July 14, 2025 • 29 mins
Dr. Linda Gantt is the co-founder of the ITR Training Institute and HelpForTrauma.com. After closing her long-standing Intensive Trauma Recovery clinic, she now dedicates her efforts to expanding the reach of the Instinctual Trauma Response® (ITR) protocol to practitioners worldwide. Grounded in neuroscience, ITR is a structured, integrative approach that combines parts psychology, art, narrative, and somatic therapies.
This method effectively addresses trauma at its core—including prenatal and preverbal experiences—without requiring individuals to relive distressing events. Versatile and accessible, ITR can be implemented with individuals as young as three, in both group and individual settings, through hourly sessions or intensive formats.
Danni Davis, LCSW brings over 30 years of clinical experience working with children, adolescents, adults, first responders, and couples. Certified in EMDR and ITR, as well as a Clinically Certified Sex Offender Treatment Specialist, she specializes in trauma-related disorders.
Danni views ITR as a transformative tool in mental health—capable of rapidly reducing symptoms while promoting long-term healing and resilience
In This Episode
The Trauma Therapist PodcastJoin my email list and receive podcast updates and other news: https://bit.ly/3LuAG2i
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This method effectively addresses trauma at its core—including prenatal and preverbal experiences—without requiring individuals to relive distressing events. Versatile and accessible, ITR can be implemented with individuals as young as three, in both group and individual settings, through hourly sessions or intensive formats.
Danni Davis, LCSW brings over 30 years of clinical experience working with children, adolescents, adults, first responders, and couples. Certified in EMDR and ITR, as well as a Clinically Certified Sex Offender Treatment Specialist, she specializes in trauma-related disorders.
Danni views ITR as a transformative tool in mental health—capable of rapidly reducing symptoms while promoting long-term healing and resilience
In This Episode
- @HelpForTrauma (X)
- https://www.instagram.com/helpfortrauma
- https://www.youtube.com/HelpForTrauma
- www.linkedin.com/in/itr-training-trauma-resolution-35023a158
The Trauma Therapist PodcastJoin my email list and receive podcast updates and other news: https://bit.ly/3LuAG2i
Listen to all Trauma Therapist Podcast episodes here: https://bit.ly/3VRNy8z
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-trauma-therapist--5739761/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Trauma THEAPIS podcast. My name is go Macpherson.
I interview incredible people who've dedicated their lives to helping
those who have been impacted by trauma. Here we go
five four, three, two and one. Our folks, welcome back
to the podcast. Very excited to have my guests today,
Linda Gant and Danny Davis. Linda and Danny, welcome to
(00:23):
the podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Thank you very much, guy, Thank you awesome.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
So. Doctor Linda Gant is a co founder of the
ITR Training Institute and helpfotrauma dot com. After closing her
longstanding intensive Trauma Recovery clinics, she now dedicates her efforts
to expanding the reach of the in Sinctual Trauma Response
Protocol to practitioners worldwide. Grounded in the neuroscience, ITR is
a structured, intricative approach that combines part psychology, art, narrative
(00:54):
and somatic therapies. Danny Davis, LSSW brings over thirty years
of clinical experience. It's working with children, adolessons and adults,
first responders and couples certified at EMDR and ITR, as
well as a clinically certified sex diventary treatment specialist. She
specializes in trauma treatment disorders. All right, awesome, welcome back
(01:17):
to the podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Linda. That's been a while. Yes, so great to have
both of you here.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Before we get going, I want each of you, respectively,
just to share with our audience where you're from originally
and where you are currently.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Danny, why didn't you go first?
Speaker 4 (01:32):
Well, I'm originally from the Morgantown area of West Virginia,
a little county right outside of Morgantown called Preston County,
which is going to be interesting because when you hear
where doctor Linda is living now, we have a lot
in common I am, but I in graduate school. I
(01:53):
went to West Virginia University, and in graduate school I
came to Johns Hopkins Hospital to do an internship in
their inpatience psychiatric unit. They're forensic their sexual disorders and
they're eating disorders unit. And then I stayed in Baltimore.
So I'm now in Baltimore and have been since nineteen
ninety four.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Wow, awesome, And how about you, Linda.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Well, let's see, I started out in Texas, That's where
I was born, and after I had finished my bachelor's degree,
then I moved to Washington, DC, and I found that
there was a course in art therapy at the Washington
School of Psychiatry, and so I got into that course
and thought, oh, this is where I want to be.
(02:34):
And so fortunately the person who gave me my first
job as an art therapist was none other than lieutenant
whom I'm married. And then we moved to Preston County.
So that's connection that Danny has there. Of Lou was
teaching hypnosis through West Virginia University and Danny took some
(02:56):
courses from him. Is that correct, band.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
Well, I actually worked with him. I worked at an
outpage or a community mental health center and a mobile
crisis center, and so I knew doctor Tennan through that
community mental health but I didn't know that he had
this amazing model. I just knew he was a wonderfully
kind man, and everybody thought he was an amazing psychiatrist.
(03:22):
So when I got hooked up with doctor Gant and
I heard that she's living in Preston County and that
she's married to doctor Tennan, I was like, this is crazy,
Like you don't understand. Preston County is a very small,
rural county and so for doctor Gant to be living
there for how many years now? Doctor Gant, and I'm
originally from there.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
So let's talk about the instinctual trauma response or ITR.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
What is it? Linda, why don't you start?
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Well, it is a theory that lou and I put
together after many, many years of hard work seeing people
of all different kinds who had different sorts of disorders,
but it actually had a trauma origin to those to
their symptoms and to their complaints, and so piece by
(04:21):
piece we put the thing together. First of all, we
were looking at the fact that you could tell stories
and narrate them and have ale us. In Hollywood, they'd
call it the storyboard. So we have people make their
own storyboards using what we think are the essential universal
(04:43):
components of the instantial response. So we titled it that
for people to understand that this is something that you're
going to see across cultures, across ages, you know, through
year old kids to ninety nine year old people. And
(05:05):
so when we said instinctual, we say that this is
what people need to realize they're not crazy when they're
having these symptoms that they're complaining about, like depression and anxiety,
and panic attects and hearing voices and so forth. When
people are saying these are the things that I experience,
(05:26):
will say yes, because we know that those are symptoms
of trauma. So we put it all together along with
a very interesting part called an externalized dialogue that allows
a person to talk to parts of themselves. So you'll
(05:47):
hear in our work some areas of similarity to other
types of trauma trauma theories, but we think ours comes
together in a kind of unique way. In fact, Danny,
I think you could probably comment on that that this
(06:08):
is something that is we've put together necessary components, but
they don't exactly duplicate what other people are doing.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Okay, But before you respond, Danny, let me just want
to share with our listeners, why are you both here together.
We didn't we didn't solidify that flesh that out.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
That's a theme. Okay, yeah, and I'm the i TR
training director.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Okay, yes, okay, So Danny wanted, why don't you respond
to what Linda asked and kind of flesh out give
us an example of what what i TR looks like.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
So i TR, which stands for the instinctual Trauma response,
Like doctor Linda said, is the instinctual trauma response is
a biologically hardwired response that all of us humans have,
and we go through this process and the process or
those components are the startle, the thwarted flight, fight, the freeze,
the altered state of consciousness, automatic obedience, and self repair.
(07:07):
And what is really unique about that is because it
is a universal response. When we start, just even the
piece of psycho education in this method, people look at
us and go, how did you know what I experienced?
How did you know what I went through? And what
we talk about and what we tell them is that
this is a universal, biologically hardwired response. We expect this
(07:27):
and this response is a normal response to abnormal situations,
right to things that have not been healthy and for us.
And what we do with those i TR components is
we build what's called there are two unique processes techniques
in the it TR method, and one is what's called
the graphic narrative, and that's where the art therapy informed
(07:50):
piece comes and what doctor Linda said is drawing out
those storyboards. But we use the instinctal trauma response, those
components that startle, that thwarted flight, fight, freeze, altered state
of consciousness, automatic obedience and self repair. We use that
as the structure for the drawings, so somebody will draw
themselves in the startle, in the thwarted flight, fight in
(08:13):
the freeze, and so on. But there's a piece to
that graphic narrative work that's really important, and it's called
the representation. And the representation is what we do as
an ITR therapist. We take all of that information that artwork.
We put the nonverbal aspects of what's happened to somebody,
the body sensations. We put all sorts of robust information
(08:35):
in there. And when we have that all of those
pictures in a linear sequence, and we have all of
that information with all of the body sensations, we then
represent that story with a beginning, a middle, and an end.
And what doctor Linda, you'll hear her say so much
if you visit our website and look at the webinars
and all of our trainings, is that the most important
(08:55):
piece to trauma and resolving trauma symptoms is to be
able to end the store. And then there's another piece,
one other technique that's really unique to the it TR method,
and that's called the externalized dialogue, and that's based on
parts psychology where we really empower the person to talk
from true self to the part of them that got hurt, stuck,
(09:17):
or left behind in the trauma experience. And that is
a really unique process as well, that's unlike any other
trauma methods. Right now, and we invite you, we want
you to come to our website and learn more about this.
But those are the really two big techniques that we
find are so great with resolving trauma symptoms and also
(09:40):
the complications of trauma. What we call victim mythology, the
way that somebody has changed as a result of their
experience in the way they believe what they believe about
themselves in the world around them.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
This sounds very interesting to me because it feels to
me like there are a lot of different kind of
modalities coming into play here.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
When you talked about the.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Sinctual response or responses, you name several right, fight.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Flight, So.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Are you suggesting or you're not suggesting that someone necessarily
is going to have all of those responses?
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Actually, we are yes, you are yes, yes, yes?
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Is that so that's so? Whence? Okay, so give us
an example.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
Okay, Well, so I don't have pictures in front of
me if I did, I would hold up pictures and
I do a representation for you. But let's just imagine
for a moment that somebody's going about their day and
all is well, but then something in their environment startles
them or causes their body to react, and they go
into the startle, which is a heightened state of alert.
(10:49):
Their muscles tense, their body braces for action, but within
milliseconds their body goes into that flight fight and that's
when adrenaline rushes through their body. Their breathing may change,
become erratic or increase, their heart rate increases because of
that adrenaline, because of that cortisol, but they are not
able to flee or fight, and that's what we call
(11:10):
the thwarted intent. And that's when their body and their
parasympathetic system kicks into action and puts them into the freeze.
And if that is because of a rush of endorphins,
that brings them down into that parasympathetic nervous system, and
that freeze can cause sort of tunnel vision, It can
cause the heart rate to slow, the breathing to slow,
(11:31):
and then the next piece is they go into an
altered state of consciousness. And sometimes you may have heard
people or many times if you've done trauma work, you
may have heard people say I felt like I floated
outside of my body and was watching what happened, or
I went deep inside my body and I went extremely
numb as things happened to my body. I don't even
know what happened. And so then they go through that
(11:52):
altered state of consciousness, but then they go into a
place of automatic obedience, especially if there's a perpetrator or
something happening to them. And automatic obedience is when your
body goes into an unthinking compliance in order to just survive.
But then when that event maybe is over or the
immediate safety concern is no longer there, our bodies all
(12:14):
instinctually go into a place of self repair where we
try to get back to homeostasis, where we try to
get body sensations and the higher executive functioning parts of
our brain to come back online. And self repair can
look a lot of different ways. It can be crying, eating, sleeping, drugs, sex, gambling,
you name it, rocking back and forth, whatever it might
(12:35):
be based on your age or your stage or what's happening.
So we do we theorize, and we find it across
all populations in all ages. That that being able to
explain to somebody what their body experienced through that startle
the worded flight, fight, freeze, altered state of consciousness, automatic obedience,
(12:55):
and self repair. People universally say to us, how did
you know what I experienced?
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Are you also suggesting that this holds true for all
types of trauma interpersonal verse shock trauma?
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Right, we haven't found any trauma that goes outside this
sort of basic format. Now, sometimes people don't have the words.
Well often, I should say people don't have the words
for what they've experienced. I mean it goes around saying
to people, you know, I had an altered state of
consciousness today? Nobody, So we give them a vocabulary for
(13:40):
what they have experienced, and like Danny says, how did
you know it? Well, we have examples from movies, from novels,
from poetry, from all kinds of places that say, yes,
this is universal.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Now correct me from wrong, But this feels different than
other treatmentalities.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Yeah, on being different, but also on being able to
translate our methods into things that other people have talked
about and so that we can say, hey, we're not
so far off of the mainstream that we can't make
a connection that will help other therapists be able to
(14:31):
see what our method does and how easily it can
be applied. Because as Moving is fond of saying, this
is not rocket science.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
So if you use example of.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Let's saying someone being mugged, they're attacked there, maybe they're
held down, they're not able.
Speaker 5 (14:52):
To flee, But are you saying their body is still
going experiencing that flee in a sense, maybe they can't
even fight.
Speaker 4 (15:03):
Well, that's what we call it the thwarted intent, and
that's where the body must freeze. So if you think
about homeostasis, like where we're in that window of tolerance
and our autonomic nervous system is just kind of balancing
back and forth as we need it. But within the
window of tolerance, when we're talking about the instinctual trauma response,
we're talking about startle sins, it's way up in the
(15:23):
sympathetic nervous system, and flight fight is way up in
that sympathetic nervous system. But what doctor Gant and doctor
Tennen have proposed, and it really does hold true, and
we know this from a lot of neuroscience as well,
is that when you can't flee, and you can't fight.
And remember adrenaline and cortisol have raised your heart rate
and you're breathing so high that the endorphins from that
(15:47):
parasympathetic nervous system needs to kick in, and those endorphins
will then bring you down into that freeze so that
you don't have a heart attack or you don't have
a stroke.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Right.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
But it also does something really amazing from a biological stance,
is that when those endorphins kick in, it prepares the
body for possible injury, right, because this is a primitive response.
So a mugging in today was like the saber tooth
tiger many many thousands of years ago. So when we
go into that freeze, it slows everything down in our
(16:18):
body so that if we are injured, we don't bleed
out as fast. So this is a biological response. So
then that freeze then goes into that altered state of consciousness,
then the automatic obedience, and then finally when kind of
you know, things have subsided and there's you know, maybe
the abuse or the situation has ended, then our body
(16:42):
or what we will do instinctally is try to get
back into our window of tolerance and to get back
to homeostasis. So self repair behaviors look like maybe substance use, crying, sleeping, eating,
I mean, we have we see all kinds of different
We see children who bang their head. One of the
big things, and one of the really fascinating things that
(17:05):
we find is that when we're working with people who
have self injurious behaviors and cutting. When you've ever worked
with anybody who has self injurious behaviors, when you ask them,
were you trying to hurt yourself and they say no,
I was trying to feel something. Again, we'll think about
cutting from a self repair and how that takes a
stigma away, how it also maybe keeps people who don't
(17:25):
need to be hospitalized out of the hospital. But one
thing that I hear from parents and children especially who
have had cutting or self injurious behaviors is when I
explain that the behaviors are from as a self repair behavior,
I literally have parents and children start to cry. It's finally,
after multiple hospitalizations and multiple therapists, you're the first person
(17:46):
who's ever explained it to my parents or to me
in the way that actually makes sense, right.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Right right, Wow, Linda, how.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
Would you say, and I realize this is a big question,
but give me kind of the thumbnail here, and how
would you say that it r differs from other modalities?
And granted, I know there are a lot of other modalities,
but broad picture, big brushstrokes, how would you say it
(18:19):
kind of differentiates itself.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Well, for one thing, it can be applied very quickly. Now,
I know a lot of people will say, listen, Linda,
you just can't rush in there and start doing trauma
therapy without having some preparation for people. We prepare them
and we educate them as to what's going to go on.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
But one of the big differences, a big brush kind
of difference, is that we minimize the talking. It's not
that we don't talk, it's that we had the person
making images. And it doesn't matter if you don't have
to be an artist. We may this so that people
(19:01):
who are your average joke can do the method. And
so I think those are two of the major things
that make the difference between our work and other people's work. Now,
when we hear people when we had at bricks and
(19:22):
Mortar set up there in Morgantown, would get calls from
people who say, you know, I heard about your program
and I wanted to know more about it, and so
as we would be doing the interview in order to
get enough information to see if the person might be
a candidate for our work, then we would say well,
(19:45):
how long have you been in therapy? Are you in
therapy now? And we get stories like yeah, I've been
in therapy with this therapist for five years. I said, well, okay,
so what kinds of traumas did you process? Haven't done
any too hot to handle? And our response is no,
(20:08):
it's not too hot to handle. If you went through it,
we can go through it again with you, but not
relive it.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
That is a very important aspect of our work. We
don't want people to have an ab reaction. We don't
want people to leave our office crime. We want them
to leave feeling oh we're to relieve.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
Yeah, go ahead, Danny, Yeah I've got something to say.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (20:42):
I love what doctor Linda said. I think one of
the things that's really different for us is that we
very quickly put trauma stories in a linear sequence. We
are able to put the body sensations to it, the
words to it, put a beginning, a middle, and then
finally and most importantly, an end to their story very quickly,
(21:04):
and being able to do that really reprograms that story
or reprocesses that story so it finally feels like it's over.
Because that is what you know, is that's why we
have the symptoms. Those are the symptoms of PTSD or
complex PTSD, is that it isn't about remembering, it's that
they're reliving it. And when you're able to put something
(21:25):
in that linear sink cast and we draw those pictures
from a hidden observer perspective, and we speak in the
past tense, So when we're representing a story to somebody,
let's say in their fifties, but it happened when they
were eight years old, it happened to eight year old,
it happened to eight year old Linda, and we do
the story from an eight year old perspective and pictures
(21:45):
are drawn from that hidden observer so that they can
see eight year old Linda in each of those stages
or those components of the instinctual trauma response. And what
really differs us and untrained in a lot of different
the trauma methods is that this is quick, it's fast,
and you see immediate relief after that representation. And what
(22:07):
I can say over and over and over again is
that when we measure how symptomatic somebody is before we
do a graphic narrative work, and they may be at
severe and we use certain assessments to do that, and
then we do after they're done with their dramas and
we do a representation and we reassess them. We see
(22:27):
time in and time out, people going from severe clinical
symptoms of PTSD to subclinical.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
So let me ask you something.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
We don't hear about the body traumas in the body.
If we go with that and believe that, how are you, folks,
how is ichar working with that? When you talk about
(23:01):
creating these linear images and storyboards, as.
Speaker 4 (23:06):
It were, we're putting what's called the non verbal experience
in there, and that's the body experience. So in that startle,
muscles tense, the breathing becomes erratic, any other body sensations
they may have in that thwarted flight fight, adrenaline is
rushing through the body causing the heart rate.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
What do you mean you're putting that in there? You're
writing that in this picture.
Speaker 4 (23:26):
What in the story in your station? But they are
also they can also put that in their drawings through
body sensation pictures labeling the body, and you will see
it draw You know what is amazing. And I'm not
an art therapist, so doctor Linda can really talk astutely
about this, but art is so amazing because the body,
(23:47):
the pieces of bodywork come out in the artwork. It's
really amazing. But we really get that body, the body
sensations in there through the drawings and through what we
call the non verbal labeling the non verbal experience, and
what we mean by that is that's the body experience
because we know that trauma isn't coded through words, right
(24:08):
because of the way that the brain functions. It's coded
and coded in fragmented memory, through implicit memory, through site, sounds, taste, touch, smells.
So we're asking them about that implicit memory and we're
putting that into that story so that when we represent
it it's robust. And the pictures also match that as well.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
And a wonderful thing about it is you can process
preverbal trauma when people didn't have words for their experience,
but they had those experiences in the body. And so
if you look at the symptoms that people talk about,
you'll see that they match very well with what we
(24:50):
say is the instinctual drama response. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Well, let me just remind everyone speaking with doctor Lennigant
and Mary Carlson.
Speaker 4 (25:01):
Danny, I'm sorry Mary's on there, but Danny Davis.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
Yeah, here.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Of the it TR Training Institute. So what are you
offering in terms of teachings, help assistance? Are we taught
it sounds like you're working with clients. Are you also
working with other therapists to teach him about this?
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (25:29):
Yeah, yeah, we train therapists. We also trained first responders.
So what we've done is we've taken our clinical model
and adapted it to a peer support model as well.
Because what we found was that I was treating a
lot of police officers and firefighters using this method, with
the it TR method, and we decided to start inviting
(25:52):
first responders then to our trainings as well. And between
treatment and trainings, we found that our first responders were
going out and actually using the psycho education piece. So
when they were going on you know, calls or after
a critical incident, they were explaining to people the ITR
and doing the psycho education piece. And it was amazing
(26:13):
because it was starting to change the culture in the
first responder world, where I was starting to get a
lot more referrals for treatment like hey, you helped so
and so and he's all better now, like how did
you do that? But then what we decided to do
was we also decided to make this into to really
adapt this into a peer support model. So we're training therapist,
we're training paraprofessionals, and we're training first responders because we
(26:37):
want to have an exponential impact in the trauma world,
not just the one off which is really important work,
super important work, but doctor Gant, doctor Tennan Mary who's
a co owner, and myself, we want to have an
exponential impact on trauma. So training the masses would be
where it's really our dream.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
So art, how do people learn more about what you're doing?
Where can they go?
Speaker 2 (27:04):
The website is helpful trauma dot com and on that
website we have a lot of little short videos that
you can prue your way through. We have well Danny
tell them about the how the course yeah goes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (27:25):
So we have three of our main courses, Accelerated Traumatology
Course one oh one, which is an introductory course which
is going to give you all the basics the psycho
education and all the basics of the ITR and introduction
to our techniques and an introduction of way to the
way we kind of roll this method out and how
flexible it is and it can be used with individuals
(27:46):
and with groups. But then we go into the Accelerated
Traumatology Course one oh two which is for simple traumas,
and Accelerated Traumatology Course one oh three is for complex trauma.
But these are our self paced courses. However, there is
a huge live component because in addition to the self
paced courses, we also offer weekly consultation calls where people
(28:10):
show up and they present their work and they get
clinical consultation. It's not necessarily supervision because we have to
be careful with supervision, but clinical consultation and instruction on
how to really become more proficient in this method. So
there's a lot of those are the basic courses. We
also have other courses as well, and we offer monthly
(28:31):
webinars for free, and doctor Linda just started a three
part series one on working with DD because she's an
expert with did wow.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
All right, Well, we'll have this linked up the show
notes page at the Trauma Theapist podcast dot com once again.
That website is help for Trauma dot Com. Fascinating, really
it is, and it's so inspiring. And as I'm listening
to talk, I'm feeling that again.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
It feels they're.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Kind of a river of different modalities coming together with
the work you're doing. And I love the idea of
putting together this linear process for what oftentimes is chaos,
sheer chaos. Right, Yes, but look, I love to have
(29:30):
you both back. I mean, you're both so friggin inspiring.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
I love it.
Speaker 4 (29:35):
We'll show you pictures next time, yes, please do, Dan,
he was great meeting you, Linda was great seeing you again,
and we'll be in touch.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
To meet you.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
Thank you, guys, all right, all right,
Welcome to the Trauma THEAPIS podcast. My name is go Macpherson.
I interview incredible people who've dedicated their lives to helping
those who have been impacted by trauma. Here we go
five four, three, two and one. Our folks, welcome back
to the podcast. Very excited to have my guests today,
Linda Gant and Danny Davis. Linda and Danny, welcome to
(00:23):
the podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Thank you very much, guy, Thank you awesome.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
So. Doctor Linda Gant is a co founder of the
ITR Training Institute and helpfotrauma dot com. After closing her
longstanding intensive Trauma Recovery clinics, she now dedicates her efforts
to expanding the reach of the in Sinctual Trauma Response
Protocol to practitioners worldwide. Grounded in the neuroscience, ITR is
a structured, intricative approach that combines part psychology, art, narrative
(00:54):
and somatic therapies. Danny Davis, LSSW brings over thirty years
of clinical experience. It's working with children, adolessons and adults,
first responders and couples certified at EMDR and ITR, as
well as a clinically certified sex diventary treatment specialist. She
specializes in trauma treatment disorders. All right, awesome, welcome back
(01:17):
to the podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Linda. That's been a while. Yes, so great to have
both of you here.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Before we get going, I want each of you, respectively,
just to share with our audience where you're from originally
and where you are currently.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Danny, why didn't you go first?
Speaker 4 (01:32):
Well, I'm originally from the Morgantown area of West Virginia,
a little county right outside of Morgantown called Preston County,
which is going to be interesting because when you hear
where doctor Linda is living now, we have a lot
in common I am, but I in graduate school. I
(01:53):
went to West Virginia University, and in graduate school I
came to Johns Hopkins Hospital to do an internship in
their inpatience psychiatric unit. They're forensic their sexual disorders and
they're eating disorders unit. And then I stayed in Baltimore.
So I'm now in Baltimore and have been since nineteen
ninety four.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Wow, awesome, And how about you, Linda.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Well, let's see, I started out in Texas, That's where
I was born, and after I had finished my bachelor's degree,
then I moved to Washington, DC, and I found that
there was a course in art therapy at the Washington
School of Psychiatry, and so I got into that course
and thought, oh, this is where I want to be.
(02:34):
And so fortunately the person who gave me my first
job as an art therapist was none other than lieutenant
whom I'm married. And then we moved to Preston County.
So that's connection that Danny has there. Of Lou was
teaching hypnosis through West Virginia University and Danny took some
(02:56):
courses from him. Is that correct, band.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
Well, I actually worked with him. I worked at an
outpage or a community mental health center and a mobile
crisis center, and so I knew doctor Tennan through that
community mental health but I didn't know that he had
this amazing model. I just knew he was a wonderfully
kind man, and everybody thought he was an amazing psychiatrist.
(03:22):
So when I got hooked up with doctor Gant and
I heard that she's living in Preston County and that
she's married to doctor Tennan, I was like, this is crazy,
Like you don't understand. Preston County is a very small,
rural county and so for doctor Gant to be living
there for how many years now? Doctor Gant, and I'm
originally from there.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
So let's talk about the instinctual trauma response or ITR.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
What is it? Linda, why don't you start?
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Well, it is a theory that lou and I put
together after many, many years of hard work seeing people
of all different kinds who had different sorts of disorders,
but it actually had a trauma origin to those to
their symptoms and to their complaints, and so piece by
(04:21):
piece we put the thing together. First of all, we
were looking at the fact that you could tell stories
and narrate them and have ale us. In Hollywood, they'd
call it the storyboard. So we have people make their
own storyboards using what we think are the essential universal
(04:43):
components of the instantial response. So we titled it that
for people to understand that this is something that you're
going to see across cultures, across ages, you know, through
year old kids to ninety nine year old people. And
(05:05):
so when we said instinctual, we say that this is
what people need to realize they're not crazy when they're
having these symptoms that they're complaining about, like depression and anxiety,
and panic attects and hearing voices and so forth. When
people are saying these are the things that I experience,
(05:26):
will say yes, because we know that those are symptoms
of trauma. So we put it all together along with
a very interesting part called an externalized dialogue that allows
a person to talk to parts of themselves. So you'll
(05:47):
hear in our work some areas of similarity to other
types of trauma trauma theories, but we think ours comes
together in a kind of unique way. In fact, Danny,
I think you could probably comment on that that this
(06:08):
is something that is we've put together necessary components, but
they don't exactly duplicate what other people are doing.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Okay, But before you respond, Danny, let me just want
to share with our listeners, why are you both here together.
We didn't we didn't solidify that flesh that out.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
That's a theme. Okay, yeah, and I'm the i TR
training director.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Okay, yes, okay, So Danny wanted, why don't you respond
to what Linda asked and kind of flesh out give
us an example of what what i TR looks like.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
So i TR, which stands for the instinctual Trauma response,
Like doctor Linda said, is the instinctual trauma response is
a biologically hardwired response that all of us humans have,
and we go through this process and the process or
those components are the startle, the thwarted flight, fight, the freeze,
the altered state of consciousness, automatic obedience, and self repair.
(07:07):
And what is really unique about that is because it
is a universal response. When we start, just even the
piece of psycho education in this method, people look at
us and go, how did you know what I experienced?
How did you know what I went through? And what
we talk about and what we tell them is that
this is a universal, biologically hardwired response. We expect this
(07:27):
and this response is a normal response to abnormal situations,
right to things that have not been healthy and for us.
And what we do with those i TR components is
we build what's called there are two unique processes techniques
in the it TR method, and one is what's called
the graphic narrative, and that's where the art therapy informed
(07:50):
piece comes and what doctor Linda said is drawing out
those storyboards. But we use the instinctal trauma response, those
components that startle, that thwarted flight, fight, freeze, altered state
of consciousness, automatic obedience and self repair. We use that
as the structure for the drawings, so somebody will draw
themselves in the startle, in the thwarted flight, fight in
(08:13):
the freeze, and so on. But there's a piece to
that graphic narrative work that's really important, and it's called
the representation. And the representation is what we do as
an ITR therapist. We take all of that information that artwork.
We put the nonverbal aspects of what's happened to somebody,
the body sensations. We put all sorts of robust information
(08:35):
in there. And when we have that all of those
pictures in a linear sequence, and we have all of
that information with all of the body sensations, we then
represent that story with a beginning, a middle, and an end.
And what doctor Linda, you'll hear her say so much
if you visit our website and look at the webinars
and all of our trainings, is that the most important
(08:55):
piece to trauma and resolving trauma symptoms is to be
able to end the store. And then there's another piece,
one other technique that's really unique to the it TR method,
and that's called the externalized dialogue, and that's based on
parts psychology where we really empower the person to talk
from true self to the part of them that got hurt, stuck,
(09:17):
or left behind in the trauma experience. And that is
a really unique process as well, that's unlike any other
trauma methods. Right now, and we invite you, we want
you to come to our website and learn more about this.
But those are the really two big techniques that we
find are so great with resolving trauma symptoms and also
(09:40):
the complications of trauma. What we call victim mythology, the
way that somebody has changed as a result of their
experience in the way they believe what they believe about
themselves in the world around them.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
This sounds very interesting to me because it feels to
me like there are a lot of different kind of
modalities coming into play here.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
When you talked about the.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Sinctual response or responses, you name several right, fight.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Flight, So.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Are you suggesting or you're not suggesting that someone necessarily
is going to have all of those responses?
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Actually, we are yes, you are yes, yes, yes?
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Is that so that's so? Whence? Okay, so give us
an example.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
Okay, Well, so I don't have pictures in front of
me if I did, I would hold up pictures and
I do a representation for you. But let's just imagine
for a moment that somebody's going about their day and
all is well, but then something in their environment startles
them or causes their body to react, and they go
into the startle, which is a heightened state of alert.
(10:49):
Their muscles tense, their body braces for action, but within
milliseconds their body goes into that flight fight and that's
when adrenaline rushes through their body. Their breathing may change,
become erratic or increase, their heart rate increases because of
that adrenaline, because of that cortisol, but they are not
able to flee or fight, and that's what we call
(11:10):
the thwarted intent. And that's when their body and their
parasympathetic system kicks into action and puts them into the freeze.
And if that is because of a rush of endorphins,
that brings them down into that parasympathetic nervous system, and
that freeze can cause sort of tunnel vision, It can
cause the heart rate to slow, the breathing to slow,
(11:31):
and then the next piece is they go into an
altered state of consciousness. And sometimes you may have heard
people or many times if you've done trauma work, you
may have heard people say I felt like I floated
outside of my body and was watching what happened, or
I went deep inside my body and I went extremely
numb as things happened to my body. I don't even
know what happened. And so then they go through that
(11:52):
altered state of consciousness, but then they go into a
place of automatic obedience, especially if there's a perpetrator or
something happening to them. And automatic obedience is when your
body goes into an unthinking compliance in order to just survive.
But then when that event maybe is over or the
immediate safety concern is no longer there, our bodies all
(12:14):
instinctually go into a place of self repair where we
try to get back to homeostasis, where we try to
get body sensations and the higher executive functioning parts of
our brain to come back online. And self repair can
look a lot of different ways. It can be crying, eating, sleeping, drugs, sex, gambling,
you name it, rocking back and forth, whatever it might
(12:35):
be based on your age or your stage or what's happening.
So we do we theorize, and we find it across
all populations in all ages. That that being able to
explain to somebody what their body experienced through that startle
the worded flight, fight, freeze, altered state of consciousness, automatic obedience,
(12:55):
and self repair. People universally say to us, how did
you know what I experienced?
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Are you also suggesting that this holds true for all
types of trauma interpersonal verse shock trauma?
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Right, we haven't found any trauma that goes outside this
sort of basic format. Now, sometimes people don't have the words.
Well often, I should say people don't have the words
for what they've experienced. I mean it goes around saying
to people, you know, I had an altered state of
consciousness today? Nobody, So we give them a vocabulary for
(13:40):
what they have experienced, and like Danny says, how did
you know it? Well, we have examples from movies, from novels,
from poetry, from all kinds of places that say, yes,
this is universal.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Now correct me from wrong, But this feels different than
other treatmentalities.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Yeah, on being different, but also on being able to
translate our methods into things that other people have talked
about and so that we can say, hey, we're not
so far off of the mainstream that we can't make
a connection that will help other therapists be able to
(14:31):
see what our method does and how easily it can
be applied. Because as Moving is fond of saying, this
is not rocket science.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
So if you use example of.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Let's saying someone being mugged, they're attacked there, maybe they're
held down, they're not able.
Speaker 5 (14:52):
To flee, But are you saying their body is still
going experiencing that flee in a sense, maybe they can't
even fight.
Speaker 4 (15:03):
Well, that's what we call it the thwarted intent, and
that's where the body must freeze. So if you think
about homeostasis, like where we're in that window of tolerance
and our autonomic nervous system is just kind of balancing
back and forth as we need it. But within the
window of tolerance, when we're talking about the instinctual trauma response,
we're talking about startle sins, it's way up in the
(15:23):
sympathetic nervous system, and flight fight is way up in
that sympathetic nervous system. But what doctor Gant and doctor
Tennen have proposed, and it really does hold true, and
we know this from a lot of neuroscience as well,
is that when you can't flee, and you can't fight.
And remember adrenaline and cortisol have raised your heart rate
and you're breathing so high that the endorphins from that
(15:47):
parasympathetic nervous system needs to kick in, and those endorphins
will then bring you down into that freeze so that
you don't have a heart attack or you don't have
a stroke.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Right.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
But it also does something really amazing from a biological stance,
is that when those endorphins kick in, it prepares the
body for possible injury, right, because this is a primitive response.
So a mugging in today was like the saber tooth
tiger many many thousands of years ago. So when we
go into that freeze, it slows everything down in our
(16:18):
body so that if we are injured, we don't bleed
out as fast. So this is a biological response. So
then that freeze then goes into that altered state of consciousness,
then the automatic obedience, and then finally when kind of
you know, things have subsided and there's you know, maybe
the abuse or the situation has ended, then our body
(16:42):
or what we will do instinctally is try to get
back into our window of tolerance and to get back
to homeostasis. So self repair behaviors look like maybe substance use, crying, sleeping, eating,
I mean, we have we see all kinds of different
We see children who bang their head. One of the
big things, and one of the really fascinating things that
(17:05):
we find is that when we're working with people who
have self injurious behaviors and cutting. When you've ever worked
with anybody who has self injurious behaviors, when you ask them,
were you trying to hurt yourself and they say no,
I was trying to feel something. Again, we'll think about
cutting from a self repair and how that takes a
stigma away, how it also maybe keeps people who don't
(17:25):
need to be hospitalized out of the hospital. But one
thing that I hear from parents and children especially who
have had cutting or self injurious behaviors is when I
explain that the behaviors are from as a self repair behavior,
I literally have parents and children start to cry. It's finally,
after multiple hospitalizations and multiple therapists, you're the first person
(17:46):
who's ever explained it to my parents or to me
in the way that actually makes sense, right.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Right right, Wow, Linda, how.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
Would you say, and I realize this is a big question,
but give me kind of the thumbnail here, and how
would you say that it r differs from other modalities?
And granted, I know there are a lot of other modalities,
but broad picture, big brushstrokes, how would you say it
(18:19):
kind of differentiates itself.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Well, for one thing, it can be applied very quickly. Now,
I know a lot of people will say, listen, Linda,
you just can't rush in there and start doing trauma
therapy without having some preparation for people. We prepare them
and we educate them as to what's going to go on.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
But one of the big differences, a big brush kind
of difference, is that we minimize the talking. It's not
that we don't talk, it's that we had the person
making images. And it doesn't matter if you don't have
to be an artist. We may this so that people
(19:01):
who are your average joke can do the method. And
so I think those are two of the major things
that make the difference between our work and other people's work. Now,
when we hear people when we had at bricks and
(19:22):
Mortar set up there in Morgantown, would get calls from
people who say, you know, I heard about your program
and I wanted to know more about it, and so
as we would be doing the interview in order to
get enough information to see if the person might be
a candidate for our work, then we would say well,
(19:45):
how long have you been in therapy? Are you in
therapy now? And we get stories like yeah, I've been
in therapy with this therapist for five years. I said, well, okay,
so what kinds of traumas did you process? Haven't done
any too hot to handle? And our response is no,
(20:08):
it's not too hot to handle. If you went through it,
we can go through it again with you, but not
relive it.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
That is a very important aspect of our work. We
don't want people to have an ab reaction. We don't
want people to leave our office crime. We want them
to leave feeling oh we're to relieve.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
Yeah, go ahead, Danny, Yeah I've got something to say.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (20:42):
I love what doctor Linda said. I think one of
the things that's really different for us is that we
very quickly put trauma stories in a linear sequence. We
are able to put the body sensations to it, the
words to it, put a beginning, a middle, and then
finally and most importantly, an end to their story very quickly,
(21:04):
and being able to do that really reprograms that story
or reprocesses that story so it finally feels like it's over.
Because that is what you know, is that's why we
have the symptoms. Those are the symptoms of PTSD or
complex PTSD, is that it isn't about remembering, it's that
they're reliving it. And when you're able to put something
(21:25):
in that linear sink cast and we draw those pictures
from a hidden observer perspective, and we speak in the
past tense, So when we're representing a story to somebody,
let's say in their fifties, but it happened when they
were eight years old, it happened to eight year old,
it happened to eight year old Linda, and we do
the story from an eight year old perspective and pictures
(21:45):
are drawn from that hidden observer so that they can
see eight year old Linda in each of those stages
or those components of the instinctual trauma response. And what
really differs us and untrained in a lot of different
the trauma methods is that this is quick, it's fast,
and you see immediate relief after that representation. And what
(22:07):
I can say over and over and over again is
that when we measure how symptomatic somebody is before we
do a graphic narrative work, and they may be at
severe and we use certain assessments to do that, and
then we do after they're done with their dramas and
we do a representation and we reassess them. We see
(22:27):
time in and time out, people going from severe clinical
symptoms of PTSD to subclinical.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
So let me ask you something.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
We don't hear about the body traumas in the body.
If we go with that and believe that, how are you, folks,
how is ichar working with that? When you talk about
(23:01):
creating these linear images and storyboards, as.
Speaker 4 (23:06):
It were, we're putting what's called the non verbal experience
in there, and that's the body experience. So in that startle,
muscles tense, the breathing becomes erratic, any other body sensations
they may have in that thwarted flight fight, adrenaline is
rushing through the body causing the heart rate.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
What do you mean you're putting that in there? You're
writing that in this picture.
Speaker 4 (23:26):
What in the story in your station? But they are
also they can also put that in their drawings through
body sensation pictures labeling the body, and you will see
it draw You know what is amazing. And I'm not
an art therapist, so doctor Linda can really talk astutely
about this, but art is so amazing because the body,
(23:47):
the pieces of bodywork come out in the artwork. It's
really amazing. But we really get that body, the body
sensations in there through the drawings and through what we
call the non verbal labeling the non verbal experience, and
what we mean by that is that's the body experience
because we know that trauma isn't coded through words, right
(24:08):
because of the way that the brain functions. It's coded
and coded in fragmented memory, through implicit memory, through site, sounds, taste, touch, smells.
So we're asking them about that implicit memory and we're
putting that into that story so that when we represent
it it's robust. And the pictures also match that as well.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
And a wonderful thing about it is you can process
preverbal trauma when people didn't have words for their experience,
but they had those experiences in the body. And so
if you look at the symptoms that people talk about,
you'll see that they match very well with what we
(24:50):
say is the instinctual drama response. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Well, let me just remind everyone speaking with doctor Lennigant
and Mary Carlson.
Speaker 4 (25:01):
Danny, I'm sorry Mary's on there, but Danny Davis.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
Yeah, here.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Of the it TR Training Institute. So what are you
offering in terms of teachings, help assistance? Are we taught
it sounds like you're working with clients. Are you also
working with other therapists to teach him about this?
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (25:29):
Yeah, yeah, we train therapists. We also trained first responders.
So what we've done is we've taken our clinical model
and adapted it to a peer support model as well.
Because what we found was that I was treating a
lot of police officers and firefighters using this method, with
the it TR method, and we decided to start inviting
(25:52):
first responders then to our trainings as well. And between
treatment and trainings, we found that our first responders were
going out and actually using the psycho education piece. So
when they were going on you know, calls or after
a critical incident, they were explaining to people the ITR
and doing the psycho education piece. And it was amazing
(26:13):
because it was starting to change the culture in the
first responder world, where I was starting to get a
lot more referrals for treatment like hey, you helped so
and so and he's all better now, like how did
you do that? But then what we decided to do
was we also decided to make this into to really
adapt this into a peer support model. So we're training therapist,
we're training paraprofessionals, and we're training first responders because we
(26:37):
want to have an exponential impact in the trauma world,
not just the one off which is really important work,
super important work, but doctor Gant, doctor Tennan Mary who's
a co owner, and myself, we want to have an
exponential impact on trauma. So training the masses would be
where it's really our dream.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
So art, how do people learn more about what you're doing?
Where can they go?
Speaker 2 (27:04):
The website is helpful trauma dot com and on that
website we have a lot of little short videos that
you can prue your way through. We have well Danny
tell them about the how the course yeah goes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (27:25):
So we have three of our main courses, Accelerated Traumatology
Course one oh one, which is an introductory course which
is going to give you all the basics the psycho
education and all the basics of the ITR and introduction
to our techniques and an introduction of way to the
way we kind of roll this method out and how
flexible it is and it can be used with individuals
(27:46):
and with groups. But then we go into the Accelerated
Traumatology Course one oh two which is for simple traumas,
and Accelerated Traumatology Course one oh three is for complex trauma.
But these are our self paced courses. However, there is
a huge live component because in addition to the self
paced courses, we also offer weekly consultation calls where people
(28:10):
show up and they present their work and they get
clinical consultation. It's not necessarily supervision because we have to
be careful with supervision, but clinical consultation and instruction on
how to really become more proficient in this method. So
there's a lot of those are the basic courses. We
also have other courses as well, and we offer monthly
(28:31):
webinars for free, and doctor Linda just started a three
part series one on working with DD because she's an
expert with did wow.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
All right, Well, we'll have this linked up the show
notes page at the Trauma Theapist podcast dot com once again.
That website is help for Trauma dot Com. Fascinating, really
it is, and it's so inspiring. And as I'm listening
to talk, I'm feeling that again.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
It feels they're.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Kind of a river of different modalities coming together with
the work you're doing. And I love the idea of
putting together this linear process for what oftentimes is chaos,
sheer chaos. Right, Yes, but look, I love to have
(29:30):
you both back. I mean, you're both so friggin inspiring.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
I love it.
Speaker 4 (29:35):
We'll show you pictures next time, yes, please do, Dan,
he was great meeting you, Linda was great seeing you again,
and we'll be in touch.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
To meet you.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
Thank you, guys, all right, all right,
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