IFS-EMDR Intensive Therapy
IFS-EMDR Intensive Therapy in Maryland & Virginia | Trauma Intensives
Sometimes an hour isn't enough.
IFS-EMDR integrated intensive therapy for people who are ready to do the deep work without waiting a week between every step.
Weekly therapy is powerful. For a lot of people, it's exactly the right format.
But for some people, and some kinds of trauma, it isn't.
When the work requires sustained depth, when scheduling makes weekly sessions impossible, or when you've been in therapy before and something keeps stopping just short of where you need to go. An intensive format can change everything.
This is trauma therapy the way trauma often actually needs to be done: with enough time, enough space, and no artificial stopping point when things are just starting to move.
I offer IFS-EMDR integrated intensives in Montgomery County, Maryland, and virtually throughout Maryland and Virginia. Serving clients in the DC metro area, Northern Virginia, Washington DC, Delaware, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and anywhere within a few hours' drive who are ready to do something real.
Is This You?
This might be the right fit if:
You've been in weekly therapy and feel like you're circling something you can never quite reach
You have a demanding schedule that makes consistent weekly appointments nearly impossible
You want to do a defined, focused chunk of trauma work and not open-ended weekly sessions
You're a therapist who does this work with others and knows it's time to do it for yourself
You want to move at a pace that actually matches the urgency you feel about healing
You're not looking for a weekly commitment, and you want longer, less frequent sessions as your primary therapy format
You have a fear or phobia, such as driving, needles, bridges, claustrophobia, medical procedures, vomiting, blood, that has resisted every other approach you've tried
You've tried therapy before and felt like just when something started to open up, time was up
For the Executive, the High Achiever, or anyone who values Privacy
You've built a life that works. Something underneath it doesn't.
You're not in crisis. You're not falling apart. You are, by most measures, doing exceptionally well.
And yet there is something. Apattern you keep returning to, a weight you've been carrying longer than you can remember, a version of yourself that feels just out of reach, that no amount of success has touched.
You've considered therapy. Maybe you've tried it. But the idea of sitting in a waiting room every Tuesday, filing insurance claims, building a years-long relationship with a provider whose schedule doesn't flex around yours, that's not a system that fits your life.
An intensive is different.
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No insurance involvement means no claims submitted on your behalf, no information shared with an insurance company, and no outside parties involved in your care. Documentation is kept minimal and discreet — meeting basic standards of care while protecting your privacy. This is concierge-level, private pay mental health care — your care stays between you and me.
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You're not spending years in weekly appointments gradually working toward something. You come in with intention, we do concentrated, meaningful work in a defined period of time, and you leave with real movement. Some people accomplish more in a single IFS-EMDR intensive than they did in years of weekly therapy sessions. That's not hyperbole — it's what focused, uninterrupted trauma processing makes possible.
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You already understand that the best outcomes require the best resources. You don't negotiate on the surgeon, the financial advisor, or the attorney. Your nervous system — and what it's been carrying — deserves the same level of serious, expert attention.
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No rigid weekly schedule. No squeezing healing into a 50-minute window between meetings. We build the format around your life — whether that's a half-day on a Saturday, a series of extended sessions over a few weeks, or a longer biweekly structure that gives you depth without the weekly commitment.
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Montgomery County — Bethesda, Potomac, Chevy Chase, Silver Spring, Gaithersburg — and the broader DC metro area, including Northern Virginia and Washington DC itself, is full of people who are extraordinary at what they do and quietly exhausted by what they're carrying. People travel from Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and West Virginia for this kind of private, intensive trauma work. If that's you — wherever you're coming from — this is for you.
For the Person who just wants to Do The Work
Not everyone wants to be in therapy forever. Some people just want to heal.
There's a version of this that doesn't look like lying on a couch for ten years unpacking your childhood piece by piece. Some people are high-functioning, self-aware, and deeply tired of carrying something they know is holding them back. They don't want an ongoing therapeutic relationship. They don't want to talk about the same thing every Tuesday for the next three years. They want to go in, do the work, and come out the other side.
A trauma intensive can be that.
Think of it less like ongoing therapy and more like a dedicated retreat for your nervous system. An immersive, focused healing experience designed to move something that has been stuck, so you can get back to your life lighter than you came in. Accelerated trauma processing in a private, contained setting. A weekend of deep work that moves more than months of weekly sessions.
Some people do a single half-day and walk away with more movement than they got from years of weekly appointments. Some do a few sessions over a month. Some come from out of state including from DC, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, specifically because they want to do something meaningful and leave it behind them when they go home.
This isn't a shortcut. It's a different door into the same healing. One that works extraordinarily well for people who are ready, motivated, and done waiting.
You don't have to make therapy your personality. You just have to be willing to show up for a few hours and do something real.
Every intensive begins with a free one-hour consultation. No charge, no commitment. We use that time to get to know each other, talk about your history and what you're hoping to work on, and make sure this format and this relationship are the right fit before anything begins.
From there, we build a structure around what you actually need.
How Does an IFS-EMDR Intensive Work?
3 or more hours for deep healing
For people who want to dedicate focused blocks of time to deep, concentrated trauma processing.
This is the format most people picture when they think of a therapy intensive. We schedule 3 to 4 hours per day, across one or more days. Either within a single week, one or more weekends, or spread across two weeks, depending on what works for your life and what the work calls for.
This format is designed for sustained, immersive trauma processing. Rather than approaching something, stopping, and returning a week later, we stay in it long enough to actually move through it. There are no rigid break schedules and we work fluidly and take breaks when the work naturally calls for it, not when a clock says to.
This works especially well if you:
Want to dedicate a specific period like a weekend or a few days, to do deep, focused work
Are traveling to Montgomery County from DC, Northern Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, or West Virginia and want to make the most of your time
Have a clear target or defined period of trauma you want to move through
Are a therapist doing your own healing work and want an immersive, contained experience
Want the retreat-style feeling of stepping outside your daily life to do something transformative
Example structures:
3 hours on a Saturday + 3 hours the following Saturday
4 hours over two consecutive days
A single 3-4 hour session for a focused, defined trauma target
Not sure which format fits? That's exactly what the free consultation is for. We'll figure it out together.
Private pay only. No insurance Accepted.
Hourly Rate: My standard rate for therapy services is $165 per hour. This rate applies to all sessions, including follow-up appointments.
Intensive Therapy Costs: Intensive Therapy sessions are billed at $200 per hour. The total cost of an Intensive Therapy session will depend on the hours agreed upon in advance. Below is a sample cost breakdown:
one 3-hour session with short breaks: $600
one 4-hour session with short breaks: $800
10-hour Intensive over multiple days: $2,000
15-hour Intensive over multiple days: $3,000
Intensive Therapy Investment
Phobias, Specific Fears & Why You Can’t Talk Yourself Out of it
Some fears aren't about the past in any obvious way. They're just there. Immediate, physical, and completely out of proportion to any actual threat. You know the bridge isn't going to collapse. You know the needle won't kill you. You know vomiting is survivable. And yet your body doesn't know that, and no amount of knowing seems to change anything.
That's not weakness. That's not irrationality. That's a nervous system response that got wired in at some point, sometimes after a specific event, sometimes through accumulated experiences, sometimes in ways that don't have a clear origin story at all. The fear isn't in your thoughts. It's in your body. And that's exactly why talking about it rarely makes it go away.
IFS-EMDR is one of the most effective approaches available for specific phobias and the kinds of fear responses that don't respond to logic. Here's why: EMDR works directly with the nervous system. It processes and resolves the stored fear response rather than just teaching you to tolerate it. IFS helps us understand the part of you that is terrified, what it's protecting, and what it would need to feel safe enough to release it. Together, they often move things in a single intensive session that years of CBT or exposure therapy couldn't touch.
A note on intensive format and phobias specifically: Phobia processing is one of the clearest fits for an intensive approach. Unlike complex relational trauma that may require more time and careful pacing, many specific phobias can be meaningfully processed in a single 3- to 4-hour session. You don't need a 15-hour intensive to address a fear of needles or bridges. For many people, one well-structured half-day session is enough to move from avoidance to tolerance, and even to freedom! That's not a promise. Outcomes vary and I will be honest with you about what's realistic, but the targeted, sustained work of an intensive is genuinely well-suited to this kind of fear.
This approach works particularly well for:
Fear of driving — including highway driving, merging, bridges, or driving after an accident
Fear of bridges — the freeze, the grip, the overwhelming urge to stop the car; whether you're the driver or the passenger
Fear of Flying — the dread that starts days before, the panic on the plane, the avoidance that slowly shrinks your world
Needle phobia — fear of blood draws, injections, IVs, or any medical procedure involving needles; often significantly disrupting medical care
Fear of vomiting (emetophobia) — one of the most underrecognized and undertreated phobias; the fear of vomiting, watching others vomit, or being in situations where vomiting might occur
Fear of blood or medical procedures — vasovagal responses, fainting, avoidance of doctors, dentists, or necessary medical care because the fear is too great
Procedural anxiety — fear of surgeries, MRIs, dental work, or any medical setting; the kind that leads people to delay or avoid care they know they need
Claustrophobia — fear of enclosed spaces, small rooms, elevators, MRI machines, or any situation where escape feels impossible; the kind that makes routine things like tunnels, planes, or medical scans feel unbearable
Any fear or phobic response that has resisted other treatment — if you've tried CBT, exposure therapy, medication, or just "pushing through it" and it hasn't held, the underlying nervous system response may not have been addressed yet
This approach works especially well for:
Complex trauma and cPTSD — layered, relational, or developmental trauma that doesn't have a single clear event at its center; the kind that lives in the nervous system and shapes everything
Attachment wounds — early experiences of abandonment, neglect, inconsistency, or harm within relationships that were supposed to be safe
A specific traumatic event or period — something defined that you want to move through with focus and intention rather than revisiting indefinitely in weekly sessions
Anxiety or depression with trauma underneath — when the symptoms are familiar but the source has never been fully addressed in previous therapy
The Approach
IFS + EMDR. Integrated, on Purpose
These aren't two separate modalities running side by side. This is a genuinely integrated approach where Internal Family Systems (IFS) and EMDR inform each other throughout the session.
IFS helps us understand and work with the parts of you that are protecting against the pain. The ones that have kept you functioning, kept you safe, and sometimes kept you stuck. EMDR moves the trauma through the nervous system in a way that talking alone rarely achieves.
Together, they create the conditions for the kind of deep, sustained trauma processing that an intensive format makes possible. This IFS-EMDR integration is particularly powerful for people who have tried EMDR before and felt like something kept blocking it, or who have done talk therapy for years without reaching the deeper material underneath.
Who Is This For?
A Note About Fit
Intensives are a closed therapeutic relationship. This means I work with intensive clients exclusively within this format. I am not also your weekly therapist. We begin with a thorough consultation to make sure this is clinically appropriate and that we're a good fit before any intensive work begins.
The geographic piece is simple: Intensives are open to any adult who is physically located within Maryland or Virginia at the time of service. In-person sessions take place in Montgomery County, Maryland. Virtual intensive sessions are available to anyone within Maryland or Virginia state lines at the time of the session. Whether you live here full-time, are visiting, or are traveling specifically for this work.
People travel from across the mid-Atlantic region for in-person intensive work, from Washington DC, Northern Virginia, Fairfax, Arlington, Richmond, Delaware, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and beyond. If you're within a few hours and ready to do something real, you're welcome here.
Intensives are a good fit for:
Any adult located within Maryland or Virginia. In-person in Montgomery County or virtually
People traveling from the DC metro area, Northern Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania, or West Virginia for in-person work
High-achieving professionals, executives, and busy adults who want efficient, private, results-oriented trauma work
Therapists seeking their own healing. You understand this process, and that can be a profound asset in the work
Intensives are not the right fit for everyone. During our consultation, we'll talk honestly about whether this format, this approach, and this timing make sense for where you are right now. If it isn't the right fit, I'll tell you and I'll help you think through what might be.
Who You're Working With
I'm Emily Lemke, LCSW-C. A trauma therapist based in Montgomery County, Maryland, specializing in complex trauma, cPTSD, and attachment wounds. My practice is built around the cases that require more than symptom management and the clients who are ready to do the deeper work.
I work from a genuinely integrated IFS and EMDR framework, informed by polyvagal theory, attachment research, and years of clinical experience across community mental health, residential treatment, mobile crisis, inpatient psychiatry, and psychiatric emergency intake. I've spent my career learning what actually moves people, not just what helps them cope.
Intensive work is one of the most meaningful things I do. It creates the conditions that weekly therapy often can't: enough time, enough safety, and enough continuity within a single session for real movement to happen.
Frequently Asked Questions
Logistics & Practicalities
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In-person intensive sessions take place in Montgomery County, Maryland — centrally located for clients traveling from Washington DC, Northern Virginia, Bethesda, Chevy Chase, Potomac, Silver Spring, Gaithersburg, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Virtual intensive sessions are available to anyone physically located within Maryland or Virginia state lines at the time of service, whether you live here or are visiting.
Many people find that traveling specifically for an intensive deepens the experience — stepping away from daily life and into a space dedicated entirely to this work creates a kind of intentionality that supports the process.
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Intensives are billed starting at $200/90 minutes — private pay only, with no insurance accepted and no superbills provided. This is intentional: private pay means no insurance claims, no information shared with outside parties, and documentation that is minimal and discreet. Your care stays private.
A deposit is required to hold your intensive slot, with the remaining balance due before we begin. If cost is a concern, please bring it up — I'd rather have an honest conversation than have it be the reason we never talk.
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Because intensive slots require significant planning on both ends:
More than two weeks' notice: Your deposit may be applied toward a rescheduled intensive within three months.
Less than two weeks' notice: The deposit is non-refundable and the full fee applies.
No-shows or late arrivals: The full session fee applies. If you arrive late, the session ends at the originally scheduled time.
If I need to cancel: You'll have the option to reschedule or receive a full refund including your deposit.
If something genuinely unforeseen comes up, reach out as soon as possible and we'll figure it out together.
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We figure that out together in the consultation. Some people come in with a clear, defined trauma target and are well-suited for a focused 3-hour session. Others are working with more layered cPTSD or complex trauma and benefit from a longer format or an ongoing biweekly structure. There's no right answer — just what makes sense for you and what we're working toward.
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Intensive slots are limited and require more lead time than a standard appointment — especially for clients traveling from out of the area. I'd recommend reaching out as soon as you're considering this. Start with the free consultation and we'll go from there.
Safety & Support Between Sessions
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Deep trauma processing can bring things up — that's part of the process. Before we begin, we'll talk through what support looks like between sessions, identify your existing coping strategies and support system, and build a safety plan together if that's clinically appropriate. For non-urgent concerns between sessions, you can reach me through our agreed-upon method during business hours and I'll respond within 24-48 hours. Intensive therapy is not designed for continuous between-session support — part of what we do before we begin is make sure you have what you need in the spaces between our work.
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If you are in immediate danger, please call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room. For mental health crises, call or text 988 (Suicide and Crisis Lifeline) at any time, or text HOME to 741741 to reach the Crisis Text Line. Please do not wait for a response from me in an emergency — these resources are available around the clock.
About Intensives
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Weekly therapy is structured around 60-minute sessions with a week in between. That format works well for a lot of people — but trauma processing often builds momentum within a session, and stopping at the 50-minute mark can mean repeatedly approaching the edge of something without ever moving through it. An IFS-EMDR intensive gives us the time to get there, stay there, and actually complete the work — rather than setting it down and picking it up again seven days later. For people with complex trauma or cPTSD, accelerated trauma processing in an intensive format can move things that years of weekly therapy didn't reach.
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IFS (Internal Family Systems) and EMDR are two of the most effective trauma modalities available — and they work exceptionally well together. IFS helps us understand and build a relationship with the parts of you that are protecting against pain, so that when we move into EMDR processing, those parts feel safe enough to allow it. Without that groundwork, EMDR can stall. With it, the processing tends to go deeper and resolve more completely. The two are woven together throughout the session — not alternating between approaches, but genuinely integrated.
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These are two genuinely different structures — and both are real options, not just variations of the same thing.
The half day intensive is a concentrated block — typically 3 to 4 hours in a day, scheduled across one or more days. It's designed for people who want to dedicate a defined period to deep, focused trauma processing. This format works especially well for people traveling to Montgomery County from DC, Northern Virginia, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, or West Virginia, as well as anyone who wants the retreat-style experience of stepping fully into the work for a contained period of time.
The ongoing intensive session format is an ongoing rhythm of longer sessions at a less frequent pace — typically 90 or 120 minutes every other week. This works well as a primary therapy structure for high-achieving professionals, executives, and busy adults who want real ongoing therapeutic work without a weekly commitment — and who need more than 50 minutes per session to actually get somewhere meaningful.
Not sure which fits your situation? That's exactly what the free consultation is for.
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Intensive work tends to be most effective for people who have some capacity for self-reflection and emotional regulation — not because you need to be "ready" in a perfect sense, but because the depth and pace of this work requires a foundation of safety. We'll talk through this honestly in your free consultation. If a different starting point makes more sense, I'll tell you.
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Yes — with coordination. If you're currently in weekly therapy with another provider, I'll want to know about that and may want to be in contact with them, depending on what we're working on. Intensive work alongside an existing therapeutic relationship can be powerful, but it requires thoughtful communication between providers.
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Intensive therapy is a closed, focused container — the completion of our work together marks the end of our therapeutic relationship, unless we've specifically agreed in writing to continue. If you have an ongoing therapist, I'll provide them with a summary of our work (with your consent) to support continuity of care. If you'd like to work together again later, we'd start fresh with a new consultation to assess where you are at that point.
The Free Consultation
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The consultation is a full hour at no charge. We'll talk about your history, what brings you to intensive work, what you're hoping to move through, and what format makes sense. We'll also spend time just getting to know each other — the therapeutic relationship matters in intensive work, maybe more than anywhere else. There's no pressure, no commitment, and no performance required. The consultation is a screening in both directions — I'm assessing whether intensive therapy is clinically appropriate for you, and you're deciding whether this feels like the right fit.
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Come as you are — nothing to prepare. Here's what we'll likely cover:
Your previous therapy experience, including any prior EMDR or IFS work
What's bringing you to intensive work — what you're hoping to address or move through
Your goals and what you're hoping to feel differently on the other side
Practical considerations — scheduling, format, travel if applicable, and structure
You don't need answers to all of these. That's what the conversation is for.
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No. The consultation is a preliminary conversation to explore whether intensive therapy is the right fit — it doesn't establish a formal therapeutic relationship. If we both decide to move forward, that relationship begins when we complete the intake process and schedule your intensive. The consultation is confidential, but because it isn't a therapy session, the scope of that confidentiality is limited to the consultation itself.
Ready to find out if this is the right fit?
The free one-hour consultation is where we start. No commitment, no pressure, no performance required. Just an honest conversation about where you are and what you need.
People travel from across the DC metro area, Northern Virginia, Washington DC, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and West Virginia to do this work. If you're ready, wherever you're coming from, I'd love to talk.