What is Somatic Experiencing?
Have you ever wondered if trauma can somehow be held within certain areas of our body?
Somatic Experiencing (SE™) aims to resolve symptoms of stress, shock, and trauma that accumulate in our bodies and nervous systems. Trauma, from an SE lens, is focused on how it shows up in the nervous system and how that dysregulation impacts life. When we are stuck in patterns of fight, flight, or freeze, SE helps us release, recover, and become more resilient. It is a body-oriented therapeutic model applied in multiple professions and professional settings—psychotherapy, medicine, coaching, teaching, and physical therapy—for healing trauma and other stress disorders from a nervous system lens within a practitioner’s scope of practice. 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. It is the life’s work of Dr. Peter A. Levine ( Cited Reference, https://traumahealing.org/se-101/)
The Somatic Experiencing 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 trauma symptoms. This is approached by gently guiding clients to develop increasing tolerance for difficult bodily sensations and suppressed emotions and working to complete defensive responses previously thwarted from bringing resolution to the nervous system and, therefore, to the individual.(Cited Reference, https://traumahealing.org/se-101/)
The reliving of trauma that is stored within us is the main goal of the technique called somatic experiencing therapy. You may know the term somatic from back in a high school biology class. It means, of, relating to, or affecting the body. So therefore somatic experiencing is a technique that works with your body in an attempt to relieve your pain. Somatic experiencing therapy is commonly used for PTSD patients or people who have experienced trauma but is not limited to just them. There are many benefits to this kind of therapy as it does help with trauma, but it can also help relieve stress. Somatic experiencing is different from other therapies as it starts with your body instead of your mind. It teaches you to feel safe in your body while going through certain memories and experiences. To start, the therapist will ask you to describe what you are feeling in your body, then move to imagery exercises. When these exercises are happening, they are observing you and analyzing the way you respond and your body language. Then they conclude by asking you about the experience and taking meaning away from that. There are many different techniques involved with somatic experiencing, some being physical, some being mental, but the point of the experience is to disconnect the patient from the trauma or stress that they have within themselves.
There are other techniques involved with somatic therapy including titration and pendulation. Titration is the process of walking a patient through a traumatic memory and then working through any physical reactions that are triggered because of this. This is meant to reduce these physical reactions and help the patient know how to mitigate the response. Pendulation is a strategy that takes patients through different emotional states. It starts by putting the patient into a relaxed state, then moving them into a state that resembles their trauma, and then moving them back to a relaxed state. This is meant to help the patient reduce the intensity of the response when it's triggered and help them be able to navigate back to a relaxed state on their own. Somatic experiencing has been able to help many patients with PTSD and severe trauma lessen their symptoms and even sometimes get rid of them completely. It also shows promise to help reduce psychological discomfort, and aggression as well as improve concentration. This type of therapy is gaining a lot of popularity among therapists right now due to the positive results. If you are looking for a more direct approach to improve your trauma symptoms or are hoping to reduce your stress and anxiety then somatic experiencing therapy is a great method to utilize.
Your “easy to talk to therapist”
Kimberly Castle RTC, CAMC
Kimberly Castle is a Registered Counsellor with a private practice in beautiful Kelowna, BC. She focuses on Kelowna Counselling Solutions to empower individuals in all areas of their life. In her practice she works with individuals on a variety of topics including trauma, self-esteem, Kelowna couples counselling and is your source for all things Online Counselling.
Blog contribution by Olson Russello undergraduate student at University of Washington
