Healthy Autonomy

Neuroscience, IoPT and the Intention Method

It is becoming widely recognised that emotional trauma is a biopsychosocial phenomenon in humans. Using this construct, it can be seen that emotional trauma is brought about through the life-sustaining need for humans to grow in symbiosis with other human beings. Principally this starts with the mother and so In Utero early trauma can occur through this initial symbiosis. When initial symbiosis is a threat to life, because of either the neurochemicals passed through the placenta to the baby, or through dysfunction in bonding post birth, the biology of the baby human is impacted. The biological response to threat imprints the nervous system, and therefore affects the developing psychology. The splits in the psyche as described in IoPT are then neurologically stored and influence the ‘I’.

The expanding Neuroscientific research and data on trauma provides further validation of IoPT. In this workshop fundamental neuroscientific information will be used to describe Identity oriented Psychotrauma Theory and the Intention Method. The neurological impacts of the Trauma of Identity will be brought to life using case studies and scenarios.

The workshop will include a working session after which participants will be asked to share their newly formed understandings of how neuroscientific knowledge illuminates the IoPT Theory and Intention Method.

Alexandra A. Smith, MNCP, Snr Accred, I am a Person-Centred psychotherapist and I offer IoPT Therapy for individuals, couples and parents in my private practice in Buckinghamshire (UK). I also facilitate IoPT workshops, IoPT Supervision for Therapy and Coaching Professionals and Educational Seminars on Developmental Trauma.
I have an eclectic training including Post Graduate studies in Traumatology and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTDS); Transactional Analysis and Neural Linguistic Programming. I am a Senior Accredited Member of the National Council of Psychotherapists, a member of the British Association for Person Centred Approaches and the UK Psychological Trauma Society. I am licensed with the British Psychological Society and I am D&BS vetted to work with minors. I am the mother of two daughters and a grandmother.

www.alexandraasmith.co.uk 
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Do I have a body or am I my body?

The psyche-body dualism as an expression of a fundamental division. This workshop deals with the question to what extent differentiation between psyche and body does already represent a consequence of identity trauma with the interruption of healthy development of 'I'.

In many fields, for example in traditional medicine, body and psyche are still studied separately. The basic assumption of such a split and the resulting view of our bodies as objects are very much taken for granted in our society. We encounter them in scientific studies, the media and in personal everyday life. They still get little attention and are not scrutinized in detail. The hype surrounding beauty, fitness and health, ultimately also mirrors only the distance from ourselves.

When we look at our bodies as objects on which we are fixated, which we worry about, which we ignore, control, evaluate, manipulate, repair, optimize or perfect, we are mainly using aspects of survival strategies to deal with trauma. These keep us at a distance from painful experiences stored in our implicit body memory. Most of the time we do not think about connecting them to our trauma biography.

How can we find a way out of this primal disconnection from ourselves? Which experience gave rise to this separation? With help from the intention method we can gradually, by feeling and sensing, succeed in regaining a sense of our identity and through this encounter coming closer to a reunion of mind and body.

Download Workshop Documents / Handouts
 

Alice-Schultze Kraft, non-medical practitioner in psychotherapy, runs her own private practice in Kleve. Identity-constellations based on identity oriented psychotrauma theory in group as well as individual sessions, co-founder of the “Centrum für Potentialentfaltung” (Center for Development of Individual Potential) in Kleve.

www.traumatherapie-aufstellung.de 
www.centrum-fuer-potentialentfaltung.de