Ygrec, my T uses ego state therapy for a variety of purposes, and it can help with trauma suffered early in life. I haven't done much work on the earliest part of my life, but my therapist and I did do one visualization combined with EMDR on a time when I was an infant. While I was hooked up to the EMDR buzzer thingies, he had me close my eyes and played a lullaby for me on his ipod, to help me go back in time, and then he painted a picture for me of when I was an infant--me lying in a crib, crying. He asked me what I was feeling, and it was actually quite upsetting to me. I remember I let out a sob (my T seemed to like that). He had the adult me go into the scene and pick up the infant and comfort her. That was the only time we did infant work. Other times we worked with my child ego states, a particular a couple of prominent ego states of about 4 and 6 years old (my T thinks this is a more significant period for me than infancy). During the visualizations, he had me say what my younger ego state was feeling or saying and why, why she was scared or hurting. Sometimes I would talk to her and report back what she said and other times I didn't report back. He had me draw a circle around her to help contain all the painful feelings. I would go into the circle, as an adult, and take her hand or pick her up (or whatever I chose) and try to comfort her. He would try to get me to take her outside of the circle (which I found easy and it felt wonderful), and the painful feelings would be left behind inside and couldn't come with us. This is a useful technique I can use even outside of therapy if I feel some very young feelings arise. I can find that scared and younger ego state and comfort her. Doesn't always work that way, but it is nice to have something to try.

To "grow me up" from these earlier years and bring me back to adult time, my T would count very slowly from 1 to my age, and as he did so, I would imagine events and images from those years, steadily getting older. Then I would be my current age and he would have me open my eyes (if I had closed them--I didn't always close them). This "timeline" technique was very cool. It just seemed like whoooooosh and the years passed by and I was adult again. My T said he doesn't like to leave his clients in the earlier times and then just send them on their way out the door (bye till next week!). He says it is important to help the client return to the present after the younger ego state work is done for the day.

My T has more recently begun using a different technique, called Lifespan Integration, which also helps clients work on earlier parts of their lives. He has not used this with me, although some of its elements are similar to what we did do. My understanding is that it also incorporates ego state work and uses a timeline of sorts.

Did your T use techniques similar to these to try to help you?

I did not find any of the ego state work at any ages to be intellectualizing at all. It is some of the most un-intellectualized work that we did. It was very powerful. (My T is not a Freudian.) To keep the work from becoming intellectualized, one can stick with the feelings from the past and the feelings that are present now. For example, just name or acknowledge a feeling of loneliness (or whatever) instead of trying to talk at length about the reasons it exists for you, all the things that may or may not have caused it, etc. Feel more than talk or think. If you have a tendency to intellectualize, maybe the T can provide help with that (quiet you down and help you return to feeling if you start to get analytical in a way that is not therapeutic for you).

If you are unfamiliar with these techniques, here are a couple of links:

Ego State Therapy
http://www.clinicalsocialwork.com/overview.html
http://www.clinicalsocialwork.com/egostate.html
"Ego-state therapy is the utilization of family and group-therapy techniques for the resolution of conflicts between the different ego states that constitutes a "family of self" within a single individual."

Lifespan Integration
http://www.lifespanintegration.com/whatisli.php
"Lifespan Integration is a new technique which promotes rapid healing in adults who experienced abuse and/or neglect during childhood. This new method relies on the innate ability of the body-mind to heal itself. Lifespan Integration uses a psychological technique called an "affect bridge" to find a memory which is connected to the current problem. The therapist guides the client to imaginally re-visit this past memory, bringing into the past whatever is needed to resolve the memory. After the memory is resolved, the therapist leads the client through time to the present using a Time Line of visual images of scenes from the client's life. This Time Line of memories and images proves to the client's body-mind system that time has passed and that life is different now. This "proof" occurs at a deeper level than is possible with commonly used cognitive behavioral [talk therapy] methods."

Ygrec, I would be interested to hear what techniques you have tried in therapy to do early work (if you want to share).