Somatic Experiencing®
Please note my practice is now full and my wait list is closed until further notice.
About Somatic Experiencing®, Trauma Healing and You
My work is based on the wonderful news that our body and psyche have an innate impulse to move towards health and connection. This impulse can be trusted, and is alive as long as we are, no matter how deep or old our stress or trauma may be.
Trauma is a reality for many of us and can present differently for each person. Whether it comes in the form of anxiety, sleep issues, migraines or depression, the one commonality is that this trauma is stored in the memory of our body.
So we begin there: by gently working with the wisdom and innate knowledge of our body. By tapping into our inherent resiliency, we find the key to not only symptoms and suffering, but also solutions to what might have felt at one time inexplicable or beyond hope.
Here are some examples of how trauma may look:
- Panic and Anxiety
- Hyper vigilance
- Nightmares
- Difficulty sleeping
- Addictions of all kinds
- Eating disorders
- Migraines
- Gastrointestinal disorders
- Chronic pain
- Trouble paying attention
- Sense of feeling disconnected
- Numbness
- Depression
We can best understand how trauma both manifests and resolves by understanding the biology of the body.
During a traumatic event the body experiences a surge of intense energy that can often stay stuck in the system. It is as though this stuck energy freezes there, taking hold of our vitality and strength and replacing it with often debilitating symptoms.
This freeze response holds the key to understanding trauma. Once aroused, our survival responses of fight or flight need to come to successful completion in order for our nervous systems to come back to a state of rest and balance.
When we are unable to complete these responses, our nervous systems become frozen. This frozen, immobilized state may look calm on the outside, but internally the state can be compared to what happens in a car when we step on the brake and the accelerator at the same time. A huge amount of energy is revving, creating the symptoms of trauma.
The Somatic Experiencing (SE) approach, developed by Dr. Peter Levine, is a gentle therapy for resolving and discharging unresolved survival energies, thereby healing the symptoms of trauma.
The symptoms of trauma are the result of a highly activated, incomplete biological response to threat, frozen in time. By enabling this frozen response to thaw, move ahead in time and then complete, trauma can be healed.
~ Dr. Peter Levine, originator of Somatic Experiencing, author “Waking the Tiger”
Some of the common issues explored in SE are:
- Ways to safely and gradually come out of the "freeze state" so common to trauma survivors
- Building “resources”; i.e., experiences which help us feel joy, optimism, freedom, and love
- Awakening awareness of feelings and sensation
- Skills in “centering”; i.e., getting “out of your head” and “in your body
- Discharging anxiety, grief, stress, and anger in safe and healthy ways
- Learning to be present to yourself and to others, in silence or in conversation
- Internal and external boundaries; how to say “yes” and “no” effectively
- Releasing compulsions and identifying and addressing underlying healthy needs
SE is not “talk therapy,” but we will talk. I will invite you to share with me what is on your mind and what is troubling you. I offer a compassionate ear because I know what it is like to suffer, to not have your life working the way you need it to, to not feel happy. And I respect your courage in wanting to change and asking for help.
In the SE approach to healing and resolving trauma, it is important to gradually bring a sense of reconnection to our bodies through a felt sense of one’s experience.
To quote from the epilogue in Peter Levine’s book “Waking the Tiger”:
“To resolve trauma, we must learn to move fluidly between emotion and rational thought. In learning to identify and contact bodily sensations, we begin to fathom our instinctual reptilian roots. The more primitive portions of our brains are not exclusively survival-oriented. They carry vital information about who we are [and] they tell us that we belong here … [that we are connected] … beyond the material world. In the process of healing trauma we become completely human animals, capable of the totality of our natural abilities.”
I am skilled at creating safety and watching for opportunities to “go a little deeper” into becoming more aware of your feelings and sensations. My teachers and my experience have taught me that this is the most direct path to releasing the past and healing from trauma, childhood neglect, abuse, or PTSD.
A SE session often feels quite magical as you remember that your body and nervous system already know how to do this. It is an entirely natural process!
Sessions are available in person or over Zoom and are $145 per session.
For more information on SE please visit: http://www.traumahealing.com
And I said to my body softly. 'I want to be your friend.' It took a long breath. And replied, 'I have been waiting my whole life for this.'
~ Nayyirah Waheed
