Nurses and doctors have unpredictable and grueling schedules. A weekly, hour-long session is hard to commit to, but you know consistency is what is going to get you the transformation you seek. The unpredictable schedule is just part of the burnout you’ve been experiencing. It’s also the long hours, the difficult conversations with your patients’ family members, the surgery that didn’t go right, the patient who became belligerent.
You return home exhausted. Your days off are supposed to be your chance to connect with your kids, but instead you find yourself scrolling on the couch tuning them out. What you need in your bones is rest, but that’s so far out of reach you can’t even imagine what it would be like. You trudge through your days at home so that you can keep giving your all at work.
Why would a nurse or doctor choose to do an intensive EMDR session?
Intensive EMDR is not for everyone – the word “intense” is in there for a reason.
But so much healing can happen in a lengthened session. That’s the magic of this treatment option and why I offer it.
When your schedule is unpredictable and makes it hard to be consistent in attending therapy, it can be hard to start EMDR following the standard protocol. When we don’t see each other for 2 – 3 weeks, a lot of life has happened. Offering these intensive sessions when your schedule allows gives you the freedom to get a lot of healing so that those 2-3 week stretches feel manageable.
Three-hour intensives provide time to get through processing.
Think about it: Most traumas require more than a single, 55-minute session to process fully. Following an incomplete EMDR processing session, you leave feeling resourced but still tender. When you can dedicate 3 hours to a single EMDR target, you can find significant relief that day.
After a 3-hour intensive, you leave feeling GOOD. It was hard work, but exhilarating (not unlike your day-to-day). You’re tired, but also excited to connect with your family. You’re excited to return to work because you’re connected to the parts of yourself that you believe in. Even if it’s a few weeks before you can move onto the next target, it doesn’t feel urgent because you’re already experiencing so much relief.
What should I expect in an EMDR intensive?
I prefer to only offer an intensive following a thorough history taking. You need a chance to get to know me before you can feel safe enough to process trauma. In return, I need a sense of who you are so that I can support you with feeling safe.
I’ll give you two options:
- Your 3-hour EMDR session can begin with resourcing and then we’ll move into reprocessing, but we are less likely fully process a target in a 3-hour session when it incorporates phase 2 (resourcing and EMDR preparation).
- We can do a separate resourcing session (or two) and then your 3-hour session can focus on reprocessing, meaning you are more likely to fully reprocess one or even more targets, depending on what you’re bringing into therapy.
Both are effective. We will talk through your specific history and therapy goals to determine which options makes the most sense for you.
What do you target with EMDR intensives for nurses and doctors?
EMDR for Work-Related Trauma, Vicarious Trauma, & Burnout
Often, healthcare workers find me following a work-related trauma or stressor.
- The sheer number of patients who didn’t make it during COVID.
- Believing you caused someone to die.
- Feeling overwhelmed and believing you’re not as good at your job as you once were.
- A hospital system that has worn you down.
- The stillbirth you witnessed.
You carry the weight of the world and people’s lives in your hands every day. When you’re not feeling your best, you know that it impacts your patients.
The recent event EMDR protocols are fantastic for preventing PTSD when you had a recent, traumatic event. We can find meaningful relief right there.
The nurses and doctors I treat leave intensive EMDR sessions reconnected to the personal values that brought them into this work. They remember in their bones how dedicated they are and that some things are beyond their control, while also knowing that they’ve attended to the things that are within their grasp.
EMDR Intensives for Complex Trauma
Deeper healing work happens when we go farther back so that you can connect with the parts of you that are highly driven to care for others. Oftentimes, nurses, doctors, and other caring professionals learned to care for others in childhood. They were lauded for being nurturing and mature from a young age.
While these early wounds drove you to be the successful provider you are, they still need attention and healing. Intensive EMDR provides the time to desensitize to the recent events and negative self talk that have taken over your system AND heal these early attachment wounds.
When you came to me, you didn’t realize that when the patient died, it brought up an old belief that you’re a failure. Or that this belief stemmed from your childhood of taking care of your siblings. Once those wounded parts of you remember that you’re good enough, it will be easier to see the ways you cared for your patient and that there may not have been anything you could have done differently to save them. That’s where you find relief: In remembering that it’s not your fault.
This is the beauty of an intensive EMDR session: There’s time and space to really go through and process the channels that connect to this experience. You thought you came for a recent event, but when you stick with it, you’re able to heal so much more deeply.