Lifespan Integration is a gentle method that helps you feel like yourself, maybe for the first time. Like many of the somatic trauma therapies, it helps traumatic events to feel more neutral and to take up a lot less space in your brain or day to day life. But it goes far beyond that. Lifespan Integration is one of very few therapies that can also clear prenatal trauma, generational trauma, neglect, and build secure attachment, all at the neurological level.
Throughout our lives, whenever we are overwhelmed by something, our brains say, “Hey, no problem. I’ll just disconnect this little group of neurons so that you can go on with your life and kinda forget about this.” Our brains are designed to do that. It’s not a problem, exactly. Over time, it does slow us down, especially for those of us who have had more than our fair share of overwhelm in life.
When this disconnection happens, it also disconnects that bit of overwhelm from a sense of time. This is how Lifespan Integration gets things going again. We use a simple timeline of your life to help these little pockets of neurons connect so that they can understand that it’s over now. You made it through! It’s really quite profound. Many of these little fragments that contain the overwhelm actually don’t know that you’re an adult now and you’re made it through. That news is usually very welcome and relieving!
A typical session begins with a short chat about what the client has been noticing in their life. Was there a big emotion or big reaction to something since the last session? What progress has been made towards the goal? After chatting, we usually turn to timelines. Most people love to chat and understand themselves better, but it’s the timelines that really help life to change. The timelines that we use for Lifespan Integration are simple. This is not an exhaustive retelling of your life story. A timeline might sound like, “You took your first steps. You started kindergarten. Went to Disneyland. Started working at Starbucks. Graduated SFU. Moved to Vancouver. Took a walk this morning. And now you and I are here together. You’re 25.” We’ll run through the timeline several times in a session. Neurons that fire together, wire together.
With Lifespan Integration, we aren’t looking for a big emotional connection in session. It’s usually not necessary. We aren’t trying to go back into the past and just sit there and feel bad about it. Not at all. We just want to give the events in the past a little tap on the shoulder and say, “Hey there. I’m in the present now. Come on over here.” The focus is much more on building the connection to the present. We definitely don’t want to go back and relive the past. This is one of the key features that keeps LI more gentle than many other methods of trauma therapy.
After several sessions of Lifespan Integration, clients begin to say that they feel like they are their actual age and that it’s easier to act their age. They begin to naturally have boundaries in their lives, sometimes without even talking about boundaries in session or even planning it out. It’s just easier to say yes or no. They become more clear about what is their own stuff and what stuff belongs to someone else (“Oh! It wasn’t my fault!). Clients find that they start to really know what they want in their lives. Healthier people start to seek them out for relationships. They stop thinking and talking about the past so much and get excited about the present and the future. Emotions tend to stay at a much more manageable size. Sometimes clients tell me that they hardly reacted to something that used to bother them a ton! People start to really like their own lives.
Clients often ask two main questions. “What if I don’t have very many memories?” That’s really not a problem. Again, this isn’t an extensive story of your life. Often, during the course of the work, more memories will come to mind. The other common question is, “What if nothing bad really happened to me?” My answer is that Lifespan Integration will be perfect for you. In trauma therapy we’re often talking about big T traumas and little t traumas. Other words for that would be abuse/traumatic event (big T) and neglect (little t). Neglect can be tricky to treat and also tricky to recognize because there’s nothing to see. Nothing happened. There’s nothing to talk about. Neglect can look like a parent who intended to do a very good job, but was just busy, or anxious, or out to lunch and couldn’t give the connection that was needed. In this case, neurological structures for secure attachment didn’t get built. Lifespan Integration is excellent at building up these neurological structures so that clients can have earned secure attachment. In neglect, children also tend to make some erroneous decisions about themselves and relationships that tend to get in their way once they are adults. LI is an excellent tool for helping the brain reconsider those beliefs that were formed in the past.
You might also wonder why not just do talk therapy? Simply talking about ourselves reaches the outside wrinkly part of the brain: the cerebral cortex. This is the area where we make conscious decisions, plans, and so on. Our early learning is much deeper in the brain. When the going gets tough, the brain prioritizes the deeper structures in the brain and the cerebral cortex (that talking part) loses out. In order to help that early learning to get up to speed on what a marvelous person you are now, we have to reach that part of the brain with more than a conversation. The timeline helps us reach parts of the brain that talk therapy can’t access.
If you’d like to read more about LI, there is the Canadian Centre for Lifespan Integration as well as the US Lifespan Integration website where you can find links to research and more.
At Pacific Waters Counselling, Lifespan Integration is practiced by Michelle Waters, RCC, CCC. She has been using LI for over 5 years. Michelle is certified in Lifespan Integration, which means that she has received extensive LI therapy, completed all training, and receives ongoing supervision in LI.