Featured in Goop: Can You Shrink Months of Therapy Into One Session?

Mirel Zaman at Goop reached out to talk about therapy intensives — why more people are turning to them, what they actually are, and whether they work. I said yes immediately. This is something I've wanted more people to know about for a long time.

Why I Said Yes to This One

I've experienced the impact of intensive work both personally and professionally, and I want more people to know this way of working exists.

There is something about uninterrupted time — real time, not a stolen hour — that changes what's possible. Time to be with what is actually happening inside you. To witness it. To let it move at its own pace. Most of us don't have that. Getting to have it changes things.

What I Shared With Goop

In the piece, I talked about the intensive I experienced as a client, not just as a therapist who offers them.

I went in wanting to work on my fear of public speaking — something concrete, something with edges. But I was also a parent who had lost her mother seven months earlier, quietly tucking grief into whatever small pockets of time I could find, because there was always something else that needed me first. My brain chose the safer door. Which makes total sense.

And then I slowed down. I sat with my nervous system. And what rose to the surface wasn't public speaking at all. It was grief. So that's where we went.

I remember being able to drop into each wave fully, without having to surface for anything. No school pickup to manage around. No part of me held in reserve. Just space to be with what was actually there, for as long as it needed.

When I finished, I could think about my mother and smile. That hadn't been possible before.

Whatever actually needs the space gets the space. That's the thing about four hours. You can't stay on the surface that long.

Who Intensives Are Really For

You get your kids to bed. You meet the deadline. You function. But there's a weight to it, a heaviness that doesn't lift, even when things are technically fine.

You know what you want to feel. It just doesn't feel available in your body.

Most people who come to me for an intensive have been in therapy before. They understand their patterns, where they came from, what sets them off. They've built real skills. And still: the patterns are there. Not with the same intensity, maybe. But present enough that they're tired of working around them.

What they're looking for isn't more insight. It's lightness. Ease. The ability to be present without bracing for what comes next.

How This Connects to My Own Intensives

What I offer is a container: protected, unhurried time for whatever needs to surface to finally do just that. To be witnessed. To move.

At Soulful Flow, I offer private therapy intensives using EMDR, Deep Brain Reorienting, and IFS for people who've already done the work and are ready to feel different.