When the experiences underneath the substance use are what still need room
A focused therapy intensive for trauma connected to substance use and recovery
You may be in recovery, or well into it. The using may be behind you. But the experiences underneath — the trauma that contributed to coping, the memories from that period, the shame that sits in your chest — may still be held by your nervous system. When you are clinically stable and appropriate for outpatient trauma work, an intensive can create the protected time to work with those specific experiences directly.
What This Can Look Like
When clinically appropriate, intensive therapy may help address trauma connected to substance use and recovery. Some of what brings people here:
SOULFLO does not provide detoxification, medical substance-use treatment, or a higher level of care. An intensive is appropriate only when you are clinically stable, not in active withdrawal, and assessed as appropriate for outpatient trauma-focused work. If you need a higher level of substance-use care, we will help you find the right resource.
Why Doesn't It Feel Resolved?
You may already understand why these experiences affect you. The question is whether your mind, body, emotions, and protective responses have had an opportunity to process what happened.
Insight was never meant to be the finish line — it's the doorway.
Unresolved experiences may continue to show up through:
This doesn't mean every difficult experience from that period is stored trauma. It means some experiences may still be held by the nervous system in a way that hasn't yet had room to complete.
How Can a Therapy Intensive Help?
Extended, protected time for focused work
An intensive provides extended, protected therapeutic time to work with a specific trauma, memory, or cluster of experiences connected to substance use and recovery — rather than trying to address your entire history at once.
EMDR
Reprocessing specific traumatic memories or shame-laden experiences from that period
Internal Family Systems
Working with the parts that used to cope, the parts carrying shame, and the parts trying to stay sober
Somatic approaches
Helping your nervous system build tolerance for emotions that substances used to blunt
Attachment-focused work
Exploring the relational wounds that contributed to coping through substances
Nervous-system regulation
Building capacity to feel without flooding — the foundation of sustainable recovery
Psychoeducation & resourcing
Understanding trauma and addiction, and building tools for triggers and emotional waves
The exact approach is individualized based on your story, your nervous system, and clinical appropriateness. Not every intensive will include every modality. An intensive is one part of a recovery process, not a substitute for ongoing recovery support, and no single intensive will fully resolve the underlying trauma.
What Might We Focus On?
You don't have to process your entire history. An intensive might focus on:
The specific traumatic experience that contributed to using — the thing underneath the coping
A memory from a period of active addiction that remains distressing
An overdose experience — your own or someone else's — and how your body holds it
The shame of what happened during that time, and the belief "I'm broken"
A relationship rupture connected to using or to getting sober
The difficulty of feeling emotions without the buffer, and building capacity for that
The grief of who you were, and the work of accepting who you are now
Format & Logistics
What this actually looks like.
Intensives are available in three formats, shaped around your capacity and what you're working through — not a fixed program.
Half-Day
3–4 hours
A focused entry point — one contained piece of work, typically a single memory, pattern, or stuck point. Good for those newer to intensive work or wanting to test the format.
Full Day
5–6 hours
The most common format. Enough time to go somewhere, get through it, and begin landing it. Includes built-in breaks for grounding, movement, and integration throughout.
Multi-Day
2–3 consecutive or spaced days
For deeper or more complex trauma histories, or for clients who have previously done intensive work and are ready for another layer. Days can be consecutive or spaced a few days apart.
The Cost
A lot of the questions I get are about cost — and that makes sense, because it's an important one. I have a part of me that gets activated when pricing isn't listed, too. So here it is.
That said, intensives are genuinely customized. The length, the pacing, the modalities — all of it is shaped around what your system actually needs. Healing doesn't happen on a fixed schedule, and neither does the time and space this work requires. Think of the rates below as a starting point, not a fixed menu.
Standard Rate
$230 / hour
Ongoing individual sessions.
Intake Session
$280
90 minutes — clinical assessment and treatment planning.
Extended sessions are designed for deeper, more focused work than a standard weekly hour allows. Intensives can be scheduled on consecutive days or spaced out over time, based on what works best for your goals. Each intensive is individualized, typically ranging from a half-day to several consecutive days, and integrates modalities such as EMDR, IFS, and Brainspotting.
An intensive isn't more expensive per hour than weekly therapy — it's the same investment, concentrated.
Instead of 15 sessions spread across 4 months, each one fragmented by the week's stress, you get those same hours in 3 uninterrupted days: full presence, no restarting from scratch each time, no losing momentum to life in between.
You're not paying a premium for my attention. You're paying to have all of it, at once, when it counts.
Before we begin
A 90-minute pre-intensive call to assess your readiness, understand your nervous system, and co-create the shape of your intensive. You'll leave the call knowing exactly what to expect.
During the intensive
Grounding and orienting, followed by focused EMDR, IFS, and/or Brainspotting reprocessing. Breaks are built in throughout — this is not a marathon, it's a rhythm. Nothing gets forced.
After the intensive
Fatigue is normal — like a hard emotional workout. You'll have a 60-minute post-intensive integration session to land what moved. If you're in weekly therapy, we'll also create a plan you can bring back to your therapist.
Where it happens
In person at our San Diego office, or virtually throughout California, Oregon, and Florida. Both formats are fully supported.
Who leads the work
All intensives are led by Nancy Phung-Smith, LMFT — founder, EMDRIA Approved Consultant, and PhD candidate with a background in community mental health and psychiatric hospital settings.
What makes this different from weekly therapy?
Weekly therapy moves in 50-minute windows. An intensive removes the clock entirely. Without the session-end pressure, the nervous system has time to actually open — and the work has room to complete rather than stopping at the edge of something real. You don't spend the first 20 minutes warming back up, and you don't leave mid-process every week. The depth available in one intensive day can represent months of weekly work.
Sliding Scale & Reduced Fee
A limited number of reduced-fee intensive openings are available.
If the standard rate doesn't fit your circumstances right now, reduced-fee intensive spots are periodically available. Reach out to check current availability.
Learn moreNot Ready to Book?
Take your time.
This is a big decision and investment. Leave your info and we'll send you more to look over — no pressure, no obligation. It'll be here if this is something you want to revisit down the road.
Your information will not be shared.
What the Research Shows
What the Research Shows
From published research on trauma, substance use, and concurrent treatment
~30–40%
Of people with a substance use disorder also have PTSD
Research consistently finds high co-occurrence of PTSD and substance use disorders, with estimates ranging from 30–40% across clinical samples — underscoring how often trauma underlies substance use.
Pietrzak et al. (2011)55.2%
No longer met PTSD criteria after concurrent treatment
In a randomized controlled trial of concurrent treatment of PTSD and substance use disorders using prolonged exposure, 55.2% of participants no longer met PTSD criteria at post-treatment, compared to 33.9% in the control group.
Back et al. (2019)82.9%
Clinically meaningful response in intensive trauma-focused treatment
In a study of 347 adults with severe PTSD in an 8-day intensive trauma-focused program, 82.9% showed a clinically meaningful treatment response — illustrating the potential of massed, focused treatment for trauma-related distress.
Van Woudenberg et al. (2018)0.84
Large effect of trauma-focused therapy on PTSD symptoms
A meta-analysis found a large overall effect size (g = 0.84) for trauma-focused therapy on PTSD symptoms, supporting the effectiveness of approaches like EMDR for the trauma-related distress that often co-occurs with substance use.
Bisson et al. (2013)SOULFLO does not provide detoxification, medical substance-use treatment, or a higher level of care. Research findings describe group-level outcomes from structured studies and should not be interpreted as predicted results for SOULFLO clients. The concurrent-treatment study evaluated PTSD outcomes, not substance-use outcomes; the intensive studies evaluated PTSD in structured programs, not substance-use populations specifically.
Research References
Pietrzak, R. H., Goldstein, R. B., Southwick, S. M., & Grant, B. F. (2011). Prevalence and axis I comorbidity of full and partial posttraumatic stress disorder in the United States: Results from Wave 2 of the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 25(3), 456–465.
Back, S. E., Foa, E. B., Killeen, T. K., Mills, K. L., Teesson, M., Danksy, H., ... & Carroll, K. M. (2019). Concurrent treatment of substance use disorders and PTSD using prolonged exposure (COPE): A randomized controlled trial. JAMA Psychiatry, 76(9), 925–935.
Van Woudenberg, C., Voorendonk, E. M., Bongaerts, H., Zoet, H. A., Verhagen, M., Lee, C. W., van Minnen, A., & De Jongh, A. (2018). Effectiveness of an intensive treatment programme combining prolonged exposure and EMDR for severe PTSD. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 9(1), 1487225.
Related Focus Areas
Some experiences overlap. You may also want to explore:
Explore Other Intensive Focus Areas
What else can we work on?
Grief & Traumatic Loss
A sudden death, complicated loss, or painful moments surrounding someone you lost.
Learn MoreBetrayal & Relationship Wounds
Infidelity, abandonment, painful breakups, rejection, or experiences that changed how safe it feels to trust.
Learn MoreReligious & Spiritual Trauma
Experiences involving shame, fear, control, rejection, identity, or loss of belonging within a religious or spiritual community.
Learn MorePerinatal & Reproductive Trauma
Birth trauma, pregnancy loss, infertility, NICU experiences, reproductive procedures, or other painful experiences surrounding pregnancy and parenthood.
Learn MoreComplicated Relationships with a Parent
Estrangement, ongoing conflict, difficult boundaries, or the grief of not having the relationship you hoped for. An intensive can help process what happened and work toward greater clarity and emotional freedom.
Learn More