What is Lifespan Integration?

Lifespan Integration is a new therapeutic technique for treating adults and children with a wide variety of mental health problems.

Peggy Pace (photograph by Steve Williams)

Peggy Pace, an American therapist based outside Seattle, Washington, has been developing and teaching Lifespan Integration since 2002. She originally designed LI to treat adults abused or neglected in childhood.

It has since proved effective with many different client populations and with all age groups presenting with various mental health problems such as post- traumatic stress, attachment anxiety, eating disorders, and dissociative conditions. LI is now practiced successfully in the United States, Canada, the UK and several European countries.

Lifespan Integration in the United Kingdom

Peggy Pace’s first trip to London was in February 2008.

The thirty experienced therapists she trained on that occasion asked her to return to teach the second weekend of training.

There are now 130 mental health practitioners who have trained in LI in the UK, including psychologists, psychiatrists and counsellors and psychotherapist of every background modality.
Workshops are open to qualified and experienced psychotherapists, counsellors, and other professionals in the field of mental health.

.LI-UK training courses are currently organized by LI-UK Ltd.

To make contact, click the ‘Contact’ link above.

Lifespan Integration Training

Lifespan Integration training is carried out in two parts.

Workshop - Part One

This workshop provides therapists with the skills they need to begin using Lifespan Integration protocol with their clients or patients.

During the workshop, participants will have the opportunity to practice using and experiencing LI under supervision.

After completing this workshop, therapists will be able to use LI to help their clients with attachment issues, anxiety disorders, difficulties with affect regulation, with self-esteem and with most other current issues which are related to a history of abuse or neglect in childhood.

This introductory training does not prepare therapists to use LI therapy with fragile clients or with clients who are extremely dysregulated.

The training briefly reviews the current neuroscience of integration and describes how trauma affects the encoding of explicit memory.

The training also provides a brief overview of how modified versions of the LI protocol can be used in the treatment of many psychological disorders which have at their root incomplete neural integration. These disorders include anorexia, anxiety disorders and dissociative disorders.

Therapists are advised to complete both Part One and Part Two levels of LI training before attempting to use Lifespan Integration therapy with these more complex disorders.

Workshop - Part Two

This workshop covers in more depth the science of neural integration, and will explain how variations of the LI protocols can be used to treat many disorders which stem from early ruptures in attachment including Borderline Personality Disorder and Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

DVDs made from videotapes of client sessions are used to demonstrate how LI therapy can be used to treat many different dissociative disorders including: anorexia, attachment disorders, somatic disorders stemming from early (even pre-verbal) trauma, and Dissociative Identity Disorder.