About This Interview

What makes trauma psychotherapy truly work — even when talk therapy falls short?

In this interview with the ISC Training ahead of the London Attachment and Trauma Congress, Dr. Abi Blakeslee introduces the core ideas behind her presentation: Implicit Psychotherapy: Theory and Clinical Tools to Access the Biology of Recovery. It's a compelling look at what's often the missing link in trauma treatment.

What Dr. Abi Explores

Some clients can't think their way through a traumatic experience. They're stuck in repetitive behaviors, emotional patterns, or physical symptoms that no amount of insight seems to shift. Dr. Abi explains why, and what to do about it.

The key lies in implicit memory: the non-conscious layer of experience that holds early attachment patterns, survival responses, and procedural movements formed long before words existed. Unlike narrative memory, implicit memory can't be accessed through talking alone. But it can be reached through the body.

Through interoception, conscious awareness of bodily sensation, it becomes possible to engage the primal brain directly, work with potentiated survival physiology, and begin to release what's been stuck.

The Biology of Recovery

Dr. Abi draws a meaningful distinction between the biology of trauma and the biology of recovery. Once survival states begin to discharge (through releasing high sympathetic charge or working with frozen, low-energy freeze states), something deeper becomes available: a return to the essential self.

Who were you before the trauma shaped you? What qualities, purpose, and aliveness were there from the beginning? This is where the work ultimately leads.

What Clinicians Can Expect to Learn

• How to access implicit memory through interoception and embodied awareness
• Tools to work with procedural and motor memory around defensive responses
• How to move clients from survival physiology toward regulation and resilience
• Experiential exercises applicable immediately in clinical practice

About the Presenter

Dr. Abi Blakeslee, Ph.D., MFT, SEP, CMT is the founder of Implicit Psychotherapy, Senior Faculty at Somatic Experiencing International, and Legacy Faculty for Dr. Peter Levine's Ergos Institute. Her work integrates implicit memory, psychophysiology, attachment, and somatic practice into a clinically rigorous and deeply human approach to trauma recovery.

ISC Interview with Abi Blakeslee