The Taproot Podcast - Therapy Round Table: Lifespan Integration

Episode Date: May 12, 2025

Explore the transformative power of Lifespan Integration therapy in this enlightening episode of the Taproot Therapy Collective podcast. Join host Joel Blackstock, LICSW-S, as he interviews three expert LI practitioners: Marie Danner, Kristan Baer, and Pamela Hayes. These skilled therapists share their personal journeys with LI, explain how it gently rewires neural pathways associated with trauma, and discuss its effectiveness for PTSD, anxiety, and attachment issues. Learn how Lifespan Integration complements other therapeutic approaches like Somatic Experiencing, Brain Spotting, and Internal Family Systems. Discover why LI has become a cornerstone of trauma treatment at Taproot, offering a gentle yet powerful path to healing that keeps clients within their window of tolerance while processing difficult experiences. Whether you're a mental health professional or someone seeking healing, this episode provides valuable insights into how timeline-based therapy can help integrate fragmented aspects of self, create a coherent life narrative, and foster lasting transformation. 🔗 Learn more about our therapists: Joel Blackstock: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/joel-blackstock-bio/ Marie Danner: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/marie-danner/ Kristan Baer: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/our-therapists/ Pamela Hayes: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/our-therapists/ 🔗 Explore Lifespan Integration: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/lifespan-integration-therapy-peggy-pace/ #LifespanIntegration #TraumaHealing #PTSD #TherapyPodcast #AttachmentTrauma #NeuralIntegration #SomaticTherapy #MentalHealthPodcast #TaprootTherapy #BirminghamTherapy #TraumaRecovery #HealingJourney #TherapistConversations

Hey, welcome to the Tap Read Therapy Collective podcast. We're talking about LI today and I'm not trained in lifespan integration therapy, but it's another brain-based medicine that's emerging that I'm interested in. I've seen a lot of patients that have had it. I've talked to a lot of providers that really like it a lot that do similar things to it that I do like brain spotting. And I'm here with three therapists at Taproot that are trained in LI and can talk about it with a lot more surety than me. Marie Danner, Pamela Hayes, and Kristen Baer. So thank you guys for being here today. And let's talk about lifespan integration. How do you use lifespan integration? Like kind of like, what brought you to it? And then maybe we can go over kind of a brief history of it, not too academic.

Yeah, so I was brought to using lifespan integration just through my own healing journey. It was something for me that was really helpful and my own therapist used it with me. So once I went through it and she told me that there was a training coming to Birmingham, then I jumped right in and have been using it with my clients ever since.

I find it to be a really helpful healing modality. I use it with somatic experiencing and it's a body focused modality. So it really complements somatic experiencing and the work that I do with my clients. And so, yeah, that's really just what brought me to it was my own healing through lifespan integration. So I actually was looking to Kristin

to consult about one of my clients because I knew she did the lifespan integration and somatic experiencing. And so I was curious about some of that. And so I went and talked with her about one of my clients who I was thinking might really benefit from it just based on the few things that she had told me about lifespan. And when we got to talking, it turned out that my client for a reason couldn't see her. And I was like, well, maybe I could just get trained in LI and then I could do it with my client. And so then I literally went back to my office and looked up lifespan integration.

And there was a training that weekend, the level one training was literally like four days after that. And so I was like, I'm just going to go for it. So I reached out to the trainer Stephanie and I signed up. I was like, hey, just going to go for it. So I reached out to the trainer Stephanie. And I signed up, I was like, Hey, last minute, can you let me in? And she was like, of course. And that was like the beginning of my journey a year ago, March to March of 24. And now I've done all four trainings and I'm totally bought in.

I love it. You definitely speed ran it. You were like in training every other weekend for a minute. I mean, yeah, I got the four done in a year. So it's good. It's good. It's really good. And then Pamela, what brought you into LI? What did you do first? Because you do a couple of things. You do some somatic stuff in EMDR and what did you kind of get into it? I primarily use internal family systems, but I got into Lifespan also from talking to Kristin. But more than just talking

to her about it, I watched Kristin's transformation. Not intentionally. I wasn't sitting there like, waiting to see how it was. But I did kind of slowly notice Kristin gain more of a sense of self over time. And I didn't even really link it to Eli until she told me more about it. I was like, oh, that makes a lot of sense. I just watched her grow more into herself over time. It was over the span of a year and a half. I was like, okay, I need to know more about what this is and how to do this. And so I went to level one training and you have your own, what are they called? When we do the practice trainings, like while we're there. The practicums?

Yeah, the little practicums where we have partners and we do it for each other in real time. And I mean, it was very powerful. And so I decided to go into level two. And I love it. I really love it. I've noticed a lot within myself and my own LI experience with my therapist. And it's kind of led me to want to continue doing it with my clients. Well, thank you for going through y'all's history with it. I'd like to back up just a second in case people aren't terribly familiar with lifespan integration. So when this is what's interesting, like when Taproot started, like we were, there was one other place that did brain spotting, like somewhere in

Huntsville, but I think she wouldn't even really do it. Like I'd called and tried to ask and she didn't like the modality, but when we opened, we kind of identified all of these brain-based medicines that were emerging. One of them was IFS, one of them was somatic experiencing, one of them was lifespan integration, one of them was brain spotting. And then one of them was QEG brain mapping, polyvagal stimulation. And we also looked at like micronutrition a whole lot because I felt like the commercialization wasn't really there yet, but the research was kind of saying these things were about to kind of be transformative. And those were like the models that we really saw as like kind of the post CBT paradigm that was gonna grow.

And so at that point, there weren't really any brain spotting people around. Now there's a ton. But if you look at things that are growing in therapy, I mean, LI is one of the big ones. I can't talk about it. I've read the book, but then when I talk to people about the book, they're LI trainers.

They're like, no, no, no, don't read the book. The book's actually so old that it's wrong now. And LI is like this whole new thing and you have to do the training to know about it. But Peggy Pace is the founder and she invented in the early 2000s, like 2001 or two. And then it's a collaborative thing. There were tons of people kind of help her

and she's like reflecting on the process and it changes quite a bit. So there's a lot of alchemization where, you know, like you figure out what's working and why it works. And then there's some techniques that are pretty different than what's going on in 2000 now, but it's a very vibrant, active community. I mean, when you meet LI people, they're not like,

oh yeah, I do LI, let me get a bagel at the conference. They're like really excited to talk to you about it. And I think that it's one of the kind of emerging and growing models that does do this kind of brain-based trick to change the way that our brains perceive time and trauma and somatic energy, like all of the other kinds of models that we do at Taproot, like the stuff that I like

even though I don't do it I've seen that with patients like and I've also seen it have a different effect than when you do brain spotting I've seen people who do parts work you know internal family systems or voice dialogue or process oriented therapy or something and then they also try Li and they're like well this is what I got out of this and this is what I got out of that you know I see them kind of collaboratively benefit. You guys are all kind of integrative practitioners. So could you say a little bit, you know, if somebody is a provider being like, why should I get trained in LI or a patient being like, why should I seek out an LI provider? You know, how does this fit into like a bigger paradigm of healing? You know, what does it do that is different than another kind of therapy that I do? Or, you know, how does it fit into like a kind of bigger thing?

You want to just kind of go in order from Marie, Kristen, Pamela, and then go through all those, the ways that you use it. Cause y'all are all different practitioners, you know, doing a model that is not standard, but you know, it's a technique. I'll turn it over to you. I lose video in my office all the time. So yeah, absolutely. I love using lifespan integration for a couple of reasons.

So I was the first brain-based, brain-body-based medicine intervention, if you will, that I was trained in was brain spotting. And so I was really into that and it was really awesome. I had seen some great healing happen as a result of the brain spawning sessions that I did with clients. And as Pamela was saying too, even just in the trainings for brain spawning in the practicums, my own personal experiences were pretty great. And so I was definitely into that and I still am. I still think it's a great tool, but I will say that I have found that lifespan integration seems to be a lot more tolerable for some of a lot of my clients because most of my clients have had severe lifelong complex

trauma issues. They've just really experienced a lot in their lifespan. No pun intended. And so with the brain spotting, you know, it can be very emotionally overwhelming for some people. And so I have found that with my clients that really did not tolerate brain spitting well because I had a number of existing clients who had tried brain spitting and just weren't super comfortable with it.

And then when I got trained in LI, like right at the beginning, I just talked to my existing clients about it and I was like, hey, you want to give this a shot? And they were all pretty much open to it. And so that was when I started to try it with people who had tried brain-spitting before. And it definitely was received a lot better by some of my clients. Some people still prefer brain-spotting. There's just some differences. But with the LI, it's more of a gentle process, I think, is the way I often describe it. Brain-spotting can be a little bit more jarring, a little bit more overwhelming emotionally.

Whereas in life-spending integration, the goal is always to get somebody into their window of tolerance and keep them in the window of tolerance so they're able to tolerate whatever emotional response is coming up. And so, LI is sort of a gentle re-networking of the neural network in the brain without re-traumatizing clients, which I think has been really great. So we get to acknowledge the things that have happened in the past and reprocess them in a way that is similar to the brain and body based treatments like brain spotting and EMDR. But it just seems gentler, a softer path if you will. So that's all I got on that one.

So yeah, lifespan, it really complements a lot of therapy modalities. I feel like you can use it with most clients. And like Marie said, a lot of my clients, they do have complex trauma. And the first stage of LI therapy is about stabilization. So it's really about building a really great foundation for doing some of the deeper work. And it can create, it can help the client to expand their window of tolerance

or have more capacity to be with some of the deeper rooted things that might come up. And with lifespan, I mean, really, you can use it for trauma resolution. You can also use it to strengthen your core self, gain more insight into why you do the things you do, some of the behaviors you may have, the beliefs you may hold, the strategies that you do to uphold those beliefs. And so it's a really insightful therapy and something that I think differentiates it from some other modalities is the importance

of attunement with the clinician. So the clinician is in attuned regulated presence for the client as they explore these different protocols. And our job is really just to hold the client, hold space for the client, give the client the experience of being cared for, held, we attune ourselves to our clients and notice like is our client within their window of tolerance. And then that informs us on how we do the protocols. So we might increase pacing or use a certain number of memory cues.

And something else that's really beautiful about it is it's really based on attachment theory. So it really, you know, it's like with the knowledge that we all have the capacity to heal that because we may have disorganized or avoidant attachment or anxious attachment, it doesn't mean that we have to have that attachment style forever. We can actually move into a place of earned secure attachment and that is the whole goal of lifespan integration therapy.

So it's really just a beautiful modality, especially for those who have had attachment trauma. And whenever I say trauma, I mean, a lot of us may even come into therapy thinking, well, I had a great childhood, you know, like I had clients who are parents who provided good enough care. And trauma isn't always about what you didn't get. It's sometimes about, you know, the good things that didn't happen. So we just use this modality really just to explore, explore the lifespan and the whole basis of it is what's called the baseline timeline. And it walks you

through day one of your life all the way through present day. And it grounds you and the safety of the present time. So that's really the goal of trauma therapy is to create more safety in the presence. And that's what lifespan does. We always end in present time. So that's just my take on it and how I use it with my clients. And like I said before, I am trained in somatic experiencing. I've been through all the trainings and they complement each other so well because

they're just both very, very gentle modalities. Like Maria was saying, you know, it's about not re-traumatizing. So not even having to live back through the trauma. A lot of clients don't want to have to talk about their traumatic experiences. And the beauty of lifespan integration is that they can just tell you a phrase and their brain is going to organize around the phrase that they're telling you. And it creates this reorganization of these neural networks that actually creates a lot more stabilization and peace in the client system. And it's, it's the benefits are they're incredible. I've seen it with my clients. So

and Pamela, can you talk about how that integrates with your work? You may be one of the more parts based people, similar to the, you know, I like the post union stuff. So that's what I'm doing. Can you talk maybe a little bit about how LI plugs into any of those kind of parts based structures? Yeah, it's interesting because it pairs really well with IFS, particularly for clients who don't really want to talk a lot.

And IFS, there's also not a whole lot of talking, but lifespan is just so unique in that way. Like Kristin said, you can just offer a phrase. And it really helps clients who struggle with overwhelm a lot because it helps to resolve little pieces of emotion at a time versus kind of diving into any one particular trauma. So well, and the other great thing about LI is it doesn't jump into somatic stuff, which is obviously where our trauma is, is in the body. And so... So it doesn't treat somatic trauma, but you feel like...

No, but... You say how it doesn't jump into that. Can you maybe parse that a little bit? Yeah. It starts, like Kristin said, with building more of a foundation to where you can then... Later on the third stage, I believe, Kristin might be able to help me with this, is when you start to go more into what the body is actually holding. But first, it addresses things like how you've coped with the trauma, what beliefs you hold about yourself and others in the world.

And once that safety is established, then you can go kind of deeper into where your body is holding all of this stuff. Kristin, can you help? I- Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I think stage two, stage three are typically where we start to get more into the body. For a lot of clients that come in,

they're really in their heads. So that's where they over-intellectualize a lot of clients that come in, they're really in their heads. So that's where they over intellectualize a lot, you know, kind of more dissociative. And that's what makes a lie a really good, a good treatment for them is because, you know, it can be like, okay, look, I know the body hasn't been a safe place for you to be. So let's just start here here building more of a foundation, building up that window of tolerance. We don't have to go into the body just yet. And then as you move toward the stage two of LI work, that's where you start to kind of pay more attention to the body sensations and the felt sense of what's coming up. As they hear there,

these different protocols. So you might notice like, hey, you know, what are you noticing? Do you notice tension? Do you notice that you feel more relaxed when you hear this? And often that comes up organically for clients. So I even had a client last week who had been a little while since they had heard their timeline. And once they heard the repetition of their timeline, they said, you know, that feels like such a relief. It's been a while, you know, I feel just like calmer. And that's often where we end our sessions.

We want to end our sessions where our client feels just a little bit better than they did when they came in. So that's really what we're monitoring as we do these protocols. It's like with each repetition, after the timeline repetition, we take a break and it's, what are you noticing? And sometimes that's, oh, I'm feeling more anxious

or, oh, I'm feeling calmer. So we just kind of, you know, go with that and then mold our treatment to the client. And that's something else I think that differentiates LI from a lot of therapy modalities is it's so customizable to our clients' nervous systems. Like we, when our clients come in for an intake and we are assessing, you know, is this client,

we have different types of clients, like type one, type two, type three, and that's going a little deeper into some of the assessment piece, but we're kind of getting a sense of, okay, where is our client in their window of tolerance? Are they in the window of tolerance most of the time? None of the time? Are they in more of a sympathetic state a lot of the time

or a parasympathetic state? Do we need to help up-regulate their nervous system into the window or down-regmpathetic state? Do we need to help up regulate their nervous system into the window or down regulate the nervous system? Like how can we create more, more ability and capacity to be within that window? So, so yeah, we just mold these protocols to our clients and determine what it is that they need. And like I said, in the first stage, it's not about body, we actually move through this pretty quickly, and we're not trying to get into the body. And so it makes it feel a little safer to some of our clients who are very much in their heads, because the body hasn't been a very safe place to be.

And one of the things that I've seen when I hear people talk about lifespan is that, you know, it's about a coherent life narrative that you're kind of using narrative as this way to get sort of like under a traumatic event. But when a lot of people think of narrative therapy, they're thinking of the narrative, the old school kind of like narrative therapy, where there's a lot of journaling and you've got a big book and you have all the events with your life connected with strings on a board or you do the tree where the fruit is the good stuff. And these are the bad wounds that the tree grew around. And there's all these kind of arts and crafts exercises, whereas LA doesn't quite work like that. It's a little bit more of making you experience your perception of time.

Some of the stuff that I've heard patients tell me about their time in LI with other providers sounded almost like ericsonia hypnosis, like parts of it, where you're kind of like really encountering these earlier parts of self. Could you talk about the use of narrative to kind of transcend time, heal trauma in the practice of LI?

Anyone have any kind of reflections on that Yeah, I can so with the as Kristen was kind of talking about like so we use timelines and Li therapy and so it's not it is a story of your life and it's kind of like it's like watching a movie of your life But we're kind of looking at highlight reels of your life and it's kind of like it's like watching a movie of your life but we're kind of looking at highlight reels so rather than trying to get every detail of your life experiences into one long consecutive story we use what's called a timeline and the timeline is composed of what are called memory cues and so memory cues are one to a few words that remind somebody of a specific

point in time a specific memory if you. And so in building those timelines, the timeline is literally consisting of those cues and not like additional information or more detail about the experiences in the past. And so what happens is, for example, when we were doing the baseline timeline, like Kristen was talking about, so we would pick, we start with developmental cues. we were doing the baseline timeline, like Kristen was talking about. So we would pick, we start with developmental cues.

So initially with the baseline timeline, you're starting with like, you're one day old. So obviously we don't remember when we're one day old, but we believe and know that like the body and the brain have memory of that experience, even though you don't have like an explicit memory of it. So we start with developmental cues for those first days, first few years,

because most people don't have explicit memories until around age two to four, two to three. So then from the first explicit memory or memory that somebody's able to consciously recall and tell themselves or others about, we do at least one cue per year for the entire year or life. And then you can have up to three. So each year of the life has to have at least one queue, up to three experiences that occurred in their life in that year of their life. So, you know, if we've got somebody who's, you know, in their 60s, it is a longer timeline because we've got 60 years of experiences. Whereas naturally speaking, somebody who's younger, their time is going to be a little shorter. naturally speaking, somebody's younger, their comments

can be a little shorter. But really, it's just about including a variety of memories too. So we kind of like to balance the story of the life without with, you know, positive, negative and neutral memories or cues. So we want to include experiences that were very impactful and significant, so that those can start to be reprocessed. But we also want to include just positive experiences in people's life. One of the ways that we can start to build that cohesive self that Kristen was also talking about is identifying the positive things that people have experienced, especially when people who we're working with predominantly have a lot of heavy stuff that

they've been through and that's uncomfortable or brings up uncomfortable feelings or emotions or thoughts. It's really nice to be able to incorporate positive experiences. That's actually one of the things I have on my treatment plans with my clients is if we're working on building an improved sense of self, raising self-esteem is tying in positive experiences, experiences where they were strong and, you know, were able to stand up for themselves or, you know, had good interpersonal interactions, you know, just so we can get more of a balanced story of the life.

So that's, I mean, ultimately, I think it's the differences. Like I said, it's specific points in time, not the entire story with all the details. I will say too, they're both and I also am recipient as a client of LI. And so like, as we're going through those timelines, more memories present. So one of the things that a lot of people will say when I explain lifespan integration is like, oh my gosh, I can't remember like what happened when I was 12. How am I going to come up with a memory cue? Well, we can use certain points in your life experiences that are pretty a little bit more broad. So the ideal cue is going to be like I said, a very specific moment in time that you can

remember, but it can also be here first grade teacher was, or that you lived in the yellow house. Because some people really aren't able to access more detailed memories for various reasons, especially in times that were very traumatic for them, for their little systems to hold. And so that is also something we get to do is like we can use more broad, but the timeline is always, it's a, I would say it's a flexible document. It's a living document. We can change it, update it. We can reword specific cues.

We can take out cues. We can add cues to really capture that full narrative of their life. In a way that is helpful to them. And so that would just be like the thing too, is like that even if they don't remember something from a certain age or certain time in their lives, like usually hearing the timeline and sessions and the repetitions that we do will start to expand some of those conscious memories to bring more to their awareness as well. And, you know, one of the things that a lot of people bring up as part of what LA does is integrate different parts of self, that you have different kind of extreme reactions or different extreme parts of self that don't get along or don't kind of see the value of each other. Christian, could you say anything about the way that you see that integrate or the way

that you see those parts of self sort of become more of a democracy and less of, you know, pieces fighting for the wheel of a car in the van. Um, you know, how do you see that, um, work and therapy? Yeah, well, um, you know, they say about Eli that it's about weaving ego states through time. And often people do see like, oh, as I reflect on my life, it feels like there's different versions of me that I've lived three different times, three different lives, you know, and so people are able to reflect on that and kind of start to bring all of it together. There's a lot of fragmentation that can happen over the course of someone's life and these parts of us that get stuck in these traumatic events or just in different times

in our lives where there was something that happened like a parent's divorce or your own divorce or a car accident or something like that. And so what we're doing is helping to connect all of these pieces together and create that more coherent life narrative. And I tell my clients, it's like, imagine a jigsaw puzzle has just been thrown across the room and there's pieces here and there and we don't really have a coherent sense of self. We don't really know like how did all these pieces connect and bring me to where I am now and so that's what we're doing like piecing things together one at a

time and as you create more coherence within the client system, then these parts start to kind of work more together. So it's about the integration. It's not about the separation of parts. It's more about bringing them all together and creating a more solid core self. And that's, you know, some of that work that we do where we are exploring these beliefs that people hold, you know, I tell people, you don't come into the world with these beliefs, they're imposed on you by some other, right. So we learn like, what are these beliefs that we hold, like, unimportant, or people can't hear me, people don't understand

me. And we start to integrate these beliefs into the timeline and give people just more insight around them. When did they start? How did these things, when did I start believing this about myself? And when are times that it's not necessarily true? And strategies that we use to uphold these as well. Like, you know, I stay small and I stay quiet because others can't hear me. you know, I stay small and I stay quiet because others can't hear me. And so it's really about these different parts of us that show up at different times that are protectors and we get to know these protectors also through our timelines as well. It's something we do in stage one. And these protectors are often about things we're not doing. So maybe not connecting, not moving.

This is something that we start to gain more insight around, around how it's protected us through our life and form alliances with these protectors and these parts of ourselves that, you know, prevent us from being able to feel or prevent us from connecting with others. And then we can also start to get a sense of how we've survived.

And there's parts of us that have enabled that so it's really about forming alliances with the parts of ourselves and then bringing all the parts suspicious of are the ones that treat every person like they're the same or pretend like, well, once the provider has mastered this, then there's going to be this, if this, then that flow chart or formula for therapy. And then they get everybody to this place. The ones that I like a little bit more make a lot of room for the individuality and the subjectivity of the practitioner and the patient because they are more of like a lens to examine an issue or a set of techniques wrapped in kind of a controlling metaphor or something. And there's a lot in lifespan. I'm wondering if you could talk to the flexibility of it.

Just going back to the influences, I don't think Pace was influenced by Jung or any of the post-Yugians other than maybe Schwartz because she doesn't seem to mention them. Just the word ego states in the title of the first book makes me think about transactional analysis and Eric Byrne, so that's probably sort of in the water that she's drinking. I would imagine, never heard her mention that. She does mention Schwartz and internal family systems. She talks about Dan Siegel's interpersonal neurobiology. She talks about attachment theory, which a lot of people use, you know,

Balbi and Ainsworth and and then memory Reconsolidation theory the fact that like these memories are overwhelming and bad until we get a theta wave until we can kind of go Into them with more compassion then they open up now We're in a place where we could modify them which is where therapy is supposed to happen and then when they come back up They're not as bad because it's about getting the trauma not avoiding the trauma Which I think cognitive therapy sometimes does or behavioral therapy can do Um, but going into the trauma in a way that is useful in the therapy room so that when it comes up in life It's not as bad

um, and it seems like li does that with playing with kind of a narratives about time in a way like eric sonian hypnosis and some of the older like i'm thinking of that eric sonian hypnosis prompt about You know go back to your room when you're a child and think of the carpet on the ground and remember, you know think of the doorknob and what the wood smelled like and Open the door and see yourself on the bed as a kid a lot of the techniques that I've heard seem similar to those things Where you're taking you know, this piece of you has to be this thing But at another time this piece of you had to be that thing now mush them together and make them fight and make them kind of figure out what the core self is. You know, that seems to be the experience of patients that I've heard that have also come to me for another kind of therapy.

Anything about just the flexibility of this modality and how it kind of can hook into, you know, anybody's style, anybody's way of thinking. Well, one of the things that as you were talking just now that came up for me or what I was thinking is that although LI is pretty, what's the word, structured, regimented, like there are protocols, there is a direction for how you use the protocols, a progression of using the different protocols. But that being said, it is very much individualized per client as far as like Krista mentioned the attunement piece. So a lot of what we do as LI therapists

is be attuned to what our client system needs in that session that day. As clients seem to progress in LI therapy and get later on to like stage two and stage three work, they can be more collaborative in the process of identifying what is coming up for them, what their system is kind of telling them this week. But initially we do a lot of that sort of a tuning to them and identifying what they might benefit from.

So doing different protocols, like Kristen was talking about, the protectors. And then we also have strategies, like things that we do to cope that we can sort of sense for the client. We kind of know where they are in their processing of their life experiences and what might be beneficial for them to do next. So often before they come in for their session, we're actually looking at what work we've done with them, where we went last, and what might be a good direction to go in that session that day. And then too, even once, you know, we may have a game plan, but once they enter into our office and they give us some feedback about, you know,

what is their system experience since their last session, we might even, you know, pivot and change the game plan a little bit. So it really is about attuning to what it is that they need in that moment. But also I do appreciate that there is a structure to it. There's pretty much a path to how we proceed through the different protocols. And protocols I'm mentioning are just different timelines, different types of timelines. So we've talked about like the baseline timeline, which is like the story of the entire life. And then we have protocols for specific traumas,

like a PTSD timeline or what we call a TLAM or timeline from explicit memory. And so those are both used pretty early on in LI therapy to sort of clear out, if you will, anything that's happened or occurred in the past five years that feels unresolved or still brings up very strong emotions or maybe symptoms of PTSD around reminders or stimuli related to those events. protocol is great because we can walk through, hit the high notes of an entire experience from the beginning to end and then bring them to present time. But also the TLEM, that explicit memory timeline is very helpful because it is even gentler where we just use one cue that connects back to the event at the very end of the event, sort of like where there was an assumed level of safety, like they were able to feel some sense of safety towards the end of event and then just bring them to the present time of cues.

So just to throw in there a couple of protocols that we do. And then there are things that we can do later on in all eye therapy. Once there's more like emotional regulation and distress tolerance, more core self built, where we can actually go back into, you know, specific memories or experiences earlier in life. And so, I think definitely with like, it is largely based around attachment theory, and that's what I love. Ever since I heard about attachment theory, that's just really what I clung to. I really believe it. I think there's no way that we can really go through our lives expecting or believing that what we've been through in the past didn't shape us or impact us.

So I've always wanted to help people work on identifying what are those things and how can we readdress or how can we re-network, re-race the neural network to help no longer experience triggers related to our past experiences, which I think is very much how LI operates. These things that we have experienced across our lifespan are just so impactful and so important that they can't be ignored. They need to be integrated. There are so many pieces. If you think of it, there're just pieces hanging out in different areas and we're sort of bringing them all together to build a cohesive network, like we said, with the whole story

of the life as being able to be held at the same place together. And so I really appreciate that because I always believed, like I said, in attachment theory and I really wanted a way to help people heal from childhood lens. And this is exactly what LI has provided me with the opportunity to do. Yeah. And to expand on that, Marie, I think

something that I really love about LI is that it really does honor the client's autonomy. So the client does have a say. And they can choose how much that they share with us and what they want to work on. And we as the attuned clinicians, you know, we kind of gain a sense and we guide our clients along the way. But as they progress through the stages of LI therapy, and they gain more insight, and

they are able to be more assertive and know what it is that they need, and they are able to be more assertive and know what it is that they need. And they are able to kind of say, hey, yeah, I think that this is what I need today. And then they can become more involved in the process. And, you know, I just think because it's so client centered and adaptable to every single client that we have, it's not just a, you know, one size fits all approach. We can, you know, come in and set and hold space for our clients and kind of get a sense of what it is that they need and until they're able to do that on their own.

So, yeah, I think it's a really beautiful modality and that it can be adapted in any way that it's needed for each client. And you can use certain protocols and not go through all the stages of LI therapy if that's not what's right for the client at the time. You can resolve relationship wounds with relationship protocol.

You can work on PTSD events with the PTSD protocol. You can just work on forming these alliance with the protectors with adding in some baseline pluses and, and just giving the client a general sense of, yeah, this is my life and this is what has happened and it's led me to where I am now. And now I am here and I am safe where I'm at now. And yeah, a lot of negative things have happened, but also a lot of positive things have happened. And overall, I've survived. I'm here. And that's really what I hear a lot from my clients is like, oh, wow. Yeah. We're really, really good at orienting toward the negative. In SC, we call it the trauma vortex. It has a very strong pull. And we often really want to focus on

these negative things because that's what keeps us safe. If we're hyperv strong pull and we often really want to focus on these negative things because that's what keeps us safe, right? Like if we're hypervigilant and we are aware of the negatives, then we can avoid those things or we can protect ourselves from those things. And so what we want to do in building capacity is build more capacity to be with the joy, be with the good things that have happened. And so that does help to integrate both of those things like, yeah, these bad things have happened, but look at how I survived it. Look at how I'm still here. Look at these really intelligent ways that my nervous

system adapted to keep me safe and keep me alive. And you know, maybe now that I'm an adult, I don't need these things that I used to do, these strategies anymore. Maybe I can start to connect to others. Maybe I can, you know, start to feel again. Maybe I can start to feel more in my body because I am in a different place now than I was when I was six years old and I grew up in a really abusive household and not connecting and not feeling really helped keep me safe. And so that's the beauty of LI work is, you know, getting a sense of what are these adaptations that our nervous systems have made to keep

us safe, to protect us. And how can that change to fit our life now? Sorry guys, before we wrap up, I just want to throw out that this really has been really a life-changing modality for myself and for my clients. As I've been in allyotherapy for a while now, I have really experienced a lot of things shift and move for me and reactions that I don't have that I used to have. Things that used to would have really jarred me emotionally or really been heavy for me really aren't. I'm able to sort of acknowledge it and recognize other key people in my life. Whereas in the past, something they said or did might put me on edge and make me really uncomfortable. And today I can honestly say that like, I'm able to recognize those things as having occurred and that those people, you know, their perceptions of the

experience is that it's theirs. It's not mine and I don't have to hold on to it. I don't have to carry that. And it's really just been a beautiful process of getting to learn myself and know myself and identify like who I am and you know what I what I get to do with my life moving forward that the things I have experienced do not have to define me moving forward. And also just wanted to add just one quick story. You know I had a client who had done some LI work and witnessed an accident. And so this person had been traveling to work on the way past this accident scene every day. And we talked about it one session after the accident happened.

And then the week after that, we actually did a PTSD timeline for that accident. And the client had been telling me literally that they were dreading passing that spot on the road for, you know, miles before they got there. And then following the PTOC timeline, they let me know in the next session that they had literally driven past the spot before they realized they passed the spot, I think, which is really telling to the power of this therapy. So that's what I have. Kristin, anything you want to add before we wrap up? Yeah, I mean, I've had many similar client experiences. It's really remarkable having clients come in and say, you know, I was having nightmares. I've had nightmares my entire life. And since we started this therapy, I'm no longer having nightmares. I'm no longer having flashbacks. I even have my own experience where I was in a car accident and had so much anxiety

around driving and was constantly checking my rear view mirror like is someone about to crash into me. And after doing L.I. protocols, like notice like, okay, I'm not feeling that whenever I'm driving anymore. And so having experienced the power of L.I. myself and as Pamela said, just like noticing my transformation over time has really proven to me just how effective this modality is. And it's what has driven me to go through all the trainings, move towards certification. And I really love that L.I LI to move towards certification requires their therapists to

actually go through it themselves. So we are doing the work alongside our clients. We are not perfect human beings. We have our own trauma. It's really what led us to this work. And the healing that we've done around it is what allows us to hold space and really understand what it is that our clients are going through. And so in doing the LI work ourselves, you know, we're also able to be like, yeah, you

know, like, this is tough work, but it's also really beautiful. And it's challenging in a very gentle way. And I'm here and I'm going to hold space for you. And we're going to get through this together. And so yeah, LA, I mean, I believe in the power of it. It's been transformational for me. And I've witnessed, LA, I mean, I believe in the power of it. It's been transformational for me and I've witnessed the transformation in many of my clients and it's just, it's amazing. I will share a personal anecdote real quick before we go. Because I haven't done quite as much work with my clients, but I've had a lot of it with my, you know, with my own therapist. but I've had a lot of it with my, you know, with my own therapist. And there was one protocol in particular that we did because I had a big presentation coming up. It was a webinar

and it ended up being 1200 people that were there. And I have struggled with public speaking my entire life. It's been a really stuck point in my life ever since I can remember. And we did a protocol before the presentation about a coping mechanism that I've had my entire life, which was staying quiet. Staying quiet has kept me safe. And I kind of observed that as my therapist was reading my timeline. And something shifted, the really cool part about LIs,

we can't always detect, we almost can never detect actually when the shift occurs because it is so subtle. But the presentation was the following week, and 1200 people showed up. And I spoke for 30 minutes. And I was fine. And I had never done that in my life ever before. And I got done and I was like, I'm very suspicious. That's when I was still kind of new to ally myself. And I was like, there's no way. And I know that not every story is that magical, but for me, that was, it felt unreal

that a shift that huge could take place and me not even recognize it, right? Like I call it behind the scenes therapy because we can't see it no idea what's happening because it's such a quiet process and it is you know it can be a little bit slower and a little bit more subtle but that was not subtle for me at all that was the opposite of subtle I just had no idea what was happening so that was a big thing for sure Pamela looks great um yeah and we are out of time but just a couple of things I wanted to throw in you That was a big one. Great. Thanks for sharing that, Pamela.

That's great. Yeah, and we are out of time, but just a couple of things I wanted to throw in. You know, if you're thinking about considering a lie, like, you know, kind of informed consent about therapy is like it is a hard process. It can be very challenging. It has brought up a lot of things that I maybe didn't consciously remember or connect with. And it has it has challenged me to face things that are very uncomfortable as does any therapy especially trauma therapy

But I can absolutely say it as it sounds like Kristen and Pamela would also is that it is worth it It is worth the challenge. It is worth some of the pain to get through the other side To really experience some of that freedom and yeah Kristen mentioned nightmares just a couple of things that I noticed people really aspire to get some relief from pretty quickly is nightmares. Increased auto response, feeling tense, keyed up and on edge.

Just so those sort of states that are, our systems are sort of, for a lot of us have sort of existed in survival for a very long time. If not, since we were created in the womb, some of us have really been in that survival state from day one. And so it really does help to start to settle

a lot of those little things that are just brought up because our system is just trying to keep us safe. Because we're able to recognize that present safety, like Kristen said in the beginning, we always end in the present moment. So something that happened yesterday or today, something recent, and then you're right here with me in present time. And that has been a really great tool for a lot of my clients.

I've even had clients who told me outside of session, they can actually kind of hear my voice going, and you're right here with me in the present time. And like, they just recognize that safety. So I really think that, of course, informed consent, like it's hard, but it's worth it. It's 100% worth it. Anything else you want to add before we wrap up? All right. Well, so glad we could do this today, guys. And we appreciate everybody who's listening. And you can check out our other blogs on Tupperware Therapy Collective, and we'll see you again next week. Bye guys.

Hey guys, I wanted to pop in here to give you a quick reminder that we do this podcast for free and there are significant expenses associated with it, including the biggest resource of my life right now, which is time. One of the things that would really help us and hopefully would help you would be to check out one of our sponsors, Hardy Nutritionals. Hardy is a vitamin company that I never encountered the advertising of. We heard over and over again from multiple people with treatment resistant anxiety and dopamine disorders like bipolar disorder and other things that they had tried everything and Hardy was what worked. And so I checked them out and they have really good research. I'm not a fan

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