By Tessa Curtin, LMFT

Do you find yourself logically understanding one thing, but emotion taking over in the moment and reacting in ways you wish you wouldn’t, time and time again? Do you experience negative beliefs about yourself or the world, despite efforts to change or talk yourself out of them? Have you engaged in traditional talk therapy before without much lasting effect, or are you tired of continually having to apply coping skills just to stay afloat? Lifespan Integration may be just the approach for you.  

We each have a life story that is uniquely ours, full of rich moments of both pain and joy. From our earliest moments of existence, we begin absorbing and adapting to our environments. It is an innate human need to have caregivers who not only provide for our physical but emotional needs as well. We need caregivers who deeply know, value, and delight in us–those who respond to us in predictable ways, even in the face of emotional distress. Decades of research have shown that healthy emotional and social development depends on this secure connection, especially in our earliest years of life. This is known in psychology as attachment theory. 

Unfortunately, this is not the reality for many people, even with well-intentioned parents who try their best. Children raised without a consistently loving person to turn to for help in making sense of their experiences and emotions–let alone children who experience a chaotic, critical, neglectful, hostile, or otherwise abusive environment–will naturally develop unconscious survival adaptations. These include autonomic nervous system states (think fight, flight, and freeze responses), globalized core beliefs about the self and others, somatic sensations, powerful emotions, and self-protective coping behaviors or tactics that are embedded in the body and mind. For example, a child who has repeated experiences of anger, unpredictable behavior, or criticism from a primary caregiver may experience social anxiety later in life. Their emotional brain has learned and generalized the belief that people will respond to them in unpredictable, hostile ways and that it is unsafe to be around others. 

Even if the ideal conditions are met in childhood, traumatic events at any stage of life will deeply affect us. Our bodies are designed to protect us against future hurt by literally rewiring the brain’s automatic responses. Though those responses no longer serve us, the human body and mind are designed to continue operating off of an unconscious “rule book” created from past experience and our early relationships with caregivers. These unconscious rules continue to shape the way we react, interact, and engage in our current life and relationships. 

The good news is that, when certain conditions are met, our bodies are capable of healing in deep and lasting ways–in a sense resetting our unconscious “rule book” and freeing us up to engage with the world and ourselves differently. Utilizing similar neuroscientific ideas as other trauma modalities (such as EMDR), Lifespan Integration offers clients a way to access their body’s innate ability to heal from outdated beliefs, emotions, patterns of protection, and ways of being that were once needed but no longer serve them in the present.

What is Lifespan Integration?

Created in 2002 by Peggy Pace, Lifespan Integration is a gentle, body- and mind-based therapeutic method that heals without re-traumatizing. Lifespan Integration is a revolutionary form of therapy that combines new developments in neuroscience and self-organizing systems with the psychology of attachment theory. 

This approach differs from traditional talk therapy, where problems are addressed through cognitively working with thoughts, emotions, or identifying new behaviors to try. Instead, Lifespan Integration works at a deep neural level to heal the root cause of current difficulty. By increasing neural network connections at a deep level in the body-mind system, the neural system and internal “rule book” are reset to reflect the current life situation. While gentle in its approach, it is powerful in its reach and effects. 

What does it look like in session?

A central component of any Lifespan Integration protocol entails revisiting–and to some degree, re-experiencing–your life story briefly and repeatedly (as many as 20 times!) during the session. How is this done? You and your therapist will create a timeline of “memory cues,” meaning just a few words that, when read to you, will bring a memory of yours to mind. For example, a memory cue could be “first day of Kindergarten.” You will create your own timeline of chronological memory cues throughout your life–even just one memory per year is sufficient–including the ups, the downs, and the everything-in-between of your unique life experience. During sessions, your therapist will read your memory cues to you in chronological order while you let your mind briefly revisit these memories and view a sort of “movie” of your life. 

In the early stages of treatment, your therapist will only read a handful of neutral or positive memory cues each repetition of your timeline. This aids in creating a gentle experience where the mind and body are actually able to integrate the memories, with the understanding that integration and healing do not occur when the mind or body are in too much distress. Your body will set the pace for treatment. Additional cues will be read as is tolerable according to the therapist’s attunement to your needs, as well as introducing different protocols that can target specific beliefs, patterns, and ways of being. 

Lifespan Integration offers clients a unique opportunity to integrate a sense of self throughout every stage of their life. It gives clients a more full picture of who they are and the ways they have grown to be their present self. Clients’ perspectives and views of themselves change as they make repeated trips through time. It is common that the theme of the life narrative will shift slightly with each repetition through the timeline, working increasingly towards a new, cohesive life narrative that is meaningful and true to the client’s core self. 

Unlike talk therapy, this approach does not require you to describe every detail around traumatic experiences or to have lengthy discussions about your past. Most of the time, the therapist won’t even know what your memory cues are referring to. Having a panoramic view of your whole life will allow traumatic memories to resurface without taking a deep-dive into them, allowing traumas to be worked with with a light touch. As your therapist guides you through multiple repetitions of your timeline, your body’s innate ability to heal will kick in as it processes and integrates your life experience. Distressing sensations from the past begin to fade and new memories may come forward creating a more cohesive life story. Many clients find that not only do the distressing memories of the past feel less painful, but they also feel a deeper connection to their strengths that have carried them through their journey.

There will be some processing of your experience in session and your reaction to it, but for the most part, we let the repetitions of the timeline do the work; the timeline helps integration occur more effectively than talking about it in the moment. In many ways, this is like physical therapy for your mind and body: continuously engaging in repetitions of your life in order to build new neural connections across time. 

As treatment progresses, additional protocols will be utilized that can target specific traumas,  attachment wounds, and neglect at any point across the lifespan–even events that occurred in the womb or at birth–to aid in deeper healing. These protocols typically involve your present self imaginally revisiting and helping your younger self through the past. This gives your younger self what they needed at that time but didn’t receive, whether that be protection, advocacy, affirmation, love, or support. Past unmet needs can retroactively be met, resolving the unconscious drive to meet those needs in the present. For example, giving a younger version of oneself the attention, love, and acceptance they needed but didn’t receive could resolve current tendencies towards perfectionism or people-pleasing. These protocols are powerful in their ability to heal from the effects of trauma and neglect, and tend to be profoundly meaningful to clients. 

Lifespan Integration therapy also works well with people who have trouble remembering their pasts. Over the course of treatment, clients who began with memory gaps are eventually able to connect the pieces of their lives into a coherent whole.

Why and how does Lifespan Integration work? 

Like many other trauma-informed therapy modalities, Lifespan Integration can sound a bit strange at first. Rest assured, all of the tenets of Lifespan Integration are grounded in the latest clinical and neuroscientific research regarding what the brain and body need to heal.

So why does it work? Lifespan Integration increases connectivity between the neural networks stored all throughout the brain. Neuroscience research has made it clear that three conditions need to be met in order to optimize neural plasticity: focal attention, activation, and repetition. Repetitions of the timeline accomplishes these three conditions. The neural connections that repeatedly fire together while going through the timeline of memories begin to wire together and create new pathways, providing the brain and body more security and maneuverability than before. The more internally connected we are (aka integrated) at this neural level, the stronger our core sense of self and well-being, and the greater our ability to respond in regulated, adaptive ways to present stressors. 

Timeline repetitions also aid in unlocking habitual autonomic nervous system response patterns (such as fight, flight, and freeze responses). These nervous system responses are gently activated in session as emotionally charged memory cues are read. The memories are briefly visited, quickly moved past as additional memories cues are read, and finally, attention is shifted to the present moment where there is safety. Repeating this process over and over in the process of an attuned, caring therapist builds into the nervous system the ability to move more flexibly and appropriately through different nervous system states. Subcortical and nervous system regulation abilities grow, resulting in long term gains in emotion regulation.

Put simply, the repetitions of your timeline will prove on a deep neurological level that no matter how painful, traumatic, or difficult your past is, you have survived. By ending each timeline in the present moment, your body begins to understand at a cellular level that you are living in the here and now and not in your past experiences. 

What kinds of issues is Lifespan Integration good for? 

Underpinning this whole approach is the belief that our current distress is intrinsically connected to our past experiences. Since Lifespan Integration offers clients a deep, meaningful, new way of processing their past, there isn’t a lot that LI doesn’t treat. 

There are a number of different protocols that can specifically treat a wide array of issues. Some protocols are focused on clearing body memory of trauma, and some are focused on building self-structure. Most protocols do some of both. Below is a list of issues, though not exhaustive, that can be addressed using Lifespan Integration therapy:

  • PTSD and CPTSD
  • Negative self talk
  • Childhood abuse, neglect, or other losses such as divorce or death of a parent
  • Recovering from a violent relationship or divorce
  • Nervous system & emotion regulation
  • Codependency
  • Anxiety and Depression
  • Compulsive or addictive behavior
  • Insecure attachment styles
  • Inner child healing
  • Grief and loss
  • Birth and adoption trauma
  • Religious or faith transitions
  • Creating a more solid sense of self, inner knowing, inner trust, and self-compassion

What can I expect after participating in Lifespan Integration?

For 1-2 days after a Lifespan Integration therapy session, the body and mind are continuing to integrate what occurred in session. During this time, it’s not uncommon for clients to experience a bit of tiredness or feel emotionally drained, especially early on in treatment when a base level of neural connectivity is still being built in the body-mind system. 

As treatment progresses, people who’ve experienced Lifespan Integration therapy report reacting to current stressors with more clarity and equanimity. They act in more age-appropriate, regulated ways, without having to work to apply a coping skill. They feel added confidence in their daily lives and can develop stronger relationships with spouses, partners, and family members. Their lives feel more connected and whole, with an accompanying increased sense of self and acceptance. 

For people who have PTSD, any symptoms–including nightmares, intrusions, and flashbacks related to this traumatic event–will cease after 1-2 sessions of the PTSD protocol. The results are stable and quality of life will continue to improve over time.

The length of treatment depends on each person’s unique physiology and history. For example, individuals whose early needs were not met or whose early environments were chaotic, inconsistent, or hostile will need more sessions of Lifespan Integration therapy than will someone who had a secure attachment and functioned well prior to a recent traumatic incident. 

Overall, Lifespan Integration works to significantly decrease anxiety and depressive symptoms, improve self-regulation, heal the mind and body from the root cause of current symptoms, establish a core sense of self-love and compassion, and repair attachment wounds. The effects noticed in day-to-day life are deep and far-reaching.

Though the past can’t be changed, it can be integrated and healed so that it no longer negatively impacts your present. No matter what you’re facing, deep, lasting healing, wholeness, and inner security are made possible with Lifespan Integration.