TL;DR: Therapy intensives can bring up a lot of different emotions & responses in the hours & days afterward. This is a normal part of the process, and preparing for it can help make the process smoother.
Tackling a problem during a therapy intensive can bring up a wide range of emotional experiences, not only during the session but also after the intensive has wrapped up. I wanted to take some time to explore what that can look like so you can be better prepared. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions!
There may be any number of reasons why emotions continue to crop up after an intensive, but I’ll dive into a couple common ones. For many folks I work with, they’ve spent years (yeaaarrrs) avoiding, analyzing, or straight-up ignoring uncomfortable feelings. This can cause what essentially amounts to a backlog of emotion that hasn’t gotten to be expressed, whether that’s because you…
After you’ve worked through something big, you’ve started to make new neural connections in your brain, and your mind can keep mulling this over in the background. This is what I love about EMDR in particular in my intensives: it helps you feel truly emotionally connected to a felt sense of safety, okayness, self-trust, etc. in regard to traumatic or other difficult situations that left you feeling off, distrustful of yourself or others, defective, or unworthy.
Let’s take a second to sidebar and lean into the metaphor of the way the Inside Out movies portray emotions in the main character, Riley’s, experience. Each emotion/character has its own personality, and in a way, that’s kind of true with our own emotions. When you’ve chosen to dive into an intensive, that usually means you’ve decided to let yourself actually process your emotions around a certain topic, and that often involves letting those emotion-parts express themselves. What happens with your other emotions when word gets out that others have gotten to be heard? You might find that other emotions want a turn to be heard, too. That’s where extra emotions post-intensive can come into the picture.
After the processing that happens in an EMDR intensive, many folks notice a wide range of emotions. This is normal, and is helpful to know about and prepare for. Like traditional weekly therapy, intensives often involve digging into memories or emotions that we normally don’t want to think about- and yet we’re bringing them up on purpose! Emotional processing of intense experiences is taxing on your brain. It’s using its energy resources to allow access to difficult feelings, and explore new possibilities (maybe I am worthy; maybe that really wasn’t my fault; maybe I can trust myself, I just have to learn how; etc.).
Keeping in mind that every experience is different, here are some examples of what that could actually look like in real life:
Your nervous system keeps chewing on things in the background of your mind, and that’s where various emotions can crop up even in the days after your intensive has wrapped up. For example, grief can come from realizing ways that you weren’t able to make different choices or get support in the past. This is why my intensives offer a post-intensive follow up session. It’s helpful to be able to discuss your realizations and how they’ve shifted the way you see yourself and the world around you.
Resting afterward is a vital part of your overall intensive experience. Trauma processing can be exhausting because it requires a lot of energy from your brain, and might also include feelings of physical activation leading to resulting physical fatigue as well. Nervous system regulation is an important part of integrating your experience. Your tank needs to be refilled, because your ‘car’ just went on a cross-country road trip, okay? Feeling emotionally depleted makes everything harder to manage, potentially even things that are normally on autopilot, like throwing together an easy dinner.
This is why new realizations, even if they seem minor and not a big deal, can still hit really hard and deserve care and compassion. Something I talk about a lot with folks is that so much of our problems related to emotions isn’t the initial emotion itself, but the emotions that pile up based on how we feel about the initial emotion. Dealing with one or maybe two emotions at a time- i.e., feeling both sad and angry about an unexpected loss- is much easier than dealing with a zillion others on top of them – like feeling ashamed, embarrassed, judgmental of or irritated with yourself, just because you felt sad and angry about the loss.
Being gentle with your emotions helps you process them more smoothly. But what does that look like in practice? Some examples:
These are just a few ideas off the top of my head. Let them be a starting point for your post-intensive integration, and know that planning your rest and care afterward is part of your pre-intensive work. We’ll have this care plan written down, which takes the pressure off of you having to remember, wait, what was I going to do to take care of myself…?? Future You will be grateful.
Post-intensive sessions are an important piece of how I help clients integrate their new learnings into their lives. If a client has a primary therapist they see regularly, I usually recommend they discuss new learnings with that therapist as well. Talking through these shifts with a trusted person helps you gain more perspective and understanding about what you’ve learned through your trauma processing.
Now wrapping it up: We’ve covered a wide range of possible reactions after an intensive, all of which are a normal, expected part of how nervous systems make sense of such deep work. If you’re ready to get started on your trauma healing journey, schedule a consultation here to explore whether intensives would be a good next step for you.
Holly Scott, LPE-I, LPC, SEP is a licensed therapist with over 15 years of experience supporting clients in and around Little Rock, Arkansas. She specializes in helping anxious neurodivergent millennials walking the line of ADHD/AuDHD, anxiety, and mild OCD, often with a dash of childhood trauma thrown in. She uses evidence-based approaches like EMDR and hypnosis to help clients slow their overthinking/shame spirals and start enjoying life. As the solo therapist at Therapy with Holly, Holly is committed to providing compassionate, expert care both in-person and online for clients across Arkansas.