Regina Abayev, JD, LMFT · Hermosa Beach, CA
Accelerated
Resolution
Therapy
Working with difficult memories, fear, and anxiety
Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) is a structured psychotherapy that uses guided imagery and eye movements to work with distressing memories and the emotional and physical reactions attached to them. I use it for trauma-related memories, betrayal, breakups and divorce, grief, phobias and panic, financial loss, perfectionism, and test and performance anxiety, either as focused treatment or within ongoing therapy.
What Is ART, and
When Is It Used?
Working with Difficult Memories
ART is most useful when understanding hasn’t changed the reaction. You can know a fear of flying is out of proportion and still feel your chest tighten at the gate, or prepare for a deposition for weeks and still blank on something you know cold. ART works directly with the images, sensations, and emotions that come up, instead of with the story of what happened.
You keep the memory and the facts. The goal is to reduce the distress the experience still produces.
How a Memory Can Keep Affecting the Present
A difficult experience can leave behind more than a memory of what happened. It can change what you expect, what you notice, what you avoid, and what you trust about yourself. The end of a relationship can leave you questioning your judgment about people. Betrayal can make you doubt your own perception of what was happening in front of you. A panic attack can undermine confidence in your body. A failed exam, professional humiliation, or major financial loss can make decisions that once felt manageable suddenly feel dangerous.
The loss of confidence that follows can become as consequential as the original event. You may understand intellectually that one relationship does not predict the next one, that one bad decision does not make you incapable of making good ones, or that experiencing panic does not mean you are unsafe. Yet the experience can continue to function as evidence: I missed something important. I got this wrong. I cannot trust myself. I cannot let that happen again.
That can change behavior. Avoidance, checking, reassurance-seeking, overpreparation, rumination, and postponing decisions can all reduce distress in the short term while leaving the underlying fear intact. The person who was once comfortable making consequential decisions may begin searching for a level of certainty that no decision can provide. Someone who has been betrayed may repeatedly revisit the evidence, hoping to make sure they will never miss the signs again. A person who experienced panic on a flight may begin organizing travel around avoiding the possibility of another episode.
ART gives us a way to work directly with the memories, images, emotions, and physical sensations connected to these experiences. The goal is not to persuade you that what happened was insignificant, eliminate appropriate grief or caution, or replace a difficult experience with positive thinking. We work with the part of the experience that remains emotionally active, so that what happened can inform your judgment without continuing to govern it.
Accelerated Resolution Therapy in Los Angeles
In my practice, ART can be a focused treatment for a specific memory, fear, or performance concern, or part of broader individual therapy. I sometimes bring it in when one experience or reaction keeps interrupting the progress of ongoing work, while depth-oriented therapy looks at the larger patterns.
ART isn’t the right approach for every client or every problem. Which treatment we use depends on what you’re dealing with and what makes clinical sense for you.
I offer Accelerated Resolution Therapy in person in Hermosa Beach, serving clients throughout the Los Angeles area, and online for clients throughout California.
How It Works
What Happens in
an ART Session
ART sessions are structured and focused. You stay awake and aware throughout, you don’t have to relive an experience in detail or tell the whole story, and you stay in control of what we focus on.
Identify What to Work On
We start with a specific memory, fear, stressful situation, or reaction you want to address. You don’t need to tell me every detail of what happened. We focus on what’s relevant to the work.
Process With Guided Eye Movements
You picture the memory or situation while following a series of guided eye movements, and we pay attention to the images, physical sensations, and emotions that come up. You can stop or change direction at any point.
Voluntary Image Replacement
You’re guided to change the way you picture the experience while keeping the facts and the memory of what happened. The goal is for the memory to come to mind without the same level of distress.
Areas of Treatment
Breakups, Divorce, and Relational Loss
The end of a significant relationship can leave particular moments unusually vivid: the conversation in which it ended, discovering that a former partner has moved on, packing a home you shared, being rejected by someone you still love, or the last interaction you continue to revisit. Rumination can keep attention fixed on what happened, what you missed, what you could have done differently, and whether the ending could somehow have been prevented.
Relational loss can also affect confidence in your own judgment. Questions about how you chose the person, what you failed to see, whether you stayed too long, or whether you left too soon can follow you into subsequent relationships. ART can be used to work with memories and imagery that remain especially painful, while therapy addresses the larger loss: attachment, anger, grief, identity, regret, and what you want to understand before moving forward.
Relationship OCD, Obsessive Doubt, and Reassurance-Seeking
Relationship OCD, sometimes called ROCD, involves persistent obsessive doubt about a relationship, a partner, or one’s own feelings, accompanied by compulsive attempts to obtain certainty. Checking your feelings, comparing your partner with other people, repeatedly reviewing interactions, researching relationships, or asking for reassurance may reduce anxiety briefly before the uncertainty returns.
ART may be useful when particular memories or images have become emotionally charged within that cycle. Where symptoms are obsessive-compulsive in nature, treatment also needs to address the obsessions, compulsions, reassurance-seeking, and difficulty tolerating uncertainty directly.
Betrayal Trauma and Infidelity
The discovery of an affair or another serious betrayal can affect confidence in another person and in your own perception of what was happening. A text, photograph, location, conversation, or expression on a partner’s face can become difficult to stop revisiting, while ordinary inconsistencies may take on new meaning as you try to determine what can be trusted.
ART can be used to work with intrusive imagery and the emotional and physical responses attached to those moments, alongside the broader individual or couples work involved in understanding the betrayal, rebuilding trust, and recovering confidence in your own ability to perceive and respond to what is happening in the relationship.
Specific Phobias and Fears
Specific phobias involve marked fear associated with a particular object or situation. Flying, needles, blood, medical procedures, elevators, enclosed spaces, animals, driving, and heights are common examples. A person can understand intellectually that the actual risk is limited while experiencing a powerful physiological fear response and organizing large parts of life around avoiding it.
Fear can also undermine confidence in your ability to handle the experience itself. The concern becomes not only something bad might happen, but I don’t know what will happen to me if I become afraid. ART can be used to work with the imagery, memories, sensations, and anticipated outcomes associated with the fear, including situations where there is no clearly remembered originating event.
Panic and Anticipatory Anxiety
A panic attack can alter the way you interpret your own physical sensations. A racing heart, dizziness, shortness of breath, or a feeling of unreality can become something to monitor, and fear of another episode can begin influencing where you go, what you do, and what situations you are willing to enter.
ART can be used when a panic episode or related memory remains particularly charged, including the feared imagery associated with experiencing panic again. Therapy can also address the loss of confidence that follows when your own body begins to feel unpredictable.
Grief, Bereavement, and Distressing Memories of Loss
Grief can include memories that are painful in ways that are distinct from missing the person who died: a hospital room, witnessing an illness, a final conversation, discovering that someone has died, something left unsaid, or an image associated with the circumstances of the death.
Loss can also change assumptions about safety, permanence, and what can be counted on. ART can help process particularly distressing memories while leaving room for grief itself. The aim is to allow the entire relationship to occupy more psychological space than its most painful moments.
Financial Loss, Bankruptcy, and Devastating Financial Events
Bankruptcy, the collapse of a business, foreclosure, fraud, a devastating investment loss, or a sudden reversal of financial security can affect a person’s relationship with risk, uncertainty, responsibility, and their own judgment. Particular moments may remain emotionally charged: watching an account balance fall, receiving the call that changed everything, telling a spouse what happened, laying off employees, signing bankruptcy papers, or realizing that years of work have disappeared.
The financial circumstances may eventually stabilize while confidence in decision-making does not. Someone who once made consequential decisions comfortably may begin second-guessing every choice, avoiding reasonable risks, seeking excessive reassurance, or postponing decisions until there is more certainty than any decision can provide.
ART can be used to work with the specific memories, images, and physical reactions connected to the financial event. In ongoing therapy, we can also examine what the loss came to mean for identity, responsibility, security, risk, and trust in your own judgment, so that one painful outcome does not become the reference point for every decision that follows.
Performance Anxiety and Public Speaking
Preparation and anxiety can coexist. A person can know the material, understand the audience, and have substantial experience speaking publicly while still experiencing intense anticipatory anxiety or a physical stress response. A presentation that went badly, a moment of freezing, public criticism, or another experience of feeling exposed can begin to influence expectations about the next performance.
ART can be used to work with those emotionally charged experiences and the imagery associated with what could happen next. Part of the work may also involve recovering confidence in your ability to think, respond, and remain present when the outcome cannot be completely controlled.
Test Anxiety and High-Stakes Exams
Test anxiety can involve cognitive worry, physiological arousal, difficulty concentrating, and fear that anxiety itself will interfere with performance. A previous unsuccessful attempt can add another layer, particularly when memories of the exam or receiving the result begin to intrude on preparation for the next sitting.
Failure can also change the way someone evaluates their own competence. Studying becomes entangled with proving that the previous result did not mean what it felt like it meant. I use ART with students and professionals preparing for the Bar Exam, licensing examinations, and other high-stakes assessments to work with emotionally charged memories and anticipatory anxiety that may interfere with preparation and performance.
Perfectionism, Shame, and Fear of Failure
Perfectionism can be organized around fear of criticism, shame, uncertainty, failure, or the consequences a person has learned to associate with getting something wrong. It can appear as overpreparation, procrastination, excessive checking, difficulty delegating, or standards that remain difficult to satisfy even after the objective demands of the situation have been met.
Confidence built primarily on getting things right can become fragile, since every mistake carries more information about the self than the mistake warrants. Where those expectations are connected to particular experiences, ART can help reduce the emotional intensity of the memories themselves, while ongoing therapy examines the larger role perfectionism plays in a person’s life.
Intrusive Memories, Nightmares, and Trauma-Related Imagery
Distressing experiences can return through intrusive memories, recurring nightmares, physiological reactions, or images that enter awareness unexpectedly. For some people these symptoms occur as part of post-traumatic stress; for others, a particular memory remains disturbing without meeting criteria for PTSD.
Repeated intrusion can also undermine confidence in your ability to control your attention, sleep, or emotional state. ART works directly with imagery and the emotional and physical responses associated with it, making these experiences particularly relevant to this approach.
ART for Test
& Exam Anxiety
Keep the Knowledge.
Reduce the Anxiety.
Test anxiety is frustrating when you’ve prepared thoroughly and know the material, yet anxiety gets between you and what you know.
I use ART with students and professionals preparing for high-stakes exams and evaluations, including the Bar Exam, LSAT, MCAT, and other demanding assessments. The work focuses on the specific experiences, fears, and reactions behind the anxiety.
When should I schedule sessions before an exam?
I usually schedule two sessions, the first one to two weeks before the exam and the second several days before it. I avoid the night before, because some people feel tired or deeply relaxed after a session, and that isn’t the state you want for hours of recall.
What does a session for test anxiety focus on?
We work with the specific images connected to the anxiety: sitting down at the desk, reading a question you don’t recognize, watching the clock. We notice the physical response that comes with each one and process it with eye movements. Then we use voluntary image replacement so you can picture yourself working through the exam focused and methodical.
Test anxiety often connects to earlier experiences, such as a failed exam, a parent’s criticism, or a moment of public embarrassment at school. When one of those comes up, we work on it in the same session or come back to it later.
- First session: one to two weeks before the exam. This addresses the primary fear response and any underlying memories driving it.
- Second session: three to four days before the exam. This reinforces the new state and addresses anything that surfaced after the first session.
Does ART work for other performance situations?
The same approach can apply to presentations, depositions, board meetings, pitches, or any high-stakes situation where anxiety gets in the way of your preparation and skill.
What to Expect
The Practical
Details
You decide how much to share during an ART session. Most of the processing happens internally, while you focus on the memory, situation, or reaction we’re working on, so you don’t need to describe every detail for us to begin.
ART can be used on its own or as part of ongoing therapy. For existing clients, I may bring it in when there’s a particular memory, fear, or reaction we’ve talked about that hasn’t shifted through conversation alone. Sessions are available in person in Hermosa Beach and via telehealth throughout California.
A superbill is provided if you would like to seek reimbursement from your insurance company for out-of-network care.
Common Questions
Frequently asked
questions
Will I lose the memory?
No. ART doesn’t erase memories. You keep the knowledge of what happened, and the goal is for remembering it to produce less distress.
Do I have to tell you what happened?
No. You process the memory privately while I guide the eye movements. You only need to share the general situation and whatever physical sensations come up.
What if I’m not a visual person?
You don’t need a clear picture. A vague impression, a sense of the room, or a feeling in your chest is enough to work with, and I’ll guide the rest.
How many sessions will I need?
It depends on what we’re working on. In published PTSD studies, ART protocols typically ran three to four sessions. A single phobia or a specific memory may take fewer. Layered experiences, like an affair discovered over months or a long history of criticism, tend to take more and often sit within broader therapy.
Will I feel exhausted afterward?
Some people feel deeply relaxed or tired after a session, particularly after working on something painful, and others feel fine. You can drive home and return to your day.
Is this the same as hypnosis?
No. You’re fully awake, aware, and in control throughout, and you can pause or stop the eye movements at any point. ART doesn’t involve an altered state of consciousness.
How is ART different from EMDR?
Both use eye movements and both are used for trauma. ART follows a set sequence within each session and adds voluntary image replacement, where you change how you picture the scene. EMDR has a much larger research base; ART’s is newer and smaller, and no published study has compared the two directly. If you’ve tried EMDR and it didn’t suit you, we can talk about whether ART makes sense.
How We Work Together
Three ways to
engage with ART
Client Experiences
In their
own words
Further reading
An ART-trained therapist compares Accelerated Resolution Therapy and EMDR: how each works, session counts, the evidence, and when I refer out.
Why two people survive the same event and respond differently.
Ready when
you are
ART aims to leave you with the knowledge of what happened and less of the distress it still causes. Schedule a consultation to begin ART, in person in Hermosa Beach or online throughout California.