Somatic Experiencing® (SE) is a trauma therapy founded by Dr. Peter Levine. To learn more about this modality visit traumahealing.org. Here I will give you a bit of my own journey with SE.
On my journey towards healing, I had done years of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) which was focused on changing my thoughts to change my emotions and behaviors. This modality worked to a point, but something always seemed to be missing.
Many years into my healing journey, I stumbled upon a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP). A few weeks in to treatment, I felt like I went from seeing black and white to seeing color. My whole world had expanded. I couldn’t quite put my finger on how or why, but I knew I had to learn more.
In sessions, the practitioner would have me look around the room and find something that my eyes were drawn to. I later learned this was orienting to joy or pleasure. Animals in the wild are constantly orienting to assess safety. Humans are often stuck in their heads feeling like there is a threat without checking out their surroundings. If they are looking, they may be hypervigilant, looking for all the exit signs and ways to stay safe. Orienting to joy and pleasure helps you to see that in this moment right here and now you are safe. Once my eyes landed on something I found pleasing, she would have me notice what I felt in my body. I would often feel expansion in my chest, and warmth, relaxed shoulders, deeper breaths. We spent a lot of time feeling into joyful, pleasurable sensations.
I was so moved by my experience back then, that I embarked in a three-year training program to become a SEP myself. During this training, we had to engage in several hours of our own personal SE work and several hours of consulting work with professionals who had already completed this training.
I began to learn that this modality is not only great for people with what I’ll call big T traumas, but also for people with little t traumas. Essentially this work helps regulate the nervous system and restore it to equilibrium.
Traumas are not about the event themselves, but how the nervous system responds to the event. Maybe during a sexual assault your nervous system wanted to flee or to fight, but something took over and you immobilized or froze. Now all the mobilized energy of fight or flight is stuck in the body with no where to go. This can feel like having one foot on the brake and one foot on the gas at the same time. You are not going anywhere, but you are buzzing all over.
In sessions, we can facilitate the completing of these survival responses. Sometimes, when your feet are moving on their own accord, for example, I might have you envision you are running and then you will observe what happens to the energy in your feet. Sometimes there is a discharge of energy which can be a release. Other times I may notice your fists in balls, and your fight response is coming on. I may have you stand and put your hands against mine and push and replicate completing the fight response.
In SE sessions, we will pendulate between the healing vortex and the trauma vortex. The things that are going right, the things that support you, and then the more difficult moments. This pendulation helps with titration of trauma processing. Meaning we will not dive head first into a trauma, we will dip our toes in slowly and that way we will not get sucked up in the trauma. We will notice all the protective factors, the things that help you survive.
Because of this slower pacing, ideally your nervous system won’t get overactivated. For many people, it is hard to be in the healing vortex. When they dabble in this vortex, their negativity bias kicks in which looks for the threat or for the other shoe to drop. We will spend time in our sessions trying to be able to stay longer and longer periods in the healing vortex. This creates an inner resource for you. And when you have inner resources, it is much easier to face the trauma vortex.
SE is best known for the tracking of body sensations. During session, I may ask you, “what do you notice in your body?” Then I might have you stay with that and then I will say, “Notice what happens next.” Through this approach you will become a good tracker of your own body. You will get comfortable giving space for sensations to move, shift, release.
In my opinion, emotions land as constellations of body sensations. When you are able to name where an emotion lands in the body, you are better able to process that emotion. For example, I may have the feeling of tightness in my chest and the emotion that it evokes may be fear. You will start to become intimately aware of the connection between feelings in the body and emotions. There is power in naming this as I believe it helps to settle the nervous system.
All of my work is informed by this overall lens of SE. Even when I am doing couples work, I am teaching the partners to become aware of what happens in their body and in their nervous system. I teach them and individuals about the window of tolerance which explains that at the top of this window there is hyperarousal – fight, flight, anxiety, and at the bottom of this window is hypo-arousal – shut down, collapse, withdrawal. In the middle of these two extremes is the optimal arousal zone. When couples know if they are within the window, they can be wiser about the conversations they engage in. It is not wise to have a serious conversation when you are hitting up against the bottom or top of this window.
I teach that it is through embodiment that we can return to our optimal arousal level. Simple things such as noticing your feet on the ground, your sit bones in the chair, your breath – the rising and falling of your chest and belly, you can come back to this healthy level. In a conflict situation, you can keep your first attention on your own physiological experience to track your level of activation. If you start to notice your heart pounding fast, your shoulders at your ears, your jaw clenched, it may be time to call a pause in the conversation. I will definitely be coming back to this topic of taking pauses in conflicts in future posts, because it is a big one.
Ideally, you and your partner will talk about the possibility of a break before you ever request a break, in a moment when you are not in conflict. It takes approximately 20 minutes to settle the nervous system from fight or flight. Ideally during the break, you are both focused on settling the nervous system.
No matter what your trauma background or lack of trauma background, nervous system regulation can benefit you. It is a great way to manage stress and anxiety, and to make conscious choices. In sessions with me, we will discover together what ways work best for you. For some people it might be walking, dancing, meditation, yoga, taking a bath, listening to a song, getting out in nature, hugging a loved one, playing with a pet. The key is to find all the ways that work for you. In different moments, you will require different things.
The topic of Somatic Experiencing® is a big one and I have just begun opening up the discussion. Because it is such a crucial way in which I view the world and view therapy, I will be coming again and again to elements of it. If you have questions or comments, we'd love to hear from you.
stions or comments, leave a comment on the blog and I will be happy to engage with you.
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