Integrated Trauma Therapy (ITT) is a body-focused psychotherapy which works with the state of a persons nervous system and it’s effect on their mood and wellbeing.

A range of complementary and evidence-based therapies are utilised, including Somatic Experiencing (SE) Counselling, Art Therapy, Somatic Experiencing Table Work, Mindfulness and Movement, (frameworks) to help you return to the best you can be.

The effects of any unresolved trauma can inhibit a healthy life. Trauma recovery needs to be a gentle process, requiring integration for the effects to be long lasting.

ITT’s primary approach is to work with you using an SE trauma lens. We work with major or minor shock events, as well as the stress chemistry that has built up in the body over time.

Trauma is such a big word. When we think of trauma, we think of something major that has happened to us. However, we can live with the stress chemistry of traumatic events without knowing it.

Trauma can become apparent to us when we have physical pain and tension, become unwell or have a major life challenge. Gradually the build-up of stress chemistry can cause other systems in the body to fail, resulting in severe illness and dysfunction.

Trauma can result from specific shock events, such as falls, car accidents, medical procedures, natural disasters, assaults and abuse of any kind. It can also be due to ongoing accumulative stress, where one can simply be living feeling chronically overwhelmed, whether from work, family and relationship challenges, chronic pain and fatigue, to severe developmental and attachment trauma from infancy, sexual abuse or mental health diagnosis.

These all have a physical impact on the body and affect our ability to function with sustainable vitality and presence

This therapeutic approach is for anyone who wants to feel less controlled by the confines of their trauma – whether severe or mild, physical, emotional or mental – and wants to use a variety of approaches to help them get there.

Somatic Experiencing (SE – Services and/or SE frameworks) addresses the story of the body. Talk therapies are valuable methods in gaining skills and greater awareness of your situation, past and present. Nevertheless, talking alone often ignores the body’s responses to trauma.

Somatic Experiencing is specifically for working with the bodymind. Using integrated therapies that work with the mind, the unconscious and the mind of the body makes for lasting change and freedom from fear and stress.

ITT benefits you by:

Treating physical pain, symptoms and stress patterns in the body

– Externalising and completing such internal processes

– Empowering transformational change, not just management

– Providing alternative approaches

– Allowing a person-centred and interactive approach

ITT will help you to reduce the charge of a traumatic experience held in your body and views integration as an important component for lasting change, enabling you to return to life with improved function.

We aim to create the right conditions for you to receive the felt sense of a reparative experience. This enables resilience and increases your capacity to meet life without fear.

ITT can work with chronic fatigue, mental health disorders such as depression, anxiety, BPD, PTSD, physical pain, stress and tension, any sense of disconnectedness and disassociation from life, your relationships or with yourself. It can also work with shame states that can result in an inability to create the life you want.

We provide psychotherapeutic education about the Somatic Experiencing model. This allows you to learn transferrable skills and techniques so you can continue to use ITT in your daily life.

ITT therapy can lead to several positive outcomes, including:

– Ease and settled presences in the body

– Access to your authentic self in your body

– Reduced shame about your body’s habits and behaviours

– Increased capacity to meet life challenges

– Alert aliveness

– A greater sense of safety, space and expansion in your body

– A quiet and calm headspace

– Less contraction and charge in the body.

We recommend 3–10 individual sessions of 60–90 minutes for a specific issue or goal.

The number of sessions required and their frequency can be determined in collaboration and consultation with your therapist, where your history and goals for treatment are taken into consideration.

Individual and group therapy sessions are available, depending on your requirements.