Why Traditional Therapy Feels So Slow
(And How You Can Make Progress Faster)
If you’ve ever found yourself frustrated with the slow pace of traditional therapy, you’re not alone. Week after week, you might find yourself sitting in a therapist’s office, sharing your thoughts and emotions, only to leave feeling like you’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s really troubling you. It’s not that therapy isn’t working—it’s just that it’s moving at a pace that feels almost glacial when compared to the depth of pain and trauma you’re carrying.
The Challenge with Traditional Therapy
Traditional therapy often involves a gradual process of building trust, exploring your past, and slowly unpacking the layers of your emotional experience. This method can be incredibly effective for some, but for others—especially those dealing with deep-seated trauma and negative self-beliefs—it can feel like an endless journey with no clear destination in sight.
Here’s why it can feel so slow:
The Need for Trust: Building a therapeutic relationship takes time. You may not feel comfortable diving into your deepest wounds right away, and that’s completely natural. But this necessary phase can make it feel like progress is moving at a snail’s pace.
Surface-Level Exploration: Early sessions in traditional therapy often focus on understanding your current situation and how it’s connected to your past. This means you might spend weeks, even months, talking about your daily struggles without getting to the root cause of your pain.
Limited Time: Most therapy sessions last about 50 minutes, once a week. When you’re dealing with significant trauma, that’s a very short amount of time to make meaningful progress. It’s like trying to clean a house one room at a time, but only being allowed to work on it for an hour each week. The work you do is meaningful, but it will take a while to get the house totally cleaned up.
Emotional Fatigue: Processing trauma is exhausting. Traditional therapy’s slow pace can sometimes leave you feeling drained, as you carry unresolved emotions from one session to the next without experiencing the relief of resolution.
Why Faster Healing is Possible
The good news is that healing doesn’t always have to be a slow, drawn-out process. If you’re ready to make significant progress, there are therapeutic approaches designed to work more intensively and effectively, helping you achieve breakthroughs in a shorter amount of time.
Enter EMDR Intensives.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a powerful therapy that has been proven to help people process and heal from traumatic experiences. And when delivered in an intensive format, the results can be transformative. Now, if you are one of the skeptics, I welcome you!
Before getting trained in EMDR, I had every hesitation with this approach to therapy. It seemed too good to be true, and also kind of confusing to understand how it really works. Then, I became a client and saw how impactful this work is, along with learning how to do this work for others. EMDR does not make you forget about your past experiences, but it gives you the clarity and closure to move forward without experiencing the same emotional charge they once had.
How EMDR Intensives Speed Up the Healing Process
Focused Attention: Unlike traditional therapy, which is spread out over weeks or months, EMDR intensives concentrate therapy into a shorter, more focused period. This allows you to dive deep into your trauma without the interruption of time between sessions.
Rapid Progress: In a 3-day intensive (2 hours/day), you can accomplish what might take months or even years in traditional therapy. The focused nature of the intensive allows you to process and resolve traumatic memories more quickly, leading to faster relief from your symptoms.
A Safe and Supportive Environment: During an EMDR intensive, you’re fully supported by your therapist as you work through your trauma. The continuous nature of the sessions allows for a deeper level of trust and safety, which can accelerate the healing process. With that said, trust and safety are a felt sense and if it takes more time to build, there is time and space for that to happen.
Quicker Relief and Resolution: Many people who undergo EMDR intensives report feeling a sense of relief and resolution as they work through their trauma. The intensive format helps you move through your pain and emerge on the other side with a renewed sense of peace and clarity. While some may take longer to process through, an intensive provides the space to make meaningful progress towards resolution, if not resolution itself.
Is an EMDR Intensive Right for You?
If you’re feeling stuck in traditional therapy and are eager to make faster progress, an EMDR intensive might be exactly what you need. This approach isn’t about rushing through your healing—it’s about giving you the time, space, and focused attention necessary to make real, meaningful progress.
Imagine what it would feel like to finally let go of the negative self-beliefs that have been holding you back. To break free from the cycle of pain and frustration that has kept you feeling stuck. EMDR intensives offer a path to healing that is both effective and efficient, allowing you to reclaim your life and move forward with confidence.
