What is Integrated Trauma Therapy?

I am a psychotherapist based in the UK, who specialises in treating complex trauma. As an Advanced Accredited Schema Therapist, Trainer & Supervisor, I integrate schema therapy with a number of powerful, trauma-informed models including internal family systems, compassion-focused therapy, mindful self-compassion, cognitive behaviour therapy, trauma-focused therapies and somatic therapies such as polyvagal-informed therapy. As a long-term meditator and student of Buddhism, I also draw on the 2,500-year-old richness and depth of Buddhist psychology. And I have combined all of these approaches and wisdom traditions into my unique model: Integrated Trauma Therapy (ITT).

Having studied psychology and psychotherapy for over 30 years, I have always been drawn to integration. That’s not to say that any of these

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models is not a wonderful, healing resource in its own right. They are all excellent, in their different ways, with so much to offer. And many of my colleagues offer powerful, healing journeys for their clients using a pure form of these or other models. It’s just that, as a scientifically minded, critical thinker, I have always found that even if I love 90 per cent of a model, there are some aspects that don’t sit right with me, or seem helpful for my clients.

I have been lucky enough to train with some of the great teachers and clinicians in my field and have also had incredible guidance from numerous supervisors and therapists along the way. They are the giants on whose shoulders I stand. But the most important teachers have always been my clients. They have – very patiently – accompanied me on this journey, as I learned and incorporated new models and ways of working. They taught me what worked and what didn’t. They helped me see that any effective approach should be flexible and tailored to the unique individual sitting across from me in my consulting room. In my humble opinion, one-size-fits-all models of therapy can be unhelpful, or even harmful, if applied too rigidly.

Trauma healing is key

It has become increasingly clear that childhood trauma is at the root of most psychological problems. If you suffer from debilitating worry and anxiety, depression, substance abuse or addiction, an eating disorder, low self-esteem or persistent struggles in your intimate relationships, it’s likely that childhood trauma is to blame. An extensive body of research backs this up, especially the seminal Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) study, which found that trauma, abuse and neglect were far more common in childhood than previously thought. The ACEs study also made the profoundly important link between adverse early experiences and every kind of mental health problem as well as most of the common physical health problems (including diabetes, autoimmune illnesses, heart disease and cancer).

Healing childhood trauma has long been my specialism and is at the heart of my integrated trauma therapy model. How does this work? When clients come to see me, they are usually struggling with anxiety, depression or numerous other kinds of problems. Our early sessions focus on building up a fine-grained picture of the person, what they are struggling with now – why they are feeling so anxious, or dragging themselves through days clouded by depression – as well as a detailed understanding of their childhood and family dynamics. This usually tells us all we need to know about why they are struggling now (unless they experienced something traumatic or highly painful in adulthood). I then spend some time teaching them all about key ideas in child development, such as attachment theory, core emotional needs, the fact that we all have painful schemas and parts of our psyche (more on that below), a little neuroscience on how a child’s brain and nervous system develops – and what goes wrong if, say, they don’t get enough love and care, or experience some kind of abuse.

They also learn all about trauma, both Big T traumas (single-incident traumatic events like a car crash or assault) and little t traumas (ongoing experiences like bullying, harsh parental criticism, bereavement, moving home/school often throughout childhood, or chronic illnesses/repeated surgery). All this ‘psychoeducation’ is a key part of ITT and helps rewrite the story of their life, from a negative, self-critical one to a kind, compassionate understanding of what they needed as kids and what went wrong because they didn’t get it. I explore these issues and many more in my brand-new self help book, on healing childhood trauma, which will be published in May 2026 through Quarto books in the US and worldwide.

Your nervous system needs soothing

When they start therapy, all my clients have a dysregulated nervous system. And that’s not surprising, because most of our nervous systems are dysregulated, most of the time. But if you have experienced complex trauma, this will look more extreme, like being stuck in a high-energy, always-on, ‘hyperaroused’ state of stress, anxiety, anger or agitation. Or a low-energy, exhausted, ‘hypoaroused’ state of deep sadness, dissociation or shutdown, depression or shame. That’s why our early work in ITT is all about regulation, using breathing techniques, self-compassion practices, guided imagery like the Safe Place Imagery, anything to activate the parasympathetic nervous system (which helps us feel calm, safe and peaceful) and reduce activation of the sympathetic (linked to the fight-or-flight response, perceptions of threat and danger).

To help both my clients and as many people as possible, I have created an extensive collection of meditation, somatic, breathwork and imagery practices which you can either find on Insight Timer or through my non-profit online store. This is a fundamental part of integrated trauma therapy, because to heal your trauma you need to calm and soothe your frazzled, dysregulated nervous system. And it’s why I integrate somatic, nervous-system-focused therapies like polyvagal-informed therapy into my approach.

Here are some calming, soothing practices you can try right now:

We are all multiple

One of the big paradigm shifts in the last 30 years has been the understanding that we are not one self, but many. We all have different parts of us, like the Critic, Worrier, Soother, Perfectionist or Striver. Although your configuration of parts is not the same as mine, we all have archetypal parts like these, with some version of them pulling the strings in our mind. And many different models of therapy understand this, including Gestalt, schema therapy, dialectical behaviour therapy and others. The parts model I include in integrated trauma therapy is that of internal family systems, which is a warm, compassionate, non-pathologising approach that my clients all seem to love. If you would like to know more about IFS, you can read all about it here.

Any effective form of therapy – especially trauma therapy – must embrace the idea of ‘multiplicity of self’, be able to map out the different aspects of your mind and work with them. The more trauma you experienced as a child, the more of these inner parts you will have, because in order to cope with the trauma you developed some parts to hold traumatic memories (called ‘exiles’ in IFS) and others to protect them (‘protectors’). In some ways, this is just common sense – if you got bullied in school when you were eight, you would have developed an eight-year-old part holding all the pain of that bullying, then protective parts like a Soother, which helped you eat comfort food and zone out in front of the TV, so you could find relief from your upsetting feelings.

A fundamental part of my ITT model is working with your inner system of parts, using IFS techniques but also helpful ideas and strategies from schema therapy and other trauma-informed therapies, like Janina Fisher’s trauma-informed stabilisation treatment. Slowly, we help your protective parts relax and can befriend and heal those hurt, young parts of you that are holding such painful memories, feelings and beliefs. This is a step-by-step but wonderful process that I have used with hundreds of clients, who report profound changes in themselves and their lives.

It’s never too much

There are many other aspects of integrated trauma therapy, but perhaps the last one to mention here is something I often tell all my clients, students and supervisees. That whatever you have been through, it’s never too much and never too late to heal. I passionately believe this to be true for two main reasons. First, because I specialise in complex trauma, I work with people every day who experienced terrible childhoods. Despite the deep wounds these experiences caused, I have seen these brave, incredible people change, grow and flourish. This never ceases to amaze me and fills me with hope and wonder at the mind, brain and body’s innate capacity to heal, if we just clear away the obstacles to healing.

Second, the concept of neuroplasticity is incredibly hopeful. This tells us that the brain is malleable like plastic, or clay, so is constantly changing its shape, structure and connectivity through experience. This happens every single day of your life, especially when you have novel experiences or learn new things. Because all the painful things in your mind are, ultimately, neural networks in your brain holding certain kinds of information, if we can rewire those networks, creating new neural pathways and synaptic connections, we can change painful schemas, negative core beliefs, wounded parts, chronic worry or rumination.

You are a miraculous, beautiful, unique human being. There is no-one quite like you among the eight billion other humans living on this planet. Every atom in your body was forged in the white-hot heart of a dying star, in the far reaches of the unimaginably vast universe, billions of years ago. Think about that for a moment and let it sink in. This is why you are a walking, breathing miracle. You may have been hurt in childhood, perhaps profoundly, by the people who were supposed to love and keep you safe. If so, I am deeply sorry – you didn’t deserve any of that. But as the eminent psychologist Dr Paul Gilbert says, although none of what happened to you was your fault, it is your responsibility as an adult to do whatever it takes to heal.

Having treated hundreds of clients, taught thousands of students and supervised dozens of mental-health professionals, I truly believe that integrated trauma therapy provides an optimal path to healing. I hope to share that with you, either in one-to-one therapy, through my new self-help book, my courses on Insight Timer, or the many forms of teaching you will find on my website and that I have planned, as I continue to develop my new model for trauma healing. I’m so happy to have you with me on this exciting journey.

Love,

Dan ❤️