What is Attachment Based Intensive Short Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (AB-ISTDP)?

ISTDP Overview

Intensive Short Term Dynamic psychotherapy (ISTDP) is an accelerated form of psychodynamic therapy with a focus on anxiety regulation and identification of unconscious processes that otherwise prevent the full experience of healthy feelings in the body.

Attachment based ISTDP is mindful of internal mental processes that develop in response to external threat. As children we are motivated to seek love and acceptance, to preserve the attachment to our parental figures. Children are driven by innate needs to survive the family dynamic they were born into and are completely dependent upon caregivers. If our parents did not respond to our needs with love, care and affection, or were a source of threat, terror or hurt, or if something traumatic happened, we may develop intense conflicting feelings towards our caregivers that can become unacceptable or distressing to feel, to show, or to be seen. It is normal to develop inner defence mechanisms to repress unacceptable feelings and impulses in these contexts.

As adults if these conflicts remain unresolved without repair, we can become attached to the use of defence mechanisms that developed in childhood to repress vulnerability, unacceptable feelings and internal conflicts in all our relationships. This becomes a familiar way of being and relating to ourselves and to others in the world. However, these ways of being can unknowingly become the source of our problems, perpetuating unconscious suffering, and be a way that we unconsciously act out our past difficulties in the present.

Attachment based ISTDP combines an emotion focussed approach to psychotherapy, with close attention paid to unconscious patterns of relating to ourselves, to others and to the world that have developed from a very early age. It can be intense as careful attention is paid towards feelings that have been repressed or avoided over time. This can stimulate strong feelings in the present with rising conflict to repress or avoid said feelings. The approach encourages clients to face internal conflict, to feel rather than avoid emotions, and to direct positive attention towards themselves, helping them to regulate anxiety. ISTDP uses a graded format working within in a safe ‘window of tolerance’ when working with fragility and trauma survivors. This enables clients to safely build capacity to psychological distress, face feelings, and feel better.

ISTDP is proven to be effective across a wide range of problems and difficulties. I have trained in many approaches to psychotherapy, and whilst I draw on others, I have found Intensive Short Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) to be the most efficient and effective in helping clients to understand and resolve their difficulties fast.

 

How can ISTDP help me?

  • ISTDP is designed to restore health and physical well-being and has proven to be effective for a range of difficulties including treatment resistant depression and anxiety based disorders

  • ISTDP is an emotion focussed approach that can identify conflicts of emotion within you that create interpersonal conflicts outside of you

  • ISTDP works well as a trauma focussed approach for people who may have suffered emotional, physical, or sexual abuse

  • ISTDP can be useful in addressing unexplained physical symptoms or conditions that have been unresponsive or resistant to previous interventions

  • Mind and body are connected. ISTDP includes a focus on physical symptoms in the body generated by repressed emotions relating to past traumatic events. This is the notion of ‘embodied trauma’

  • The version of ISTDP that I practice is attachment-based. This can be particularly useful in addressing painful experiences and unresolved emotional wounds in childhood that continue to haunt you in adulthood

  • ISTDP addresses relational conflict and mistrust in adult relationships as underpinned by repeated experiences of attachment and relational trauma

  • Attachment trauma occurs as a result of disrupted or repeatedly broken bonds occurring between infant, parent(s) or caregivers that occurred in childhood or adolescence

  • Attachment trauma can also stem from parental loss, separation, parental divorce, parental illness, adoption, parent-sibling conflict and maternal or paternal abandonment

  • ISTDP helps clients to know and face unacceptable emotions in adulthood, helping clients to trust and connect to their feelings so that they can feel better, without being pained by crippling anxiety

  • ISTDP can be a great option if you want to get to the root of the problem fast. If you are unsure about what the true nature of your problems or difficulties might be, then this approach can really help to clarify this