Somatic Experiencing
Trauma makes it so critical parts of your nervous system continues to believe you’re in danger, even when you are in situations that are very safe. When a trauma-induced sense of safety is lacking, this can manifest in many ways:
Disproportionate amounts of stress and overwhelm over “little” things
Difficulty relaxing, sleeping, or feeling at ease
Discomfort expressing your needs to others, saying no, or setting boundaries
Bursts of panic or rage that seem to come out of nowhere
Feeling numb or disconnected, like you’re in a haze while life passes you by
People pleasing and regularly prioritizing other people’s happiness/comfort at the expense of your own
Somatic Experiencing is a framework that uses sensory awareness to help your brain more accurately assess the true safety of the present moment. When safety is perceived in the deepest, non-verbal parts of the brain, there is a natural transition toward more ease, connectedness, and empowered ability to take action in your life.
How does it work?
During SE, you are invited to notice and track the shifting sensations in the body. Through strengthening your ability to connect with your inner sensory experience, we work together to help you build your capacity to tolerate the discomfort of stress without becoming overwhelmed. This includes tolerating the discomfort of small stressors (IE: non life-threatening), and the discomfort may come from taking action to set appropriate boundaries and make healthy changes in your life. As you build the capacity to tolerate these different kinds of discomforts without becoming overwhelmed or “triggered,” resilience grows.
In the SE framework, we support your system in accessing a greater sense safety through connection to your body. Helping you experience a felt-sense of safety always comes first. From there, we can deliberately work with small, “titrated,” amounts of nervous system arousal/activation (ie: stress). We work with small amounts of activation at a time, so it easily be discharged/digested. As the activation is discharged, the nervous system returns to a state of deeper ease, safety, and connection.
The activation that we work with in an SE might present itself organically in the present moment; or we might invite some activation in by talking about a recent stressor. As your nervous system gets practice at pendulating (IE: moving back and forth) from small amounts of activation back to a resilient baseline, it can make these transitions on its own with greater ease. You can think of this as a nervous system “workout.”
As you build your capacity to experience activation/stress, we can then work with the activation of traumatic memories. As this activation is organically discharged through the body through crying, shaking, shivering, heat, or other movements, a more expansive baseline of safety and ease often emerges. Along with it often comes a reduction or elimination of post-traumatic stress symptoms.
Since we aim to work in a titrated way, you won’t be asked to dive into the heart of your trauma story at your first session. In fact, because this is a somatic approach, it is not a problem if you don’t remember many of the details of your trauma story! We can still repair the impact of the trauma on the nervous system by working with the body.
How was SE developed?
Somatic Experiencing® is a trauma healing modality that uses awareness of the body to support the regulation of the nervous system and resolve patterns of post-traumatic stress. It is based on a multidisciplinary intersection of physiology, psychology, ethology, biology, neuroscience, indigenous healing practices, and medical biophysics and has been clinically applied for more than four decades. SE was developed by Dr. Peter Levine, author of In an Unspoken Voice and Waking the Tiger.
Levine observed that mammals in the wild typically don’t become traumatized in the same way that humans do, even though they are regularly subjected to life-threatening survival situations. In the aftermath of high stakes survival situations, wild mammals instinctually engage in movements that discharge the high intensity charge of survival energy, resetting the nervous system back into a state of regulation. When we are unable to complete the stress-response cycle through movements that help discharge the activation of survival energy, we continue to experience post-traumatic stress.
The SE approach facilitates the completion of self-protective motor responses and the release of thwarted survival energy bound in the body, thus addressing the root cause of many trauma symptoms.
Who can benefit from Somatic Experiencing?
SE can be useful for healing from any form of trauma including falls, car accidents, sexual abuse, medical trauma, surgical trauma, social trauma, near drowning, pre/peri/post natal trauma, physical/emotional/verbal abuse, anesthesia, and developmental/childhood trauma.
For some people, SE can be an effective standalone treatment. For others, it can beneficial to also include other healing professionals on your team of support. I am open to collaborating with those on your support team if you’d like.
How is SE different from other kinds of therapy?
It’s a body-based approach, rather than cognitive/talked-based, and it is designed to support non-verbal parts of the brain that are impacted by trauma
There is no pressure to share all the details of your story
Through awareness of body sensation, SE helps people "renegotiate" and heal trauma rather than re-live or re-enact trauma
Being guided toward the the bodily felt-sense allows the highly aroused survival energies to be safely experienced and gradually discharged
SE titrates the experience (we aim to work with small, doable doses of sensation), rather than evoking catharsis, which can overwhelm our ability to self-regulate
The somatic approach eliminate pitfalls of re-traumatization and questions about memory