cost or refunded if cancelled no later than 72 hours before the booking.

    Full payment for the EMDR intensive block must be made on the day of the session.

    Cancellations must be made no later than 72 hours (3 days) in advance otherwise cancellation fees will apply.

    Late cancellations within the 72 hour window will incur 50% of the intensive cost of the treatment.

  • Unfortunately, the psychologist does not work with children, couples or families at this time. Angela may see older teenagers but at her discretion.

Get started with EMDR Intensive therapy today.

Invest in your mental health today. Embrace the chance for a fresh start and experience the life-changing benefits of EMDR Intensive Therapy. Make the first step towards healing—reach out to learn more about our services and how we can assist you on your journey.