Show Notes

Kayla: Welcome back to the Designer Practice Podcast and I’m your host Kayla Das.

Eye movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy, or how most of us know it as EMDR therapy, has become probably one of the most popular and sought after therapeutic modalities over the last couple of years.

But did you know that providing EMDR intensives can actually transform your time, your clinical outcomes and your income?

Well, in today’s episode, Carolyn Solo, Social Worker and owner of Integritas Wellness and Recovery, will share with us how EMDR intensives have changed her practice and she’ll share with us how EMDR intensives can also help us transform our time and income too.

Hi Carolyn, welcome to the show. I’m so glad to have you here today.

Carolyn: Hi, thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to talk about one of my favorite things.

Introduction

Kayla: This is such a fabulous topic. But before we dive in, please introduce yourself, where you’re from, and tell us a little bit about your practice journey and also your EMDR journey.

Carolyn: Sure. My name is Carolyn Solo. I’m a Licensed Clinical Social Worker just outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I am also a mom of three daughters, seven and under. I am finishing my PhD in social work right now, and I own my own practice and have a small business coaching business on the side as well.

I graduated from my program in 2014, my master’s program, and I worked in a community agency providing outpatient therapy for several years, as many of us have done. And as many of us experienced, I became kind of burned out. I had my first child by that point and I was actually trying to get pregnant with my second and that’s when I actually started my doctoral program and decided to stop working in community mental health.

I was working on my doctoral coursework and I was a busy mom and all that. But I really missed clinical practice. So, I decided in January of 2020, start seeing a couple of clients online, because I thought that’s easy. And then COVID happened and seeing clients online was what everybody was doing.

So, in 2019, I had a very close friend who kept telling me about EMDR and was like, “Oh, it’s transformed my practice. It’s so great.” And I was really, really skeptical. I thought, “Oh, come on. What? What is this like waving your finger in front of somebody’s face? I don’t think that’s a real thing.” But I really respect her as a clinician. And she had a lot of similar client population experiences to the ones that I had had. And she said, “No, really? Try it.” And so, I thought, “All right, I trust you.”

And so, I signed up for the training and let me tell you the first two days I was super skeptical. I was like, “Okay, uh huh”. Taking notes, I was like drawing pictures in my notes. It was virtual. Anyway, so I was doodling in my notebook, like whatever, whatever. And then we did our practicum part. And I had a very powerful experience being the client, and then also playing the therapist for the other person in the practicum. And so, I thought, “I don’t know, maybe there’s something to this.” And the consultation that I had as part of my training was really good.

And so, the way it worked in the training, I did was it was two weekends, about three months apart. And we had consultation in between, and you were encouraged to start trying some EMDR on your own. And like everybody, I was very nervous, but I did try, and I was like, this is really interesting. I started reading a lot about it, and I really kind of went all in at that point, because I was starting to see things like major triggers that clients of mine had had for a long time, actually seeing some positive impacts of doing EMDR, like they were feeling less reactive, really working on early attachment memories seemed to be helping a lot of their present-day symptoms. And I was like, “Wow, this is so cool” in a way that just talking about them had not done before.

And I was really starting to respond myself to the kind of more embodied approach of EMDR. It’s very somatic. And so that kind of started that journey. And then I just started doing a lot of trainings. I decided to get certified, which is like the next step. And now I’m doing consultation for other therapists who are trying to get certified.

And then during the consultation process, the consultant I was working with started talking about intensives and I was like, “Oh, that’s interesting,” but it was still so foreign to me because I’d only ever done your 50-minute client hour and then, you do six of those in a day or however many. And she started talking about how interesting and exciting it was to be able to just maybe see one or two clients in a day for several hours and how much change could happen in a short time in that way. And that started to click for me, but I was still nervous because it just felt so different.

So, I actually joined a consultation group about intensives and that’s really where I got into it in a big way. And I took a couple online courses. I did a retreat. I did this consultation group. I did a lot of stuff about intensives. And really develop my skill set over the course of I would say a year and a half. I wouldn’t say I do exclusively intensive now, but I probably do 60 percent of my clients are intensive clients. And what can be cool about that is that sometimes I just work with someone for like a week or two weeks and then they go when they’re done. And maybe they come back in a couple months for one more session, or maybe not. It’s a very different experience than having those long-term client relationships and there’s benefits to that, I think, actually.

Kayla: So, this actually brings me into, first of all, what is EMDR? And also, what is an EMDR intensive and how might it be different than, say, the traditional therapy mode or method that we currently practice in?

What is EMDR Therapy?

Carolyn: Sure. So EMDR, as you said, stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. And its initial inventor, Dr. Francine Shapiro, who died a couple of years ago, actually. She was on this famous walk in the park in the late 80s, and she was feeling distressed by something that was going on with her. And again, this story, I’m like, “Is this really true? It sounds kind of apocryphal.” But it’s the story everybody tells. That she just started moving her eyes back and forth, and noticing that whatever she was thinking about was feeling less distressing. And she was a trained psychologist, and had trained in psychoanalytic theory, and CBT, and all this stuff, but this was very intriguing to her. And over the course of the next several years, she developed EMDR.

And the way I think about it, and I explained as a client is, we’ve all seen those videos of someone asleep and their eyes are like moving underneath their eyelids. Right? And we know that that’s REM sleep. And REM sleep is when we dream. And so basically the connection was made that we’re kind of doing that while you’re awake. That’s kind of what EMDR is. We are accessing the brain’s natural processing mechanisms for the things that happen during our day and helping them move through material that maybe didn’t get processed during that time because it was too much. It was too overwhelming. Because our brains process all the things that happen to us during the day, right? But I’m sure a lot of us don’t remember what we had for breakfast six months ago, but we do remember the time that we were bullied in sixth grade, right? And that might still feel painful to recall. And that’s the sign that there’s still some unprocessed stuff there. That it hasn’t been fully, digested by the brain. And so EMDR kind of mimics that experience while you’re awake, obviously a contained setting with a therapist who knows how to facilitate the process in a safe way.

And the eye movement is a form of bilateral stimulation, which means you’re moving from both across the midline of your body and from the left to the right side of your brain. So, facilitating those connections. And you can do it with eye movement. You can also do it with tapping or buzzers that move from one side to the other of your body. You can also do it with audio, like tones from one ear to the other. So, there’s a lot of different ways to do it based on the client preference.

When Francine Shapiro invented EMDR, she always intended it to be 90-minute sessions. That was kind of the model that she came up with. But, you know, over time, insurance companies and convention in the therapy world. It’s like, “Well, yeah, you have a 50-minute session.” That’s what gets reimbursed by insurance. So that’s what we do. But over time, different EMDR therapists, different people in academia, even started to explore this idea of like, what if we made the sessions even longer? Because what people were finding was that in a therapy session, often we spend some time, how is your week? How have you been feeling? And that can stretch into like 20 minutes plus. And then “Okay, now we’re going to get into processing.” You do it for 10 minutes and then you want to make sure you have enough time to close the session down to make sure the person’s contained and feels okay. So, the amount of time you actually spend doing the trauma processing ends up being very limited. So, what if we really stretch that out? And gave more time for that and then also looked at an intensive as, let’s look at a theme or an issue that’s really causing someone a lot of distress.

Like I work with a lot of moms. So, for example, someone who’s been experiencing postpartum depression and it’s really debilitating. Let’s focus on that for several hours over maybe a couple of weeks. The way that I do intensives is essentially I have a 90-minute intake and then 3 four-hour sessions and people can do more than that afterwards. But that’s where I start with people. I find we make some good progress in that time. Let’s really focus on that and see the progress that we can make on that very specific theme in a shorter time. And this can be really helpful because a lot of people are like, “Well, this is affecting me now. I don’t want to spend six months improving, slowly getting better. And still struggling with feeling connected to my baby, or feeling really angry at my partner,” or whatever it is. So that’s the idea behind an Intensive, if that makes sense.

Kayla: That makes complete sense, and I love how you connected how insurances or how other people expect us to kind of do therapy and how it can inform approaches, even if, there’s other ways to do it. And one of the reasons I created the Designer Practice Podcast is to show listeners that you can create a practice that you love and that does not necessarily fit into this box. But the box is often created by other people or other organizations or even just societal norms, whether they are practical or not. So, hearing you say that you’ve incorporated this into your business as a way to one, better help clients, because now they’re able to get more intensive support in a quicker amount of time so that they can recover quicker as support yourself with time and income, which I know we’re going to talk about later too, which I’m super excited about.

EMDR Intensives

So how did you start providing EMDR intensives? You kind of mentioned a little bit in your introduction, but how did you get started and then how does it fit within your practice specifically?

Carolyn: Yeah, so the way I would say that I got started was one of the consultation groups I was in really normalized that this felt so different from what all of us were used to because there were other therapists in this group. And said, “Try extended sessions. Try a longer session with a client you know well. A client with whom you have a rapport who trusts you with whom you’re already doing EMDR and just say, ‘Hey, let’s experiment with this.'” And that felt very supportive to me as it’s not an all or nothing.

Because the model of intensives that I originally heard of was like five days, eight hours a day, knock out everything out of the park. And I was like, “I can’t do that. I don’t want to do that. I can’t handle that. That’s too much for me, for my system. For my schedule.” So, it was very liberating to have someone tell me like, no, there’s a middle ground. And so, I started offering longer sessions again to clients that I knew really well, and they were responding really well to them. And I just sort of like stretched some of them out to the point that I had a client where we’re like, “Let’s just try a day and see how it feels.” And we did. We did a six-hour day with like an hour break in the middle. And we got through some stuff. So that to me was kind of like the signal I needed that this is the way forward for me.

And I also loved that I had all this time just with this one person. Because you know how we talk about like the doorknob moment in therapy, where the person’s leaving and they’re like, “Oh, by the way.” Those don’t happen as much because you have time and people don’t feel pressured. And they also feel like if it takes them a little while to warm up to the process, that’s fine. That time is built in. So that, for me, felt really good and supportive.

How EMDR Intensives Create Flexibility and Freedom

So how it fits into my practice is, just a little bit of a personal note, not to go too far down that road, but my oldest child started kindergarten at the beginning of last year. And we knew she had some sensory processing issues prior to starting kindergarten. But over the course of the last year, it became very clear through a lot of things that she got diagnosed with autism. And so, the transition to kindergarten was really rough. So last fall, I was kind of losing it. And I was just like, ” I need to show up for my kid in a lot of ways that I haven’t really had to before, because she hasn’t been in a full day of public school before with all this going on. And I need more time.” And the thought that I was going to have to reschedule all these hourly clients over and over again, just felt exhausting to me. And I had been dabbling in the intensive model before this, like doing these longer sessions and stuff. But I finally at that point was like, “Nope, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t have this many clients. I can’t have a schedule that feels so hard to move around,” and so that was sort of really what got me to make the shift.

And just in general, the flexibility of like, “Well, I have three client days this week, but they’re all one person each or the same person.” So, if I have to reschedule one, I’m only rescheduling one. And so, if I have to say my kid is sick, can we do another day? I’m not trying to reschedule six people. And also, because I charge more hourly for intensives than I do for an hourly session, and we can talk about that more to it later on. I can have fewer clinical hours a week. And so that felt really supportive as well, that I could have more time in my schedule just to be a mom and all the things that that means. And still feel like I was getting the income that I needed to support my family and my needs.

Kayla: It sounds like it’s given you more freedom to be able to do the things you need to do. Especially, as therapists and coaches, we have a life outside of our practice and because we are typically the traditional model is trading time for dollars, meaning, we work, we get paid, if we don’t work, we don’t get paid. That can be challenging.

But on top of that is even that administrative pieces, now you’re only trying to reschedule one person, which is going to take a lot less time than trying to reschedule six and as a result, you can have more time doing the things that you need to do. Plus, that financial freedom connected to that.

And I love the financial freedom pieces of it. And I know I’m getting ahead of myself here, because we’re going to talk about some of that stuff. But the one thing I haven’t shared on the podcast, and I guess this is me sharing it, is that actually in January, I’m expecting my first child. So, even though I’ve been incorporating different business measures into my business for years. There’s still that fear of, “Well, now I have to at least temporarily give up my one to ones,” which is one of my primary income streams. Now, obviously I don’t provide intensives, but I can definitely see how intensives could be supportive because even if you are taking time off for various reasons, whether maternity or whatnot. Again, if something comes up and your daycare falls through or your child gets sick, you’re only canceling one person and you’re actually spending less time having to do that administrative process so that you can spend time with your child.

So, I love this, these pieces to it. And again, becoming a new mom, I’m always thinking about how can we incorporate additional supports into our businesses so we don’t have to always feel like we’re trying to catch up, even though we’re never catching up when it comes to the traditional model of therapy.

Carolyn: Yeah, absolutely. And congratulations on your baby. That’s so exciting. Biggest and most exciting life transition, I think. That I’ve had so far. I think that another piece that comes up for me too, is part of the reason I’ve decided to charge more is because I know I need to work fewer hours. One, because things come up with my kiddos. And two, because the work we do is so hard, and I need even more time for self-care because I’m also caring for three little humans. And when I’m with them, it is not self-care time. Like, anyone who is a parent knows that when you come home from work, you’re not just like, “Yeah, I get to watch my shows.” We don’t have that time. So, I have to build it in for myself when I have childcare, or else I would totally burn out. Especially because the work we do carries such a heavy emotional load. And a lot of us moms know about the emotional load and how we carry so much of it in our families. We also carry it for our clients, like something’s got to give somewhere.

And so, this, for me, and that experience with my own child last fall, really, really, that hit home for me in a big way. Where I was like this close to burning out in all these areas. I didn’t sleep for like a month, like I could go on and on, but like it was bad. And how was I supposed to show up for clients in that condition? So, I was like, well, I got to charge more for these. That’s it. That’s it.

EMDR Intensives and Improved Clinical Outcomes

Kayla: So, when it comes to EMDR intensives, how does it help clinical outcomes?

Carolyn: Great question. So, a bunch of ways. One, what I was alluding to earlier, you don’t get that much processing time because of the opening and closing of a session. I think that’s one of the biggest ones. I kind of think of it as a bang for your buck kind of situation. First of all, it’s an hour that you are spending with the person. Of course, not that you can’t have bathroom breaks and whatnot, but four hours for me is four hours. Sometimes clients come late, like all that stuff, you still have that time that gets lost in other ways.

I also think that when you’re doing an intensive, people come in differently. There’s a sense of like, I’m here for this thing, and I’m doing it in a focused, intentional way. That pervades. I think you can just feel that, in terms of how both people are meeting up for the work. And then, the other thing I would say is that, this is from an EMDR perspective, when I talk about processing, that’s when we’re really deeply diving into whatever traumatic memory or experience holds a lot of intensity for the person. I don’t want to go into a full description of the EMDR modality right now, but there’s a process that we use where you look at the present-day triggers and figure out what are the earlier life memories that really informed that creation of– I mean, I think of triggers as that’s a part of ourselves that’s getting activated. So that’s how we know, right, is when we feel triggered.

And so EMDR, part of the process is you kind of go back in time and you’re like, “Okay, what are the moments where I really, really internalized that belief about myself or that fear.” And then through the EMDR, there’s eight phases through the eight phases of it, you really target that particular memory and you target changing the negative cognition that you have about the experience, changing the emotions, changing the body sensations, and whatever the image is that really, really is a direct part of that memory kind of reducing the intensity with which you experience that image.

So, for example, I work a lot with people who’ve survived sexual trauma as well, and actually there’s a lot of crossover with moms there, of course. If a memory is of a sexual assault, oftentimes the negative cognition the person will have is, “I’m not safe”, or “It was my fault.” That’s another common one. So one of the things we want to do is reduce the attachment they have to that belief and help shift it to a more positive one, like ” I’m safe now,” or “I did what I could to protect myself,” or whatever. But through this process, you address all those different pieces of the memory: the image, the cognition, the emotions, and the body sensations. Because often those are all the parts of a trigger that we experience, and the parts of a traumatic memory.

That being said, that protocol takes a while, and it’s intense. You’re asking people to really go deeply into some really serious stuff, so the more time you have, the better, just in terms of safety, in terms of containment, in terms of if they dissociate, which happens, and I have a lot of training in that, so that’s a big part of it, too. You need to be able to address those things in a way that doesn’t feel pressured by time, and I think the clients know that they have time, and so the safety that that provides totally leads to better outcomes. I think it’s time and it’s also it feels safe to their system to really go there. So yeah, I guess that is how I would see the clinical outcomes being better and just faster.

EMDR and Client Populations

Kayla: From your experience and training, are there specific, say, populations or clientele that tends to have, say, better clinical outcomes with this specific approach than others?

Carolyn: Do you mean intensives or EMDR or both?

Kayla: Both.

Carolyn: Yeah, so EMDR was initially developed as a trauma treatment modality. I think Francine Shapiro worked mostly with vets, Vietnam veterans in particular. So that’s really kind of where it originated. And it’s actually one of the two treatments that is recommended by the Veterans Administration in the United States for treating trauma and combat trauma, so it’s very much like a modality. There’s a lot of research behind it. But, over time, and I think we all see this in the therapy field, there’s been this re conceptualization of trauma in that adverse life experience has happened to all of us. And often are very related to developing mental health symptoms in the present.

So, the person that I did my training with, always said that “EMDR can be used with anything stuck that’s causing yuck,” which I love and go back to all the time. And I think that’s true. I do EMDR intensives with my therapist, and on paper, I don’t have any big T traumas. But I have stuff and it’s impacted how I show up in the world today. So, I really believe you can use it on almost anything. The big caveat is often with people who are very dissociative and that’s kind of off the topic for today. That’s a whole other– I talk about that a lot on my podcast, actually. But there are ways to do EMDR safely with people who are dissociative. It is something that requires extra training, I would say. And I think it’s just something to at least get consultation about if that’s something that you’re looking into or you have clients that applies to. But it can be done safely.

There used to be, interestingly enough, a lot of talk about, like, “Well, don’t do EMDR with pregnant people.” And there was no research to support that. It’s absolute nonsense. So bust that myth. And it feels very patriarchal to me and very, very like, “Oh, we have to protect those poor, vulnerable, pregnant people.” It’s nonsense. I have done EMDR on so many people who are pregnant. You know what’s really stressful when you’re pregnant? Having unprocessed trauma that is triggering you all the time. That is not good for that baby, and for you, and for the developing attachment that you have to that baby. So, just like to bust that myth whenever I can.

Kayla: I’d actually like to go into that, and this is me, of course, being pregnant. Those emotional hormones. This might be really off base, but does EMDR help with that?

Carolyn: I think yes. And I’m sure this resonates with you as a therapist, I think we realize that any embodied experience we have, there’s a biological piece, and there’s a psychological piece, and trying to separate those is kind of futile. I mean, our nervous system is a biological system, right? So, I think that hormones are certainly playing a role, and it’s likely that our other stuff, whatever that is, is related to how we’re responding, at least to what is triggering us, or what feels difficult. Like, the kind of stuff that would bother us a little bit when we’re not pregnant feels really, really big when we’re pregnant, right?

I know for me, in my pregnancies, I got in more fights with my partner, for example. And I’m sure the hormones played a role, and it was just that I was very, very sensitive to any perceived, whatever that he was doing or not doing. So, I think it’s, yeah, absolutely. And I think also a lot of us when we’re pregnant have a lot of anxieties about birth, about the postpartum period, about the kind of parent we’re going to be. And I think EMDR works really well on that, too, because where do all those things come from? They come from earlier messaging, of course.

Kayla: And also, sometimes, people who this might not be their first or it might be their second or their third pregnancy, they may have had some sort of birthing trauma. And even though prior to being pregnant again, they may have felt that they dealt with it until they are now pregnant again and thinking of all of the things that have had happened previously.

Carolyn: Absolutely. And another thing that I will never tire of talking about is how common birth trauma is. I think most people think of birth trauma as something really, really tragic, like the baby didn’t survive, or was in the NICU for weeks and now has all sorts of medical problems, or the mom was really harmed physically. But I think that our birthing system kind of is inherently traumatic. I mean, I say this as someone who’s done it three times now. It can be very dehumanizing. You can feel very unheard. It can be incredibly physically painful and exhausting in a way that most of us haven’t experienced before and that’s very scary. It’s really, yeah, all those things. A lot of people feel like their choice and autonomy is taken from them during the birthing process. So, I think that birth trauma is very common. And I also think postpartum trauma is very common because we don’t care for postpartum women well. So yeah, that often, people who are pregnant again might not be aware of that, but all that stuff can get triggered in a lot of ways.

Something else that I’ve worked with a lot in my practice is people who’ve had repeated miscarriages. Just the trauma of that period, if they have not been able to successfully birth a baby. And people who, the pregnancy is going well, but they’re just racked with anxiety about something happening to the baby. I’ve also worked with people who had a baby die very late in the pregnancy. And that is just so awful. And even if the doctors tell them it’s nothing you could have done about it. It was a genetic abnormality. Of course, that’s going to carry with them after the fact. If they want to have another baby or if they don’t or whatever, that stuff is really, really hard. And I’ve done EMDR with a lot of people around those issues because they’re so somatic. It’s not just a cognitive experience where you can say, “Oh, well, that was a genetic thing that has a one in one million chance. Guess I’m not going to worry about that again.” That’s not how we experienced the world. So, I have worked with a lot of people and use EMDR a lot in those situations as well, and in intensives as well.

How EMDR Intensives Transforms Time and Income in Private Practice

Kayla: Those are all really great points. Now I want us to switch this a little bit because as a business coach I would be remiss if we didn’t touch on. How does EMDR intensives transform time and income inside of private practices?

Carolyn: Yeah, for sure. And I’ve talked about this a little bit here and there, but one for sure, fewer clinical hours is a huge one that I think most of us probably would like to work a little less. I think that like you’ve been saying, like the model of trading time for money is not a great one. And you’re still trading time for money, but you’re trading less time for more money. Because sitting with someone for an entire day is hard. It’s a lot of work. I think of it as like a premium service that you’re offering. And so therefore you get to charge premium prices. And they’re getting premium outcomes. Like I was saying before, like in some ways it’s like more bang for your buck, because an hour session is almost like two 50-minute sessions because it’s continuous, you’re not having the opening and closing. So, you really are getting more bang for your buck.

And, I also tell people like, what if we can work through this in two weeks instead of six months? How is your life going to be different after two weeks instead of carrying this for the next– and six months might not even be enough, you know? So, I think that that’s kind of the financial sell that I give to clients because it’s a lot of money. But I don’t think most people come expecting it to be cheap. And I’m very transparent on my website. I don’t lie, I don’t say contact me for– I just say, this is how much it costs, the end. And I like to have it out there because if someone says I can’t do that, then they don’t need to go through the process of asking. But I think those are the arguments that I make for why it costs more.

And I also find that if you just say it and you’re very grounded in it. You don’t over explain, people tend to be like, “Okay, I guess that’s just what this costs.” I think we get in trouble as therapists when we’re like, “Oh, well, I charge this much, but I know that’s a lot of money and if you can’t afford it, maybe we can like–” just don’t go there, don’t go there. And you have to train yourself to be able to be grounded in that. That’s one of the things I coach therapists on is how to say this stuff, be grounded in it, feel confident in what you’re saying.

So just to give you an example, like my hourly rate for just if I were seeing someone for just a regular session, 50-minutes is $200 and my intensive rate is $250. And sometimes I’m like, maybe I should charge more, but that’s where I’m at now, but I thought about bumping that up. Because it takes a lot out of you and one of the things I say to people is I don’t schedule anybody else, that’s your day. I want to be as present and rested and fresh for you as I can. And that does mean that I’m giving up– I don’t say this, but it does mean that I’m giving up a couple hours, but I could schedule someone. So yeah, that’s revenue loss technically. So, I got to factor that in, I think. But I can work 12 clinical hours in a week and feel really good about that income as opposed to 20.

Kayla: I think that’s amazing. And really, as you were talking about EMDR intensives, because you were talking about setting a premium price. And I was thinking like, this actually sounds a little bit like a retreat in a sense, like an individual retreat, where you have a therapist to yourself for the day. Of course, a day might be three, four hours, whatever that looks like. But people pay thousands of thousands of dollars for a quote unquote retreat. And I’ve heard of different types of therapeutic modalities being incorporated in wellness retreats that you go to. So, that’s really what come to my mind.

Carolyn: Yeah, absolutely. And that’s one of the things I often talk to therapists about is like, think about this. That’s part of what you’re selling is this individualized experience that a lot of us don’t get to have for a variety of reasons. This is a unique experience that you can offer and you deserve to be compensated as such. And I also encourage them to try to create a bit of a retreat like experience. I have a whole bunch of different teas and coffees that people can choose from. I always ask the client, what snacks do you like so I can have them here for you? I make sure I have cold water. Just try to create some things that make it feel special.

I know another person who does intensives who, at the end of each, when she finishes the, whatever her package is, she gives the client a little plant as a symbol of growth or whatever. But there’s that piece of it too. It provides nice closure, and it gives that idea of this was a special time, it deserves to be marked somehow. And so, I think people really respond to that idea as well.

Kayla: I love that. And my marketing hat is even on, and I know I’m thinking more marketing than the therapeutic, but even some of the things you’ve talked about, it’s having the teas, having the plant, having this atmosphere is going to in itself support people because they’re going to have a really great experience when they come in then just sitting in a chair, right, and not being offered anything for three and a half hours, or four hours. And with that, that’s also things to consider when you’re thinking about pricing too, right? If you have to pay for teas, and you have to pay for a plant, obviously, this is going to go into the price, it looks free, but it’s not actually free. So, you got to incorporate that into what you’re charging as well.

Carolyn: Totally. And I also make sure that my office has like lots of cozy blankets and pillows and I have a lot of drawing supplies because sometimes that’s something we incorporate. That stuff is not free. Having a nice office is not free. And that’s another thing. I do intensives in-person. I would do up to like maybe two hours virtually. I don’t even like to do that. But part of what I feel like I’m selling is like I have curated this space. That’s really nice. It has a lot of natural light, nice plants, et cetera, et cetera. And that is not free, especially in a time where there are plenty of therapists, and I totally support this, whose practices are entirely virtual. So, they don’t have that overhead but you got to factor that in somehow, because plenty of therapists are charging $200 an hour and doing virtual therapy, which is fine. And I got to pay my bills.

Kayla: 100%. I agree. So, do you have any additional advice or insights for therapists or coaches who are interested in providing EMDR intensives inside of their private practices?

Future Template Parent Podcast

Carolyn: Well, I hope this is an okay place to plug my podcast, but I have a podcast called the Future Template Parent Podcast, which for EMDR therapists, they would know what that means. Future Template is part of the EMDR protocol, where you process some difficult event and you’re feeling better and you kind of project into the future what it would feel like to experience something difficult now that you have worked through this thing. And then the parent part is about– so much of this I connect to parenting.

But in any case, in my podcast, I talk in great detail about all the things I’ve touched on today about intensives, from the clinical, to the business, to the marketing, to what you should have on your website. So that is a great free resource that I think would give people a lot of ideas, actually. And I talk about referral sources, which I think is really important. How do you explain what you’re doing to other therapists? I get a lot of referrals from other therapists who are like, “Oh, this client of mine is really stuck on this thing. Maybe they can work on it with you and then come back to me.” that’s a great model. So, I think continuing to have strong referral relationships is so key.

I think not being afraid to tell people that you’re doing this. I think a lot of us therapists want to not be seen, but then nobody will know. And I actually promote myself relatively actively on Instagram, which I know is not everyone’s favourite thing. But I think when someone is thinking about investing a lot of money in something, really getting a feel for who you are is going to make them feel more comfortable than even just reading your website bio. So, I think that when you’re starting to market something that’s outside of the norm, you might have to use marketing techniques that you might not have considered otherwise. So I think Instagram and things of that nature have been really valuable for me. I get direct referrals through Instagram, but not for everybody. But I think in general, thinking creatively about your marketing is really helpful.

I also think that people often have to do some mindset work around the cost that they’re charging and really working on how to make yourself feel really grounded and feeling good about this is what it is. This is what it costs. And like I said, not apologizing for it, not spending five minutes explaining why, “Well, I have to pay for this and…” like nobody wants to hear that. They want to feel like you’re confident that this is worth it.

And I think it’s important to have a variety of clinical skills in your repertoire. I have a resource library that I’ve created for EMDR Intensive Therapists. Just a lot of different tools that I use and I think it’s really good to have a lot of flex. I’m not going to go too into the weeds there because it’s kind of EMDR specific in some ways, but there’s a lot of different techniques and approaches and skills that you don’t necessarily learn in the basic training that tend to come later on. And having facility with a lot of that is really good, so a few things like that.

Consultation with Carolyn

Kayla: All really great points. So, do you provide support or consultation for therapists who are starting their intensive practice or might even want some consultation even if they’ve already started?

Carolyn: Yes, definitely. So, my coaching business is Future Template Parent. So, it’s aligned with the podcast and the website is www.futuretemplateparent.com. And I offer what I call a VIP Day. And all of them I’ve done have been virtual. I wouldn’t assume that anybody unless they live in Pennsylvania would do it in person, but I certainly would where I sit with you for five hours actually, and basically just run you through all the nuts and bolts of what you need to know. How do you market this? What are the scripts that you can use to tell new clients about it and current clients? What should you put on your website? How to talk about it on social media. That’s one of the things I talk about. And then I also spend a lot of time on the clinical skills that I use and different tools that I have learned over the years that I think are valuable and they get that whole Google drive of like my quick and dirty explanation of all those things that I did a lot of trainings on.

And one thing that is a benefit for people who are looking for EMDR certification, which is the second level after your basic training, you need to get 20 consultation hours, as part of that. If you do the VIP Day, those hours can count towards your certification hours because I do consultation as part of my practice. And I do offer just like one off if you want to reach out to me and just say, can I like pick your brain for an hour? Absolutely. We can do consultation that way.

And I am planning soon to actually offer that document package as like a separate thing you can purchase. Right now, it’s just something that’s included in the VIP Day, you get the workbook. It’s a document, about 15 pages that I have clients fill out before the first intensive. It’s basically a fast way to do history taking and treatment planning, and it also really primes them to be ready. And it has a bunch of different assessment tools I’ve created, and different questionnaires that I have clients fill out. And that’s included in the document package, and clients really like it. And I have found it super, super useful in terms of streamlining the treatment planning for the intensive so you come in and we’re ready to we know where we’re going. So that is the VIP Day package. And yeah, so at some point, I’m going to have the documents as a separate thing, but I’m not there yet. And I’m hoping to make it an online course at some point, again, haven’t done it yet. So that is how you can work with me in that capacity.

Kayla: I love that you said that your VIP corresponds with the consultation hours, because I’ve actually heard from therapists, I’m not EMDR trained myself, but just in passing from colleagues and people that I’ve worked with, saying that it’s actually sometimes hard to find someone to do consultation for the EMDR hours that people need. So it’s really great to hear that, if someone does connect with you and join your VIP that they get those consultation hours, plus all of this extra stuff that is going to help them and their clients moving forward.

So, if you’re interested in listening to Carolyn’s podcast, Future Template Parent Podcast, check out kayladas.com/carolynsolopodcast.

That’s kayladas.com/carolynsolopodcast

Or you could simply scroll down to the show notes and click on the link.

I’ll also connect her website if you’re interested in connecting with her regarding her VIP program as well as for consultations.

Carolyn, thank you so much for joining us today on the podcast and providing us with such an amazing way to design our practices that not only improves clinical outcomes for our clients, but can also help us increase our time and generate profit.

Carolyn: Well, I am so grateful for the opportunity to share all this with your audience. And it’s obviously something I’m very passionate about. You can probably tell. So, yeah, I’m happy to talk to anybody more about this if they’re interested.

Kayla: Thank you, everyone, for tuning into today’s episode. And I hope you join me again soon on the Designer Practice Podcast.

Until next time, bye for now.

Credits & Disclaimers

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