Alessia Tomba was born in Milan and has always worked in the area, pursuing a private practice in Monza.

She graduated in 1997 in Clinical and Developmental Psychology, receiving honors, and recognition from the press, and majored with honors in Psychotherapy at the Scuola di Psicoterapia Psicoanalitica dell’età evolutiva (SPP) of Milan in 2003. She started her professional career immediately working with children, mainly in child protection services and parenting. At the same time she continued also to work with adults in her private practice.

In recent years, she has specialized in psychotraumatology, obtaining the European Certification of EMDR Practitioner and completing the first and second level of training in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy with the Sensorymotor Psychotherapy Institute (Colorado-USA) with Psicosoma (Milan).

 

Today she uses a psychotherapeutic approach based significantly on psychodynamics (taking as reference authors such as Klein, Winnicott, Bion, Bowlby, Fonagy, Stern), to which she has added the cognitive (attachment theory and development), and somatic approaches; Sensorimotor Psyochotherapy (Ogden, Minton, R.Kurtz, Siegel, Kabat Zin).

Her constant interest and work with children and adolescents led her recently to develop clinical work and research aimed at identifying more specific tools for the treatment of childhood trauma; for this Dr. Tomba has reviewed and re-evaluated all the knowledge and experience acquired so far in her clinical field work and in trainings.

Modern theories on structural dissociation and post-traumatic functioning to which Dr. Tomba refers (in particular the theory of structural dissociation of O. Van Der Hart, K. Steele and ERS Nijenhuis and conceptualization on trauma treatment of the EMDR technique – from F.Shapiro D. Mosquera – and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy) are almost always centered on adults, both in clinical descriptions and methods used. As a result, Dr. Tomba has decided to find the best ways to translate, adapt and integrate all this for working with children … no easy task! However, she is facing it with passion and creativity.

From here, for example, the PiTiPies were born; “Puppets for Trauma Psychotherapy’s”, invented and registered (as registered trademark) as a clinical tool for assisting in childhood psychotraumatology.

Also from this premise comes a voluminous work that Dr. Tomba and other colleagues are compiling to define the intervention protocols and take-overs in specific patient groups such as adoptive children.

All along Dr. Tomba has continued her work with adults in a manner that in clinical practice is inspired, in some ways, by a famous phrase spoken by the Little Prince in the book by A. de Saint-Exupéry:

“… All grown-ups were children once. (But few of them remember it) …”

Dr. Tomba is among those who keep this link open and who seek to take advantage of the inner world that belongs to childhood to find more and better ways and tools to work with both children and adults.

Adults can be greatly relieved by reopening the dialogue with their “inner child”. In fact, most of the injuries or traumas that lead people to seek out psychotherapy belong to the latter. Adults often interrupt their communication with this part as an attempt to forget everything painful belonging to their childhood…

This of course does not work

Inside any adult who is suffering, desperate, worried, confused or dysregulated, if you look closely, you can find the features, expressions, posture, movements and sometimes even the little baby voice that is still waiting to be found and heard … It’s a real treasure hunt!

It is not always easy to start. Sometimes we lack the tools, maps, and resources. We feel in danger … and we don’t even know what the treasure is!

This is where psychotherapy begins: from the first encounter with the therapist, to the preparation, to the journey.