Therapy spotlight: What is Lifespan Integration and could it help me?
There are countless therapies out there and it can sound like alphabet soup—CBT, ACT, EMDR—OMG 😂 There are many therapy modalities that are effective and can work for you. Rarely is there one right answer, but instead many paths to healing. However, sometimes, a particular therapy deserves a shout-out among the rest for its usefulness when it comes to certain issues. So today I want to highlight the therapy LIfespan Integration (LI) and how it can help you in your healing journey.
What is Lifespan Integration Therapy?
From the Lifespan Integration website:
Lifespan Integration is a gentle, body-based therapeutic method that heals without re-traumatizing. In 2003, Peggy Pace published the first edition of her book, Lifespan Integration: Connecting Ego States through Time. Pace originally designed Lifespan Integration therapy for adult survivors of childhood abuse or neglect. She soon found that LI therapy facilitates rapid healing in people of all ages, and is effective with a wide range of therapeutic issues. Since 2004, Pace has been training therapists throughout the US and Western Europe.
“Lifespan Integration is a gentle, body-based therapeutic method which heals without re-traumatizing.”
Lifespan Integration is different from talk therapy in that our focus is not a cognitive approach that deals with changing thoughts or negative beliefs. LI is body-based, and utilizes repetitions of a visual timeline of memories to facilitate neural integration and rapid healing. By using the timeline from the client’s life, LI helps integrate a person’s sense of self throughout every stage of their life.
Using this panoramic approach of one’s entire life, the body can naturally allow traumatic memories to resurface without the therapist having to take the client deep into those difficult memories. We can work with those traumas with a light touch and help the body realize that those traumas are over and they are now in the present—the timeline proves to the body that this is so.
Repetitions of a timeline of the client’s memory cues are central to every LI protocol. Some LI protocols are focused on clearing body memory of trauma, and some are focused on building self-structure. Most LI protocols do some of both. In a typical LI session, the therapist will read the client’s timeline to them multiple times and the client will view their life as a movie. Other interventions will be done depending on our goal.
What kinds of issues is Lifespan Integration good for?
We can use Lifespan Integration to clear traumas, build self-esteem, help diffuse relationship stress, help with grief, target negative beliefs, decrease anxiety and depression, promote a calmer nervous system, and more. Lifespan Integration helps rewire a person’s nervous system to help them be more resilient to stress and better able to regulate their emotions. It does this through integrating neural pathways to create a solid core self.
Imagine a trampoline that was hanging by only a handful of springs, parts of the fabric flopping down. I bet you’d be nervous to jump, am I right? With good reason! There aren’t enough points of connection to provide that buoyancy against your weight.
But think of a properly assembled trampoline—there are dozens of points of connection all the way around between the fabric and the springs attached to the frame. The more points of connection, the stronger that trampoline is to support your weight, and the more fun you have jumping.
Lifespan Integration helps create those points of connection between all of our neural networks (which are stored all over our brain and body). The more internally connected we are (aka integrated), the stronger our core sense of self and well-being.
looking for lifespan integration therapy near you?
Imagine feeling you really know yourself deeply, and love who you are. Imagine cultivating a relationship of compassion with yourself at every stage throughout your life. Imagine getting to go back in time and “input” some of the love, affirmation, advocacy, and support that you needed back then, in a way that matters for your present-day self. Lifespan Integration allows you to do all these things in a way that is not just on the level of our thoughts, but in our very body itself.
I provide Lifespan Integration therapy in Tacoma, WA, and online to residents of WA. (Lifespan Integration therapy works very in online therapy, by the way)! If you'd like to find out more about Lifespan Integration and if this therapy is right for you, give me a call at 253-365-0403 to ask about counseling. I provide a free 15-min phone consult to see if we are a good fit.