EMDR Intensives: Why Busy Women Are Skipping the Weekly Hour

You know the feeling. You finally get to the thing — the real thing — and you look at the clock and there are four minutes left. So you put a pin in it. And by next week, or two weeks from now, you're not quite back there anymore. This week I'm joined by Kristen Holmes, LPC, who has been part of the Shoreside Therapies team for several years and is one of the people I refer to when a client is genuinely stuck. We talk about EMDR — what it actually is, past the acronym — and about EMDR intensives, a format where instead of an hour a week you do focused, deep work in a single block of hours or across a few days. Kristen explains why stuckness usually isn't stubbornness. It's a moment in your life where you didn't get something you needed, and a part of you is still there, trying to get that need met over and over. She also names something a lot of people need to hear: many of the clients who come to her for EMDR don't arrive with what they'd call trauma. They arrive with anxiety, burnout, and relationships where they feel unseen — and they're often the ones who look like they have it all together. In this episode: What EMDR actually is, and the movie-theater metaphor that makes it click The difference between the internet's version of "triggered" and what a real activator is Why your nervous system reacts before your thinking brain gets a vote What keeps people stuck after years of good therapy What an EMDR intensive looks like — the pre-session, the block, and the follow-up Why intensives fit business owners, career women, moms, teachers, and medical professionals How intensives work alongside your current therapist, not instead of them What Laurie sees in clients when they come back