mental health THERAPY SERVICES in atlanta, ga and online across georgia, florida, and colorado
Individual Chronic Illness Therapy Intensives
For when the weekly therapy model doesn't fit your body or mind
Weekly therapy was built around work schedules, not symptom patterns. It assumes a body that can reliably show up at the same time every week, week after week, and that the thing you're working on can be opened on a Tuesday and politely closed until next Tuesday.
If you live with chronic illness, you already know consistency is not how your energy works.
Chronic Illness Therapy Intensives might be a good fit if…
Some weeks you make it, but you spend the whole session just catching me up. And some weeks you have a rare stretch of capacity — and a 50-minute appointment barely scratches the surface before it's time to stop.
An intensive is a different distribution of the same work. Instead of spreading therapy across months of sessions you may or may not have the energy to attend, we concentrate it into an extended block of time while your window is open.
This is a different format that works with fluctuating capacity instead of against it.
You don’t have to have it all figured out, just a sense that you’re ready for something different.
If you live with chronic illness, you already know consistency is not how your energy works.
An intensive may be a good fit if:
Your symptoms fluctuate, and the weekly model means constantly canceling, rescheduling, or showing up at half capacity
You have a specific focus you want to work through — a medical trauma, a diagnosis you're still metabolizing, a pattern of fear around your body — that keeps getting opened and shelved in weekly sessions
You have windows of better capacity and want to use one deliberately
You're already in therapy elsewhere and want focused adjunct work on the chronic illness piece your current therapist doesn't specialize in (in this case, Destiny collaborates with your current therapist before you meet)
Travel, distance, or energy cost makes frequent appointments harder than one well-planned day
An intensive is probably not right for you if:
You're in active crisis. Intensives are for focused work, not stabilization. If you're in crisis, you need consistent, ongoing support — and possibly a higher level of care, not a single concentrated dose.
Long stretches of cognitive processing wear you out fast. Some people (especially those with brain fog, post-exertional symptoms, or conditions that tax cognition) do their best work in smaller doses with recovery time in between. If processing for several hours at once would leave you depleted rather than resourced, traditional 50-minute sessions are likely the better format for you.
You don't currently have support around you. Intensive work stirs things up. You need people, structure, or practices to land back into afterward.
You prefer (or your nervous system requires) slow titration. Some trauma work needs to move in small, carefully paced increments. That's not a limitation — it's good clinical care, and it's what weekly sessions are for.
You're hoping to skip the slow parts. An intensive concentrates the work; it doesn't compress healing into a weekend. Anyone telling you otherwise is selling a false promise.
If you're not sure which category you're in, that's exactly what a Discovery Call is for. Book here, and I will tell you honestly if I think weekly work (with me, Destiny, or someone else) would serve you better.
Our Approach
At The Chronic Illness Therapist, we work in several modalities aimed at making life feel fuller: deeper connections with friends and family, stronger self-advocacy with doctors and employers, and most importantly, helping you build a life that feels like yours.
OUR MODALITIES:
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) — building a meaningful life alongside symptoms, not waiting for them to disappear first
Somatic Experiencing — working with your nervous system, not just your thoughts, to release the bracing and hypervigilance your body has learned
Ketamine Integration Therapy — support for processing and integrating ketamine treatment you're receiving for chronic pain or treatment-resistant depression
What actually happens in a chronic illness-focused therapy intensive?
BEFORE:
We meet for a consultation call to confirm fit, then you complete intake paperwork and a (short) pre-intensive questionnaire so we're not spending your intensive on history-gathering. In the same vain, I won’t ask you to write everything all out before we’ve even met, because I believe that trust is built inside the room, not on a piece of paper. We'll also plan around your body’s needs: seating, lighting, food, medication timing, whatever pacing needs you have. I’ll also meet with you for 45 minutes one week before.
DURING
A typical intensive runs 3 hours a day for 1-3 days. We work in blocks with real breaks built in — not as a courtesy, but as part of the clinical work. Pacing is the intervention for a lot clients, and the intensive is structured to practice it, not override it. The work itself draws from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Somatic Experiencing: we're not just talking about what happened to your body, we're working with how your nervous system is holding it now.
AFTER
You'll leave with a written summary of what we worked on and what to practice, and we will schedule a 45-minute follow-up meeting later to integrate.
You might also be wondering…
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More time. If you're always hitting the 50-minute mark right as you're starting to open up, an intensive gives you the uninterrupted space to actually go there, without having to stop and pick it back up a week later.
Deeper processing. Some people make more progress in a concentrated stretch of time than they do across weeks of spread-out sessions. If that's how you learn and heal, an intensive works with your natural rhythm.
Flexibility. Intensives don't have to replace regular therapy, they can complement it. You might start with an intensive to build momentum, then transition to weekly sessions. Or use an intensive to go deeper after you've already been in therapy for a while. There's no one right way to do it.
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Hold on to your wallet if anyone promises you pain elimination from a weekend of therapy or coaching.
What I won't promise is less pain. The goal of this work is less fear of pain, less bracing around it, and less of your life organized in avoidance of it. For some people, the pain itself eases when the threat response settles, but that's a welcome side effect, not the deliverable.
You'll leave with the concrete takeaways that are relevant for you:
a written summary of our work
a personalized pacing plan
a flare plan for when pain spikes
regulation skills you've practiced with me rather than just read about
and a framework for talking with your medical team, family, and place of work.
If advocacy is where you're struggling, we can make that the center of the work, and you'll leave with actual language and strategies for the places where you keep getting dismissed:
the doctor's office
the dinner table
the meeting with HR
Not generic assertiveness scripts, but words built around ADA laws, your condition, your relationships, and what you've already tried.
You can also expect a clearer map of your own pain-fear-tension cycle, and the experience of staying with a hard sensation or emotion — with support — instead of bracing against it.
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That is the question.
Both options are available. Online and in-person are equally effective, so it comes down to your preference. Online intensives are great for clients with fatigue exacerbated by travel or any other reason that travel is difficult.Online intensives are only available to clients who are physically in the state of Georgia, Florida, or Colorado at the time of the intensive.
In-person options are in Downtown Atlanta, East Atlanta, or a private short-term rental of your choice.
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Yes, and honestly, I'd be surprised if you didn't bring some. Chronic pain and trauma are rarely separate stories. Sometimes the trauma came first and the body protected itself; sometimes the medical system itself was the trauma — the dismissals, the procedures, the years of not being believed. Either way, you don't have to pick which one to work on.
Both modalities I work from (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Somatic Experiencing) are genuine trauma treatments, not just "trauma-informed" approaches, and both have research supporting their use for chronic pain and trauma alike. This isn't pain therapy with trauma awkwardly bolted on, or trauma therapy that treats your body as a side note. It's one integrated piece of work, because in your life, it's one integrated experience.
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Starting December 2026, yes! Through one of our therapists, Rachel Hopkins. Rachel is trained in ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP) and works with medical partners who handle the prescribing and medical screening side; she provides the therapy itself.
The intensive format and KAP actually fit together well. KAP isn't just a medicine session… it's preparation beforehand and integration afterward, and the most useful integration window is the day or two right after dosing. A multi-day intensive keeps that window inside the work instead of leaving you to process the experience alone until next week's appointment.
A few important notes:
KAP requires medical screening. Not everyone is a candidate. That determination is up to your medical provider.
Ketamine is a tool, not a cure — for trauma or for pain. If a clinic has already promised you otherwise, I'm sorry, and that's exactly the kind of expectation we'd want to talk through in preparation.
My intensives remain medicine-free. If you're unsure which path fits, a consultation call with either of us can help you sort that out.
If you'd like to be contacted when Rachel's KAP intensives open, join the interest list here.
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A typical 3-day intensive looks like this (all times Eastern):
A 45-minute assessment session via Zoom before we begin
Thursday: 12–3pm, with scheduled breaks plus as-needed breaks
Friday: 12–3pm, with scheduled breaks plus as-needed breaks
Saturday: 10am–12pm or 12–2pm
A 45-minute follow-up session one week later
The breaks are an intentional part of the work. Pacing is one of the skills we're practicing, so the schedule is built to honor it rather than push through it.
This schedule can be modified based on your needs and my availability. Half-day and full-day formats are also available.
For in-person intensives: We can meet at my office in Atlanta. Or if you'd like a true retreat feel at an Airbnb or private home/short-term rental that you book for your stay. Atlanta has several wonderful treehouse Airbnbs that lend themselves to this kind of work. Fruit and snacks are provided; meals are not, so plan your breakfast, lunch, and dinner accordingly.
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$2,500 for the complete individual intensive. $3200 for relationships
That includes:
10 hours of focused one-on-one therapy (Thursday and Friday afternoons, plus Saturday morning)
A 45-minute pre-intensive assessment session (with each partner, if doing relationship work)
A 45-minute follow-up session one week later (with each partner, if doing relationship work)
A written summary of our work, your pacing plan, and your flare plan to take with you
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These are some shifts I've watched happen for clients in this work:
Learning to name their needs and ask for them without the three-paragraph apology first
Moving from "I'm a burden to my family" toward being a person in their family again
Stepping off the treadmill of the next protocol, the next practitioner, the next supplement stack (and grieving the time and money spent on the ones that never worked)
Making social plans locally, and travel possible again (with a real plan for flares, pacing, and energy, instead of waiting to feel ready first)
Connecting with friends and family from a settled place, rather than performing wellness for their approval
Understanding their own nervous system patterns well enough to predict them, instead of being ambushed by them
Your version of this work will be your own. These aren't a checklist… they're a sample of what becomes possible when fear stops running the schedule.
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Then we work with the body that shows up. That might mean shorter blocks and more breaks, working lying down, or shifting that day's focus toward what's most useful mid-flare. Which, honestly, can be some of the most valuable work we do. Practicing pacing and regulation during a flare, with support, is the live version of everything this work is about.
If you're too unwell to participate meaningfully, we can reschedule that day's hours rather than forfeit them. Flares are a feature of chronic illness, not a failure of commitment, and my policies are built to reflect that.
What I'd ask is communication: tell me what's happening as early as you can, and we'll decide together whether to adapt the day or move it.
Looking for additional support but not therapy?
Welcome to the Waiting Room
A community membership for people living with chronic illness A space for conversation, reflection, and shared understanding with others who truly get it. Open to anyone, anywhere. Not therapy. No clinical relationship, just connection and insight. This is for people who want to feel less alone in it all.
Let’s find what works for you
Start with a conversation. We’ll talk through your needs and figure out the best next step, together.
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