IFS Therapy and Intensives in Minnesota
for Life Transitions and Religious Trauma
Therapy Intensives and Retreats in Minnesota
Sara Smith, LMFT, Level 2 Trained IFS Therapist | All Things New Therapy | Minnesota
Remember that feeling when you've been on the merry-go-round of life for so long that when it finally slows down, you're dizzy, disoriented, and not quite sure which way is up? You've been doing the therapy thing and it's helpful, but you can't shake the feeling that you're going round and round, but you're not going deep ENOUGH, fast ENOUGH.
I get it. At All Things New Therapy, I offer individual therapy intensives online and private in-person retreats for women in Minnesota who are at a turning point and ready to do therapy differently. Not more therapy. Different therapy.
What Is a Therapy Intensive?
And How is it Different from a Retreat?
People use the terms "therapy intensive" and "therapy retreat" pretty interchangeably - and honestly, that's fine! They share the same big idea: giving you concentrated, uninterrupted time to do real, deep therapeutic work instead of squeezing it into 50-minute windows between kid drop-offs and lunch breaks.
A therapy intensive is multiple extended sessions - about three hours each - packed into two to three consecutive days. Rather than spreading 12 weeks of progress across 12 sessions, we go deeper in days than many people go in months. Instead of that familiar rhythm where you spend the first 15 minutes catching me up on your week and then just start getting to the real stuff right as time's up (wah, wah, wah!), intensive sessions give your brain and body the time they need to actually settle in. You go deeper. You get somewhere.
A therapy retreat is the same deep work but with more intentional breathing room between sessions - time for reflecting, resting, processing, and letting things settle. In my practice, the retreat format is designed so that the space around the work is just as therapeutic as the work itself. The pauses matter as much as the sessions.
For a lot of my clients - especially those navigating trauma or PTSD, religious trauma, anxiety, major life transitions, or old patterns that just won't budge - the intensive retreat format feels like a completely different experience from weekly therapy. Not because weekly therapy is bad! But because some things need sustained, focused attention to actually shift. That might look like an IFS intensive, a trauma intensive that weaves in somatic therapy, or a few focused days around a turning point. (Think LASIK vs. glasses - both help you see, but only one actually transforms your vision.)