For Referring Clinicians
A trusted home for the EMDR work your clients
For therapists who don't practice EMDR, IFS, or Brainspotting — we offer a collaborative intensive pathway with Nancy Phung-Smith, LMFT. Your client does the deep trauma processing here, then returns to you to integrate it.
Learn more about Nancy Phung-Smith, LMFT 138181
Why Refer
You've built the relationship. We hold the trauma processing.
Many of your clients have read about EMDR. They've asked about it. They sense there's something — a memory, a pattern, a body response — that talk therapy alone hasn't reached. An intensive offers a focused, time-bound container to move through that material, without disrupting the therapeutic relationship they have with you.
Adjunct, not replacement
Intensives are designed as a parallel, time-limited engagement. Your client remains your client.
Targeted processing
Half-day, full-day, or multi-day formats focused on a specific event, pattern, or stuck point.
Closed-loop handoff
A clinical summary returns with your client so the integration work continues seamlessly in your sessions.
The Modalities
Reaching what has been avoided, dissociated, or held below words.
Each intensive is sequenced with the modality — or combination — best matched to your client's presentation, nervous system, and goals.
EMDR
Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing
An evidence-based protocol that helps the brain reprocess traumatic memories at a neurobiological level. Particularly suited for single-incident trauma, attachment wounds, and intrusive memories that talk alone hasn't resolved.
IFS
Internal Family Systems
A parts-based approach that gently meets protectors and exiles. Effective for clients who feel internally divided, self-critical, or who describe 'a part of me' that keeps them stuck despite insight.
Brainspotting
Brainspotting
A somatic, brain-body modality that accesses material held below conscious awareness — useful when a client knows something is 'there' but can't put words to it, or when traditional cognitive approaches plateau.
Is it a fit?
A simple way to know when to bring an intensive in.
A quick decision tree for the moments you're weighing whether an adjunct intensive could support the work you're already doing.
Keep going. Revisit if a plateau appears.
Common Signals
If two or more of these are showing up, it's worth a conversation.
- Client keeps asking about EMDR or trauma-focused work
- Stuck on a single memory, image, or body sensation
- Insight is there — but the charge isn't shifting
- Dissociation, freeze, or 'I can't access it' moments
- A plateau after real progress in weekly therapy
- Upcoming life event activating old material
The Pathway
What the referral looks like, step by step.
- 01
Curiosity
Your client mentions EMDR or you sense an intensive could move something the weekly format can't. You share this referral.
- 02
Clinician Consultation
A 30-minute consult — clinician-to-clinician or with your client — to assess fit, discuss history, and align on goals.
- 03
Goal Setting & Preparation
We define a clear target: a specific memory, pattern, or somatic stuck point. Resourcing and stabilization happen before processing.
- 04
The Intensive
Half-day, full-day, or multi-day. Sustained, titrated processing using EMDR, IFS, and/or Brainspotting.
- 05
Return to Your Care
A written clinical summary and integration recommendations come back with your client — so you can continue the work in weekly sessions.
Example Referrals
When an intensive is the right next step.
The Stalled Plateau
A 38-year-old client you've worked with for 18 months has made meaningful gains around her relationship patterns, but a single childhood incident keeps surfacing in dreams and won't shift through cognitive work.
The plan: A 2-day EMDR intensive targeting that specific memory. She returns to your weekly sessions with the charge reduced — ready to integrate the relational learnings she'd already begun with you.
The Curious Client
A new-ish client has read about EMDR online and keeps asking if it's right for him. You're not trained in it, and don't want to lose the rapport you've built.
The plan: A clinician consultation, then a half-day Brainspotting + EMDR intensive. He continues weekly therapy with you throughout — the intensive is an adjunct, not a transfer.
The Body That Knows
Your client describes a 'wall' — she knows something is there from childhood but can't access it. Talk therapy circles it. Her nervous system tightens whenever it's approached.
The plan: A multi-day intensive sequencing IFS and Brainspotting to gently approach what's been protectively held. Pacing is titrated; safety is the priority.
Collaboration, not handoff
The work is better when we hold it together.
Our clients benefit when we stop working in isolation. Building a small, trusted referral community around each person — therapists, specialists, modalities — is how meaningful change becomes durable change.
Two clinicians, one client
You stay the primary therapeutic relationship. I hold a focused, time-bound container for the trauma processing — then hand the thread back to you.
Open clinical communication
With your client's consent: a pre-intensive call to align on goals, and a written summary after. We talk like colleagues, not like a black box.
A community of care
Referring isn't outsourcing — it's expanding the team around your client. The best outcomes happen when therapists trust each other and share what we know.
"The strongest therapeutic outcomes I've seen aren't from one brilliant clinician — they're from a small, trusted circle of clinicians who collaborate around one human."
Let's talk about your client
Schedule a consultation call to discuss fit, pacing, and how an intensive could support the work you're already doing together.
Book a Clinician Consultation