Individual Intensive
Intensive Therapy for Individuals: Longer Sessions for the Work That Needs Time
Some things do not fit into fifty minutes. A decision that will change your life, a trauma you understand but still carry in your body, a family visit you are dreading. Individual intensive therapy gives that work the time it needs: a full day, or extended sessions of two to three hours, one-on-one with me.
In person in Brooklyn and Pensacola, Florida, online worldwide, and at your location by arrangement.
Why Longer Sessions
The Hour Ends Just as the Real Work Begins
In a short session, one of two things tends to happen. You avoid the hard subject, because you know there will not be time to go into it properly. Or you start, reach something real, and the session ends with you still inside it, carrying it home for a week.
The way I work is bottom-up. We approach what is stressful until your nervous system feels it, then return to a place of safety and stability, and repeat. That is how the body learns to feel and respond differently. It cannot be rushed, and it needs room on both sides: time to go in, and time to come back out.
Short, structured sessions suit approaches like cognitive behavioral therapy well. Somatic and parts work needs more room. An individual intensive gives it that room.
Two Ways to Work
A Full Intensive or Extended Sessions
Every session with me is longer than the standard hour. What differs is how the time is arranged, and we choose that together in the consultation.
A one or two day intensive
- About 10am to 5pm ET, with breaks built in
- For a decision, a deadline or a trauma that needs concentrated time
- Months of weekly work held in one container
Extended sessions
- Two to three hours, weekly or every other week
- For ongoing work that needs depth without a full day
- A 3-hour Mini-Intensive is a good way to begin
Who It Is For
When Something Has to Move, Not Just Be Understood
- A major decision - a job change, a move, moving in together, proposing, becoming a single parent, coming out, or whether to stay in a marriage.
- A specific trauma - a memory, an assault or a loss that you have talked about for years and that still lives in your body.
- A recurring relational pattern - the same kind of partner, the same fight, the same withdrawal, in dating and in the relationships closest to you.
- A date on the calendar - a confrontation, a wedding, a family reunion or going home for the holidays.
- A full calendar - high-achieving people and performers whose nervous system carries more than their output shows, and who would rather commit one focused block than reschedule a weekly hour around everything else.
- A partner who is not ready - after an affair or at a crossroads, when you need clarity of your own before any couples work.
When the Deadline Is Real
Going Home for the Holidays
Some of the most useful intensive days happen a few weeks before something you cannot move. You are going home for Thanksgiving or Christmas, and you already know which conversation with your mother will go wrong, and how your body will react when it does.
Six months of weekly therapy is not available when the visit is four weeks away. A day of focused work is. We look at what gets activated in you, practice staying steady when it does, and decide what boundaries you want to hold and how you will say them. Dealing with family during the holidays still takes courage. You arrive with a plan, and with a nervous system that has already rehearsed it.
The Somatic Relational Method
Four Pillars, One Focus: Your Nervous System
Somatic Experiencing to work with what the body still holds, in small, tolerable steps.
Internal Family Systems to meet the parts of you that protect, and the parts that carry old pain.
Relational Life Therapy to change how you show up with the people who matter most.
Mindfulness, drawn from Buddhist psychology, so the steadiness you build in the room is something you can return to on your own.
The goal is not insight alone. It is a shift you can feel.
How a Day Is Structured
The Arc of an Individual Intensive
Every intensive is shaped around what you bring. Most move through four parts.
01
Consultation and preparation
A 45-minute consultation to understand what you are facing, followed by a short intake so the day starts with the work, not the history.
02
Resourcing
We find what steadies your nervous system first, so there is somewhere safe to return to before we go anywhere difficult.
03
The core work
The decision, the memory or the pattern, approached and integrated in cycles, with as many returns to stability as it takes.
04
Integration
A clear sense of what has shifted and what you are taking home. Integration sessions afterward help the change hold in daily life.
Who You Work With
Fifteen Years of Clinical Work, and a Long Conversation With the Field
I am Francesca Maximé, LCSW, a somatic psychotherapist and coach trained in Somatic Experiencing, Internal Family Systems and Relational Life Therapy. Before clinical work I spent years in broadcasting, and that curiosity still shapes how I work.
On my podcast, ReRooted, I interview trauma specialists, teachers and researchers. What I learn from those conversations comes into the room with every client.
"I've been in more traditional types of therapy for the past 14 years, but Francesca's method has been more effective for me than any others I've tried."E.R., individual client
Format and Schedule
Built Around Your Calendar
Intensive
One or two days, about 10am to 5pm ET, Thursday through Monday.
Extended
Sessions of two to three hours, weekly or every other week. A 3-hour Mini-Intensive is a focused way to begin.
Where
In person in Brooklyn (June to September) and Pensacola, Florida (October to May), Massachusetts by arrangement, online worldwide, and at your location by special arrangement.
Therapy
Psychotherapy for clients in New York, Florida and Massachusetts. Elsewhere, the same work is offered as coaching.
Safety
This is private one-on-one work, not an intensive outpatient program, partial hospitalization or residential treatment. If you are in a mental health crisis, need medical detox or need daily clinical monitoring, I help you find the right level of care first.
Questions
Intensive Therapy FAQ
What is intensive therapy?
Intensive therapy concentrates therapeutic work into longer blocks of time, from a session of a few hours to one or more full days, instead of spreading it across months of weekly hours. Here it means private, one-on-one work with me, drawing on Somatic Experiencing, Internal Family Systems, Relational Life Therapy and mindfulness.
Is this the same as an intensive outpatient program (IOP)?
No. An IOP is a structured clinical program, usually several group sessions a week, for people who need more support than weekly therapy but not hospitalization. An individual intensive is private work with one clinician. If you need a higher level of care, I help you find it.
How is an intensive different from weekly therapy?
Weekly therapy works well for gradual growth. An intensive gives a specific issue enough time to be approached, worked through and integrated in one container, without stopping just as you reach what matters. That is why one focused day can reach what months of weekly hours did not.
Is an individual intensive the same as a therapy retreat?
Not quite. A therapy retreat is usually a group program at a destination. An individual intensive is a private therapy intensive with one clinician, in my office in Brooklyn or Pensacola, online, or at your location by arrangement. If you were looking for an intensive therapy retreat for yourself alone, this is the closest form of it, without a group.
Do I have to book a full day?
No. Extended sessions of two to three hours, weekly or every other week, bring the same depth into an ongoing rhythm. A 3-hour Mini-Intensive is a good first step if you are unsure.
Is an intensive right before the holidays a good idea?
Often, yes. If you know a family visit will be hard, a day of focused work a few weeks before gives you time to prepare, practice and decide on your boundaries, which months of therapy cannot do when the date is close.
Is intensive therapy covered by insurance?
Intensives are private pay. Fees are shared on the 45-minute consultation, and that consultation fee is applied toward your intensive.
Start With a 45-Minute Consultation
We talk through what you are facing, whether a full intensive or extended sessions fit better, and what the work could look like. If a couple or relational format would serve you better, the couples intensive and the Somatic Relational Method pages cover them.