Life span integration therapy?

[Starfire]

My therapist has suggested trying Life Span Integration therapy.
Has anyone tried it? How did it go?

 

[Ecdysis]

I just googled it. It sounds cool. I'd like to do it

 

[Friday]

It’s a type of exposure therapy similar to EMDR & TF-CBT; using a visual timeline & self-awareness of how your body is reacting to triggers & stressors, to both differentiate between then & now, & “speed up” your ability to ground & center in the present.

It’s nothing new, per se, but a VERY clever adaptation of tier one treatments, specific to visual & kinesthetic learners… which is a significant swath of the population.

 

[OliveJewel]

specific to visual & kinesthetic learners

Educator hat on. The theory of learning styles has been seriously discredited and is widely considered a stubborn myth.

Not sure how that affects your evaluation of this therapeutic model. Appreciated your short description.

 

[Friday]

Not sure how that affects your evaluation of this therapeutic model. Appreciated your short description.

<grin> Not at all! And I do love the correct, by the by. But I also agree with it. So I’m biased.

I’m very solidly on board with teaching to all the senses, and that unless there is serious brain trauma, the single best way to teach? IS to all of them, as memory & understanding are complex and multifaceted. Whilst most people have strong leanings in one way or another? Most people also learn/understand/recall jack when it’s only presented to a single sense. So if you really want to reach most people? Use as many senses as possible, and then? Make them teach someone else.

In slightly more detail?

There is virtually no difference between SE (somatic experiencing) and CBT… EXCEPT… that the language of one is touchy feely, whilst the language of the other is coolly analytical. The end result of which? Is that roughly half the people who try either/both HATE one, and click with the other. Same. Durn. Therapy. Different words used. Radically different reactions. This therapy (lifespan) is pretty much the third leg on that particular tripod; visual, instead of verbal. Yet still bilateral. (Like EMDR uses visual, audial, or physical cues to get the duality in play).

It’s a wicked cool tool, in the right hands.

Also something art therapists have been doing for yonks… minus… what TF-CBT / PE & EMDR therapists have been doing. So it’s an incredibly effective merge of the three, IME.