Therapy Intensives in Montreal and Online throughout Quebec and Ontario
Brainspotting & EMDR Intensive Therapy: Nervous System Reset
Deep, Focused Psychotherapy for Accelerated Growth and Integration
Extended time to regulate your nervous system and process trauma, heal negative beliefs, and expand your capacity.
Sometimes, weekly 50-minute sessions just aren’t enough. For clients who feel stuck, overthink, or lose momentum between sessions, Psychotherapy Intensives offer a focused, immersive approach to meaningful change.
Over the course of a few days, you’ll work closely with your psychotherapist in longer, carefully structured sessions that create space for deeper exploration, emotional processing, and integration. These intensives combine psychodynamic understanding, nervous system regulation, and evidence-based techniques such as EMDR and Brainspotting to support accelerated healing and growth.
Research shows that intensive therapy can help clients achieve significant progress in a condensed timeframe, while structured follow-up support helps maintain lasting change.
“When we slow down and create space for safety and presence, the parts of us that have been waiting to be seen finally begin to heal.”
Why Do a Brainspotting, EMDR, Nervous-System Intensive?
You want to experience deep therapeutic work that can create meaningful change quickly.
You’ve had painful or uncomfortable experiences that continue to affect your present life.
You have time off work or school and want to use it for a “mental reset” or therapeutic deep dive.
You’ve done Brainspotting or EMDR before and want to return to this work for continued healing and integration.
You’re preparing for a big life event such as a wedding, move, career transition, or becoming a parent.
You’re already in weekly therapy but feel stuck or on the verge of a breakthrough. An intensive can supplement your ongoing work and help you move forward with renewed clarity.
Brainspotting & EMDR Intensives Can Help With:
Trauma related to assault, abuse, or neglect (PTSD)
Painful childhood or attachment experiences (CPTSD)
Self-esteem concerns and negative self-talk
Stress, anxiety, phobias, OCD
Depression and emotional numbing
Recovery from accidents, injuries, chronic pain, or medical trauma
Burnout and compassion fatigue in helping professionals
Addictions and self-sabotaging patterns
Performance and creativity enhancement
Working in an Intensive Container can be especially helpful for:
Deep thinkers and over-analyzers – If you tend to intellectualize or “live in your head,” intensives provide the time and safety to move past defences, connect with emotion, and experience breakthroughs that weekly sessions may not reach.
Clients stuck in cycles of rumination – When you find yourself revisiting the same issues without resolution, intensives offer a focused reset for new insight, release, and forward movement.
Those who lose momentum in weekly psychotherapy – Instead of losing traction between sessions, intensives keep you immersed and supported, allowing for faster integration and growth.
High performers and busy professionals – For those with full schedules, intensives allow you to prioritize your well-being without a long-term commitment. In just a few days, you can accomplish the depth of work that might otherwise take months.
Major life transitions, grief, trauma, burnout, or pivotal decisions – Intensives provide a structured space to pause, reflect, and reset when life feels overwhelming.
Burnout, stress leave, or acute relational/work stress – If you’re in crisis or on a short-term leave, intensives offer a chance to address urgent issues with depth and immediacy, giving you tools and insight to return with resilience.
In short, intensives are designed for people who don’t just want to talk about change but those who ready to experience it.
How does this work?
Each Brainspotting, EMDR, Nervous System Reset Intensive is uniquely designed for each individual’s needs.
1. Intake Session
Before we begin your intensive, we’ll meet to build safety and rapport, understand your life and stressors, explore available supports, and discuss how you manage overwhelming emotions or sensations.
This session helps us understand what has led you here, what you’re longing for, and the areas where you want relief, growth, or a sense of movement and ease.
2. Intensive
Our work unfolds at both cognitive and somatic levels.
We’ll focus on reducing distress and expanding emotional capacity through Brainspotting and EMDR, helping your brain and body process and integrate what’s been held inside.
Throughout, we move at a pace that feels right for you and prioritize relational safety.
Depending on your goals, we may explore:
Past or present experiences
Relational themes
Future transitions
Each intensive is a deeply personalized, collaborative process that honors where you are in your own unfolding.
3. Closing and Integration Session
Afterward, we’ll meet again to reflect on your experience, notice what felt meaningful or surprising, and discuss the shifts you’ve observed.
Together, we’ll explore how to apply these insights and emotional changes in daily life, supporting your ongoing integration and sense of continuity beyond the intensive itself.
The Value of Intensive Therapy at Clinic Altera
At Clinic Altera, we understand that healing asks for time, safety, and focus.
Weekly therapy can be an excellent space for ongoing support and integration. But sometimes, when something specific is weighing on you, it helps to stay with the work longer, to allow your mind and body to move through what’s been held, rather than pausing just as it begins to unfold.
Weekly Therapy
Weekly sessions are designed for steady, consistent growth and reflection.
In a typical 50-minute appointment, time is often divided between:
Checking in and grounding from the week
A shorter period of processing or Brainspotting/EMDR
Closing and re-regulating before returning to daily life
This rhythm supports ongoing care but can make it harder to stay immersed in deeper material. Because focus shifts naturally week to week, it may take several months and multiple sessions (often $800 – $1,000 per month) to experience resolution around a single issue.
Intensive Therapy
An Intensive offers an extended space — usually half a day — to do sustained therapeutic work.
You’ll begin by setting intentions and mapping your nervous-system and window of tolerance, followed by two to three hours of uninterrupted Brainspotting or EMDR processing, and close with time for integration and reflection.
At $200 per hour, the total investment is typically $1,200 – $1,500.
In that time, many clients process the equivalent of several months of weekly therapy. The continuity allows your nervous system to stay regulated and engaged, often creating a sense of relief, clarity, and emotional lightness in a shorter time frame.
Why It Works
Intensives create the conditions for deeper healing:
Focused time to stay with what’s arising
Relational safety and consistent presence
Fewer external interruptions between sessions
Faster integration and lasting change
For many clients, this approach means feeling better sooner, reducing the need for extended therapy, and spending less overall.
Who offers psychotherapy intensives at Clinic Altera
Amanda Hankins, MSW, T.S.
Clinical Director and Founder of Clinic Altera
Amanda is a licensed psychotherapist and clinical social worker in Quebec and Ontario with over 14 years of experience supporting individuals through trauma, transition, and relational healing. Her approach is deeply trauma-informed and psychodynamic, drawing from both traditional and experiential models of therapy.
In addition to her advanced training in Brainspotting and EMDR therapy, Amanda integrates principles of Short-Term Intensive Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (STIPP), a focused and experiential method that helps clients access, process, and release emotional patterns that may be stored beneath conscious awareness.
Through this integrative lens, Amanda creates a space where the nervous system and the psyche can work together toward healing. Her intensives are designed to help clients move through stuck points, gain clarity, and experience meaningful change within a supportive and attuned therapeutic relationship.
At Clinic Altera, Amanda combines depth-oriented insight with embodied regulation work, helping clients reconnect with themselves and find another way forward that feels grounded, integrated, and alive.
For many, the intensive format also offers the benefit of skipping the waitlist and beginning the healing process sooner, without needing to delay the care they’ve been seeking.
