Happy, Healthy, & Wealthy Therapists | Ep 6: Therapy Intensives Are the Future of Private Practice

Released: 12/26/2025

Show Notes:

In this episode, Amanda Buduris explores the concept of therapy intensives, explaining their flexibility, benefits, and how they can be a valuable addition to a therapist’s practice. She discusses the various formats intensives can take, the client demand for deeper, more focused therapy sessions, and the potential for therapists to charge premium rates for these services. Amanda emphasizes that therapy intensives are not limited to specific modalities and can cater to a wide range of client needs, making them a promising model for the future of therapy.

3 Key Takeaways:

1. Therapy intensives are a flexible model—not a modality—allowing any therapist to offer deeper, focused work without being limited to EMDR or couples therapy.
2. Clients actively want extended, immersive sessions because they create faster momentum, greater depth, and meaningful shifts that weekly 50-minute therapy often slows down.
3. Intensives can ethically increase your income and sustainability by generating premium revenue in fewer hours—without adding new business arms or burning out your caseload.

Connect with Amanda:

• Follow on Instagram: @amandakbcoaching
• Check out the Amanda KB Coaching website

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Sponsors:

• This episode is sponsored by Jane – use code: AMANDA2MO for a 2-month grace period

Resources & Links:

SEO for Therapists Membership

Therapy Intensives Academy

Happy, Healthy, & Wealthy Mastermind

Free Training: 3 Steps to Booking Your First Therapy Intensive

Free Guide: 3 Steps to Double Your Income

SEO Freebie

Just a quick heads up, everything I share in this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It’s not legal advice, financial advice, or tax advice. Every practice and every state has its own rules. So if you’re wondering how something applies to your situation, make sure to check in with an attorney, accountant, or another qualified professional who can give you guidance based on your specific circumstances.

Transcript:

Amanda Buduris (00:06)
Hey everyone, welcome back to happy, healthy and wealthy therapists. Today we’re diving into a question I get asked constantly from therapists, potential therapy clients, and honestly, even my own friends and family. The question is, okay, but what exactly are therapy intensives? If you’ve been curious about offering intensives, but feel unsure, intimidated, or like you’re quote, not that kind of therapist,

This episode is going to clear it all up. We’re going to talk about what therapy intensives actually are, why they’re way more flexible than people think, who they’re for, which spoiler alert, they are not just for EMDR and couples therapists, how they work in person or online, why clients love them, what you can earn ethically through intensives, and why this model is essentially becoming the Disney fast pass of therapy.

And towards the end, I’m gonna share some information about my own stats, how many intensives I’ve booked, how much revenue they’ve brought in, anything that feels helpful for you all to know. All right, let’s break this down. So let’s start simple when it comes to what are therapy intensives. A therapy intensive, plain as can be, is simply extended, focused therapy time.

This can range anywhere from two to three hours. A lot of therapists that I’ve coached even do 90 minute therapy intensives to half day sessions, right? You can do it for four to five hours at a time, or you can do multi-day deep dive experiences. A therapist I’m supporting right now just added a six day, six hour per day intensive to her offerings. So there’s a lot of ways that you can do this.

But what I really want you to hear is that instead of trying to fit meaningful work into a 50 minute slot where you spend 15 minutes warming up, 20 minutes actually doing the work, and then 10 minutes grounding so your clients can get to their car without crying, an intensive really just gives you and your clients time, real time, spacious time, therapeutically productive time.

And here’s the key thing I want you to take away from this episode. Therapy intensives are a model, not a modality. They are not for EMDR therapists only. They are not for couples therapists only. They are not tied to any one approach. They’re simply an extended container where your existing skills have room to breathe. I wanna say that again.

Therapy intensives are just an extended container where your existing skills have room to breathe. So whether you do EMDR, brain spotting, IFS, EFT, ACT, DBT, somatic work, narrative work, whatever it is that you do, you can build an intensive. If you help clients get somewhere faster or deeper or with more focused intention, you can offer an intensive.

Right? All you are literally giving people is more time with you as a therapist. And that is something many, many people want. And they don’t even know that it’s an option. But once my clients learn, hey, we can actually do this differently. We can do this in a way that’s more supportive for you. So many of them are like, yes, please sign me up. I didn’t even know therapists did this. So this is something that people want.

They just may not know it’s out there. So I’m going to talk all about like marketing when it comes to that. So when I just gave the range of here’s everything that it looks like, this is a real problem that I’ve encountered a lot. So when therapists think intensives, they often picture this rigid multi-day EMDRs, whatever bootcamp. No, the beauty of intensives is customization.

you get to design the experience based on your skills, your ideal clients, your capacity, your values, your schedule. That’s probably one of the most important things. Number one, if you don’t have space in your schedule to do intensives, don’t offer these intensives that you don’t want to do and you don’t have space for. But here are the main ways intensives can be flexible. Because I want you to see

the opportunity here again, that is not just for you, but also for your clients.

Number one, flexible length. You can really offer anything here. You can do a two hour reset session, a three hour half day, a five to six hour full day, a two or three day retreat style experience. You can do weekly intensives like three hours every Friday for a month. You can absolutely do these in a recurring fashion. Again, a lot of therapists that I’ve coached ultimately start to offer

90 minutes as their baseline session. They don’t do 50 minute sessions anymore because they’ve seen the power of extended sessions and they really do feel like it’s not clinically sound or in some ways ethical to offer anything less than that. So the beauty of this is that there is no one right way when it comes to the length of healing ultimately that you are offering. Number two, flexible delivery.

So you can run intensives in person, online. You can even do a hybrid version where you do some online prep, like maybe the intake is online, the actual intensive is in person, and then the follow-up is online. I get this question a lot of can you actually do online intensives? Does anyone want to do that? And the thing is online intensives are incredibly effective. The brain and the nervous system don’t need a physical office to do deep work.

and people love the convenience of online. the majority of, this is the difference I will say, the majority of my individuals who I’m doing intensives with, they have no problem sitting in front of the screen for 90 minutes to three hours at a time. We might need like a stretch break or maybe they wanna look away from the screen for a little bit. That’s totally fine. I will say my couples generally prefer in-person intensives. That’s not to say that’s,

rigid, that’s not to say that’s a rule. And that’s also, you know, the way that I structure my intensives is there are two days, five hours on day one, four hours on day two. So if you’re doing something different, if you’re doing two to three hour couples intensives, your couple may not have a concern with that. But I have noticed that trend. Individuals, pretty flexible in person versus telehealth couples generally might want more in person and that might be like their space and their setup of what they have.

like I don’t know that I would want to be sitting next to someone in a tight cramped space in front of a laptop for an extended time, but some people don’t have a problem with that. Number three, flexible client location. So with intensives, your clients can live locally. Obviously we have to be licensed in the state that our clients are in to see them. So you might have someone from down the road, you might have someone from two hours away come to travel to you.

Your clients can also come to you from out of state, right? The whole rule, obviously double check your laws and things like that. But generally when the rule is you just have to be licensed where your client is located at the time of sessions, that means clients can come to you from the next state over that you’re not licensed in. It means clients can intentionally travel to you. They can fly in for a two to three day deep dive.

I’ve even worked with therapists who have had clients come from out of the country to work with them. And that is the power of SEO. My friends, if you do not know about SEO, please go back to my last episode that I recorded that tells you why this is like, I don’t really love the term secret sauce, but like it’s the secret sauce for marketing for therapists. So it’s really awesome to be able to have clients that want to travel long distance.

for intensives and it’s actually very common. I literally just did a couples intensive a couple of weeks ago with someone who came from the Midwest out to see me in Seattle. And it’s not because there’s not couples therapists offering intensives in the Midwest. It’s because my website’s easy to find. It’s because I do a dang good job marketing my intensives and why they’re a perfect fit. It’s because I’m accessible. It’s because I’m quick to respond to things because I have spaciousness and capacity.

to respond to emails and phone calls and things like that. And people like making an experience out of their intensives, right? Like if we’re gonna do this whole thing, why not travel somewhere we haven’t been before and have some fun while we’re at it? When people want meaningful change, they are willing to travel to the right therapist, right? This couple that I just mentioned, they’re it. Both of them are people of color. I’m a woman of color.

And so for sure, like that offers me a certain piece of like relatability and credibility in a different way that I think about relationships. And so when people again can find you easily when they know what you’re doing and when you market it well, they are willing to travel for that. So you don’t have to go get licensed in all of the states and figure out all the ways to see people outside of states that you’re licensed in if you’re doing like coaching or something like that.

people can travel to you because they wanna work with you. Number four, flexible structure. So again, you can build an intensive around trauma healing, anxiety, relationship patterns, burnout, grief, life transitions, somatic stuckness, inner child work, couples breakthroughs, like plain and simple. Again, I would say this over and over again. If your clients want more time,

more space, more support, faster movement, an intensive becomes a perfect fit regardless of your niche and your methodologies, your approaches, whatever you want to call it. There is no one niche area or type of therapist that has a monopoly on intensives. This is for anyone because everyone can benefit from it. It’s just a matter of you figuring out

what your clients want, what you’re good at, and coming up with some kind of program or treatment plan around that. So let’s talk about your client’s lived experience because this is honestly why intensives sell themselves once you understand how to frame them. I get this question so often from therapists is like, there’s almost this sense that we have to convince clients of why it’s the right fit. And sometimes I think that’s a matter of we may not be convinced.

It’s the right fit. We may not fully have the buy-in of like, well, is this intensive going to be helpful? Am I going to be able to deliver the results that I marketed? And I want to name that that is a big mindset issue. It’s one that definitely needs to be addressed if you want to be successful with intensives because your intensives can sell themselves. Like I say all the time, over 90 % of my clients find me straight from Google, which means

They’re either searching actively specifically for an intensive or they’re searching for a modality or a type of therapist or whatever it is. They’re finding my website. They’re reading my web pages and then they literally are scheduling a consultation specifically for intensives. That’s one thing that I love about my Jane booking site is that I have options of do you want weekly or biweekly therapy? Do you want a brain spotting or EMDR intensive? Do you want a couples therapy intensive?

They literally have three options of what to book the consultation for. I’m initially, I was actually really surprised how many people booked specifically for intensives. But what that tells me is that they read about it on my website and they self-identified and they’re opting into this sounds like the thing that I want. Clients want intensives because they’re tired of slow progress. The 50 minute model is not the problem.

but it can slow things down. Weekly therapy, when it’s limited to 50 minutes at a time, can often feel like, ⁓ we are finally getting somewhere and then, time’s up. Or, I don’t want to wait a whole week to keep working on this. Or, I wish we could just stay with the momentum. Intensives fix this problem. They allow clients to stay in the work long enough to actually move something major. Intensives are not about

solving everyone’s life problems in 90 minutes or three hours, but it’s about having more time and more space to get to the finish line sooner. Right? It’s like a leg up. Clients want intensives because they want to feel better faster. This is where this Disney fast pass analogy comes in. Traditional therapy is kind of like this. You’re waiting in line for space mountain. It works, but you’re inching forward.

week by week, never quite sure when you’ll get to the front. A therapy intensive is like saying, I’m not waiting in that line for six months. Give me the FastPass, I’m ready now. It’s not skipping the healing process. And honestly, it’s not even like fully skipping the line. I’ve been sometimes in the, I’ve gone to Universal Studios quite a few times and what do they call it? Like the ExpressPass. I’ve sometimes been in that line where it’s still pretty long.

But it is accelerated, right? It’s a little bit faster. You get a little bit more priority and you will still pay for that, right? I’ll wait in a line for 40 minutes instead of three hours. So this isn’t about skipping anything per se. It’s just removing the pauses, removing the warmups, removing the disruptions, the sorry, we’re out of time. People love therapy intensives because they want efficiency without sacrificing depth.

Right, so this is a space where you get both. Therapy clients also want uninterrupted time with you. If you’ve been working with someone for a long time, they like you, they like working with you, they like what you have to say and how you make them think differently about something. They like the presence that you offer them. And therapy clients rarely get to sit with a therapist for three hours straight.

That level of containment is powerful. They feel held, they feel supported, they feel seen, they feel like this is the therapy I’ve always wanted. Honestly, therapy intensives in so many ways are great for neurodivergent people, they are great for people who have complex trauma and have a hard time letting guards down and opening up to people. There are so many people that just didn’t even know this wasn’t

option and so they didn’t know it was the perfect option until they experience it. As well, therapy intensives are perfect for people who are busy or overwhelmed or who travel a ton, especially if they work a lot, if their job requires them to travel a lot. So clients with demanding jobs or parenting responsibilities, travel schedules, burnout, ADHD, chronic stress,

These clients often prefer an intensive where they can take one day off, do deep work and integrate later. As opposed to having to keep rescheduling or late canceling. Now they have protected time in their schedule where they can still do some really, really great work. And then these clients get to walk away with real shifts. You and I both know three hours of focused work can equal weeks.

or months of standard sessions and clients really feel that. Again, we’re not offering intensives as this magic pill or quick fix bullet, whatever those phrases are. We’re just saying, hey, we can do this differently here, right? And it can actually help you feel more productive. It can help you feel like you’re getting more out of therapy faster. Now, the next thing when it comes to therapy intensives, a lot of people will ask me, okay, so then

I’m just literally, meeting with them for two or three hours. So I’m just pro rating my rate, right? And this is where I’m going to start to challenge some people around charging premium rates for therapy intensives. And what I mean by that is charging higher fees than you would normally charge for your hourly sessions. And we’re going to talk about that. So this is always a juicy topic and we’re going to address it head on because that’s what we’re doing here at Happy Healthy and Wealthy Therapists. So therapy intensives are

highly specialized, they are high value, they are high impact, and they are emotionally demanding in a different way compared to the weekly model. They’re also kind of logistically complex because you have to rearrange your schedule in a different way. And at the end of the day, they are deeply transformative. There is a lot that goes into therapy intensives. So yes, you can charge 300,

or 400 or $500 an hour or more, depending on your specialty, your location, and honestly, like what you want to charge. This is not overcharging. This is not unethical. This is not quote, taking advantage. This is premium pricing for a premium service, and it’s one that clients want. There are therapy clients out there who are routinely investing in

coaching programs, retreats, wellness weekends, spiritual intensives. There are people who are out there doing things for their betterment in a way that works for them. So they already spend money on deep, concentrated healing experiences. Therapy intensives are simply the clinical version of something the public already values and loves. I think that we just get into this mindset of

Well, therapy is supposed to be quote affordable and by that we mean low cost. So we assume no one’s gonna wanna buy it. And there’s a different way to market it, right? When you are selling anything at a higher price, you have to market it differently than you might sell something at a lower price. But people are out there investing in their wellness. They just need to know what an in therapy intensive is, how it helps them and why it’s right for them.

This is not about, it’s just too much and you can’t charge those fees and no one would ever book them. This is about how are we marketing it? How much again, do we have faith in what we’re offering? So I want to give you a sense of what’s possible here. Here are my own numbers. To date, I am filming this in December 2025. I started offering intensives. The first one I booked was in April.

2023, so less than three full years. To date, I’ve booked 97 therapy intensives and I’ve generated about $137,608 in intensive revenue alone. So six figures in therapy intensives. That number does not include my weekly therapy clients. It doesn’t include my coaching business. This is just intensives.

So I really wanna share those very explicitly, again, 97 intensives, about $138,000 if we’re rounding up. And so these are not a fluke. These are viable, ethical, in-demand services that clients are either actively seeking out, because more and more people are hearing that it’s a thing, or it’s something that…

They find your website, they’re checking out your services, they see about these intensive offerings, and they realize, actually, this is what I’ve been wanting all along. So we have to be able to step into our belief that we have something valuable to offer and that it is okay to charge the rates that excite us, because this is not.

just doing more therapy, you are doing so much more work behind the scenes and in preparation. And to be attuned to someone for three to six hours in a day, one person, that’s still a lot of work. They are emotionally demanding to me. It is worth it because it means the rest of my schedule gets to be a lot more flexible when I commit one day or two days to this intensive emotional work. So it’s worth it, but it has to be worth it to you too. And if it’s not worth it,

might be a part of the reason why you’re having a hard time asking for the fee that you’re trying to ask for. So I’m going to make a pretty bold statement here. I believe therapy intensives will become as common as virtual therapy. I believe therapy intensives are the future of private practice. Why? Because our culture is shifting. People are overwhelmed, overstimulated, burned out.

inpatient with slow progress, wanting efficiency without sacrificing depth, craving meaningful experiences, not endless appointments. Intensives meet people where they are and they help them go where they want to go faster. And as therapists, we need alternatives to packed caseloads. I’ve talked to so many therapists who are seeing upwards of 30 clients a week. That’s just not going to work.

We need alternatives to burnout cycles. We need alternatives to fee stagnation or rigid scheduling or the overworked underpaid model. Intensives help therapists work fewer overall hours, make more revenue per hour, offer deeper, more fulfilling work, stay in the field longer, actually feel excited about client work again. It’s a win-win.

⁓ I have worked with so many therapists who have considered this potential that, you know, I have to add coaching, I have to sell courses, I have to do all these things because that’s clearly the only way to make money. What people miss about that is that there are extra expenses the more things you do in business, but not with therapy intensives. With therapy intensives, you can charge the higher fee and your expenses are all the same.

Maybe you’re renting an office if you don’t normally and you did book an in-person intensive, but you don’t have to hire a virtual assistant to design your webinar slides or create that new PDF or that new email sequence or whatever it is. So it’s all a win-win quite honestly. If you are looking to make more money, start with therapy intensives. Trust that people want this. The fact that I can book 97 and make $138,000

Like that, that’s amazing. Honestly, it’s mind blowing to me. So to wrap this up, therapy intensives are flexible, customizable, powerful, profitable, ethical, deeply meaningful, and wanted by clients. They are not limited to one modality. They are not only for trauma or couples. They are not complicated. They are not out of reach. They are simply therapy.

done in a way that actually supports the depth of work you already do. And if you’re listening to this episode and it sparked something in you, that little, ⁓ wait, I could actually do this feeling, I wanna invite you to take the next step. I created a totally free training called How I Make $1,500 in Three Hours from Therapy Intensives and How You Can Do It Too.

In it, I walk you through the structure of my intensives, why they work, the exact marketing approach I use, and the very first steps to building your own intensive offerings. And when you watch the free training, you’ll also unlock a special offer to join my Therapy Intensives Academy, which is my full step-by-step program that teaches you how to design, market, and sell your intensives with confidence. If you’re ready to make your practice more sustainable, more profitable,

and honestly, more enjoyable, start with the free training. You can grab it in the link in the show notes. Thank you so much for being here. I will catch you in the next episode of Happy Healthy and Wealthy Therapists.