When 50 minutes isn’t enough
Therapy Intensives - Fort Smith, Arkansas
Melanie Taylor, LPC-S
Private therapy intensives for women ready to give their complex trauma work more room, depth, and time.
How It Works
1. Free Discovery Call
We start with a conversation.
You’ll tell me a little about what brings you here, you can ask questions, and we’ll talk about whether an intensive may be a good fit.
I’m also considering whether this format is clinically appropriate for the work you want to do.
If I don’t believe an intensive is the right next step, I’ll tell you.
2. 90-Minute Intensive Intake
If we decide to move forward, we’ll schedule a full intake and planning session.
90 minutes | $300
This gives us time to look more closely at your history, what’s happening now, what you’ve already tried, and what you’re hoping to work on.
We’ll begin mapping the work and identifying possible areas of focus for your intensive.
You don’t need to come in knowing exactly what your targets are or where we need to begin.
That’s part of what we’re figuring out together.
3. Your Private Therapy Intensive
$275 per hour
Intensives can be scheduled over 1–3 days, depending on what we’re working on and what makes sense for you.
Intensive days are generally scheduled Thursday through Saturday.
A $500 deposit is required to reserve your dates.
Once those dates are reserved, that time is yours. I don’t schedule my regular therapy caseload during the time we’ve set aside for your intensive.
Before you arrive, we’ll talk through the schedule, breaks, meals, what to bring, and what you can expect.
You’ll also receive a journal to use while you’re here for anything you want to capture, remember, or come back to during our work.
What Makes an Intensive Different?
An intensive isn’t six hours of regular therapy packed into one day.
The difference is that we have time to follow the work.
We may map pieces of your history and begin connecting experiences that never seemed related. We may identify beliefs that developed around those experiences, notice patterns that continue showing up today, and pay attention to what you’re noticing in your body as we work.
Sometimes we’ll use EMDR.
Sometimes we’ll move to the sand tray because putting something in front of us helps us see what talking about it hasn’t.
We may use parts work, body mapping, hypnotherapy, writing, or other experiential activities.
Complex trauma doesn’t always show up in words. That’s one reason I’ve spent years training in approaches that allow us to work with more than the story you can tell me.
I don’t have a six-hour script that I run every client through.
Your story tells us where we need to go. My training helps me know what to do when we get there.
What Does an Intensive Day Actually Look Like?
No, we’re not going to sit across from each other and talk about trauma for six straight hours.
There is movement throughout the day.
We might talk for a while, move to the sand tray, map something out, use EMDR, take a break, eat lunch, walk around, and then come back and see where we are.
I’m paying attention to your capacity as we work.
If we need to slow down, we slow down. If something important comes up, we have time to stay with it. If you need a break, we take one.
We’re not trying to see how much trauma we can process before you leave.
We’re giving the work enough room to unfold without constantly having to stop because our 50 minutes are over.
Who Comes for an Intensive?
Many of the women I work with already understand a lot about themselves.
You’ve done the reading. Maybe you’ve done therapy. You can identify some of your patterns and probably tell me where a few of them came from.
And still, something keeps happening.
You understand people-pleasing, but you still abandon yourself to keep the peace.
You know why boundaries are difficult, but your body still reacts when you try to set one.
You understand where the shame came from, but knowing that hasn’t made the shame disappear.
You recognize the relationship pattern, and somehow you keep finding yourself back in it.
Or maybe there are pieces of your history you’ve talked about many times but have never really had the space to work with.
You may not need more information about why you do what you do. You may need time to work with what happened and what it left behind.
Why I Do This Work
This work has taught me to listen for the pattern beneath the problem, notice what isn’t being said, pay attention to what you’re experiencing in your body, and recognize when something happening today may connect to something much earlier.
I’m a Licensed Professional Counselor-Supervisor, and I’ve spent years training in different ways of working with trauma because complex trauma doesn’t always fit neatly into one approach.
My work may draw from EMDR, sand tray, hypnotherapy, parts work, body-based work, expressive activities, and other approaches depending on what we’re seeing and what you need.
But my belief in intensive work isn’t only professional.
I’ve done my own work with complex trauma, too.
I know what it feels like to sit on the other side of the room.
When I was doing my own deeper work, traditional therapy sessions often weren’t enough time for me. Intensives were the sessions where I finally had enough room to make significant progress.
I wasn’t spending most of the hour getting to the wound and then having to put it away again.
I had time to stay with it.
That experience is a big part of why I offer intensives now.
What Happens Afterward?
Your brain may keep working with what we did long after you’ve left my office.
You may make new connections. You may recognize an old pattern sooner. Something we worked on may look different once you’re back in your everyday life.
Integration sessions are available after your intensive so we can talk about what you’re noticing, reinforce the work we’ve done, and work with anything that surfaced afterward.
Integration sessions are billed separately at my regular session rate.
Before you leave, we’ll talk about what I recommend for your continued integration.
Is an Intensive Right for Everyone?
No.
Longer therapy isn’t automatically better therapy, and there are times when weekly work, additional preparation, another type of treatment, or a different provider may be more appropriate.
That’s why you can’t simply purchase a Therapy Intensive from my website.
We talk first.
Then we complete the intake.
Then we decide what makes sense.
Fit matters more to me than filling a spot on my calendar.
An intensive also isn’t a promise that years of complex trauma disappear in a weekend.
What happened to you happened.
Our work is with what those experiences left behind: the emotional wounds, beliefs, body responses, protective patterns, and ways you learned to move through the world because of them.
The extended time simply gives us more room to understand those pieces and work with them intentionally.
Traveling to Fort Smith
You don’t have to live in Arkansas to travel here for an intensive.
Women can travel to Fort Smith, Arkansas for 1–3 days of in-person work.
Fort Smith Regional Airport (FSM) is only minutes from my office, and there are several hotels nearby.
Because I’m close to the airport, I can also provide transportation between the airport, hotel, and my office when arranged in advance.
Once your intensive is scheduled, I’ll give you the practical information you need to plan your stay.
Start With a Conversation
You don’t have to know how many hours you need.
You don’t have to have your entire history organized.
And you don’t have to know exactly where we need to go.
That’s part of my job.
The first step is simply a conversation about what has brought you here and whether an intensive is the right next step.
