Instinctual Trauma Response®
ITR® is based on brain science and “works the way the brain works”!
Intensive trauma therapy started with us. Dr. Louis Tinnin (psychiatrist) and Dr. Linda Gantt (art therapist) husband-wife team developed Instinctual Trauma Response® over 50 years in clinics and hospitals. and used it as an intensive trauma therapy model. It’s a more gentle way of processing trauma and is fast and effective. It is quickly becoming the preferred way of treating trauma. Instead of diagnosing first, we say: Resolve the trauma and see what’s left!
We offer more than hope. We offer trauma resolution and healing.

Trauma Can Be Healed
We EMPOWER people to fully recover with self-help tools for life.
“Resolve the trauma first and see what’s left.”
Instinctual Trauma Response® is a simple, non-invasive, fast, and effective trauma recovery approach.
Instinctual Trauma Response® (ITR)
- Structured trauma recovery approach for the whole brain
- Informed by art therapy, parts therapy, & brain science
- “Finishes” trauma stories that are fragmented memories & without words
- Does not require reliving experiences
- Resolves any type of trauma, even preverbal
- Can be used alone (self-help) or with a facilitator
- Can be used for individual or group work
- Effective with children (3+ & up), adolescents, and adults
- Greatly reduces or completely eliminates trauma symptoms
“The biggest threat to our planet is the belief that somebody else is going to solve our problems.” We offer self-help with help.
Do a free consultation and prescreen to see if ITR is right for you. Find out more.
“Trauma is the biggest mental health problem of the 21st century and it is the most treatable.”
Dr. Louis Tinnin, (Psychiatrist and Co-Founder of ITR®)
Are you ready to “Resolve the trauma first and see what’s left”? The ITR® Intensive Trauma Recovery program is the answer.
People suffer in silence, believing that they are “crazy” since nothing they have tried worked for them. But the truth is, you are not crazy! The troubling consequences of life’s traumas are real and can look like anxiety, hyperactivity, fears, self-mutilation, obesity, nightmares, flashbacks, and depression.
The effects of trauma are often misunderstood in the mental health field. ITR sees the possible consequences of trauma as being “stuck” in an ITR component such as startle, fight/flight, freeze, or self-repair. Living with this toxic stress can be devastating. Many people feel hopeless. Options for help can be confusing, slow, re-traumatizing, and yield little to no results.
Instinctual Trauma Response® (ITR) offers a unique virtual or in-person intensive program (2-4 hours a day) focused on the roots of problems rather than symptoms. We guide people through simple and effective tasks to get “unstuck” quickly, put an end to traumatic events without reliving them, and calm the internal chaos. We empower people to do their own work now and in the future. A therapist or coach can help.
If you are frustrated by years of work that didn’t help or coping techniques that don’t last, we can educate and empower you with a way to live and thrive in the future, free from the shackles of the past. You can do it!
We offer more than hope. We offer trauma resolution and healing.
For those of you who experienced infant surgery without anesthesia, we can help you. Check out this important documentary. https://cutdownfilm.com/
Testimonials
“My wife went thru a therapy program using this Instinctual Trauma Response program and had excellent results. It eliminated all her flashbacks, her panic attacks and so on. It did what was being explained to her. Be careful about being critical until you understand more. This therapy will eventually be the standard for treating PTSD.”
“I am more free to be myself, to be real with everything my life has held, and to allow myself to experience a full range of emotions regarding my life. ITR helped me put together various puzzle pieces I’d been looking at in counseling and couldn’t make sense of. Probably the biggest change is that I know it is a very good thing that I am alive and life is beautiful. There is a big change in my perspective.”
“I feel so much freer and happier now and have been able to use tools I learned (grounding, external dialoging) to get through rough times. I am back on my “feet”, stronger than ever, enjoying a new line of work for now, many friends, life in general and perhaps most important: a much better sense of myself–all parts of myself that I now understand, accept guide and love.”
“Whether acute or sustained, the effects of trauma on the brain can lead not only to anguish for the client, but also to frustration for the clinician. These painful conditions, so often resistant to even the most sophisticated therapies, are now, thanks to the dedication of Drs. Tinnin and Gantt, able to be approached with a new and remarkably successful methodology. This is a model for responsible and effective care.”
“The therapeutic implications of this concept are profound, and are addressed in detail, providing theory and application of techniques that embrace both cognitive and non-verbal somatic/behavioral elements.”