What is Somatic Experiencing?

By Amanda Tangney, LPC

Traditional “talk therapy” most often includes talking about what happened, talking about our thoughts and feelings about what happened, and talking about what we're still struggling with about what happened. A ton of progress and healing can be made with talk therapy!

But sometimes words can only heal so much. I've found in 10 years of talk therapy experience that clients often reached a “stuck point” in which they know that their trauma wasn't their fault, they know how it was affecting them, and they know the changes they had to make... but they still couldn't control or change how they emotionally reacted to certain wounds or triggers, and find themselves stuck in the same dysfunctional or unhelpful cycles.

You might understand why you're anxious and still feel your heart race when something stressful happens. You might know logically that you're safe, but your body doesn't seem to believe it. You might find yourself shutting down, becoming overwhelmed, or reacting more strongly than you'd like, even if you're frantically trying to remind yourself of all the cognitive work you've done in therapy. This is where Somatic Experiencing (SE) can be helpful to bridge the gap from traditional talk therapy. I refer to this as the difference between "thinking knowing" and "feeling knowing", referring to the split between the brain and the body/heart.

Somatic Experiencing is a therapeutic approach that focuses on the connection between your mind, body, and nervous system. The word "somatic" simply means relating to the body. Our bodies respond to what's happening around us all the time, often without our conscious awareness. Getting an upset stomach, tightness in the chest, an alarmingly fast heart rate, or chronic tension in the jaw - that's your nervous system responding to something it perceives as important and/or threatening. After stressful, emotional, or traumatic experiences, sometimes our nervous system continues to respond as though we're in danger even when we're actually safe. Somatic Experiencing gives us a way to gently explore those responses and re-negotiate them at the body level.

What Does Somatic Experiencing Look Like in a Therapy Session?

SE most importantly involves increasing you capacity to slow down and pay attention to your mind-body connection. I help you pay close attention to what is happening in your body, and find ways to bring safety and connection into those bodily reactions to help resolve them, bit by bit. Together, we “befriend” your nervous system rather than fight against it. Over time, becoming more aware and connected to these physical responses can help you recognize what's happening inside you before you automatically react. You can choose how you want to respond instead.

For example, you may be recalling a stressful conversation with a loved one, and I may help point out that your leg is bouncing rapidly, or that you are tensing your jaw, or that you are rolling your eyes. We may explore what you see in your “mind's eye” when you recall that stressful conversation and play around with imagery of a different response. We may use paper and markers to help express that anger or hurt you feel when remembering something painful. We may practice boundary-enforcing movements with your arms and hands to help you feel more in control of feeling attacked by someone in your life. By getting creative, expressive, and even playful with how you express these emotions/sensations/meanings, we can explore your nervous system responses in entirely new ways.

One of the things I appreciate most about this approach is that it allows us to look at our reactions with curiosity rather than judgment. Instead of asking:"Why am I like this?", we can curiously ask: What is happening inside me right now?"

Many of the ways we respond to stress developed for a reason. Staying alert (hypervigilant), shutting down, avoiding conflict, or immediately trying to make everyone happy (people-pleasing) may have helped you feel safe at some point in your life. Typically, after some time, those response patterns and nervous system reactions aren't as protective or helpful, and SE can help you understand those patterns and develop new ways of responding.

The goal of Somatic Experiencing isn't to make you calm all the time or eliminate uncomfortable emotions. Feeling anxious, angry, sad, jealous, or overwhelmed is part of being human, and we can embrace the function of all these emotions. Instead, the goal is to develop more awareness and choice. You can learn to notice when your nervous system is activated without automatically being controlled by it. You can learn to recognize what your body is telling you and decide how you want to respond.

Ultimately, Somatic Experiencing is about developing a better relationship with yourself, inside and out. It can help you accept that you aren't broken, and that your reactions developed for a reason. SE can help you understand those reactions better, build new resiliency, and develop more trust in yourself and how you show up for yourself.

What I want to emphasize to you is that my extensive training in SE includes a lot of personal practice for myself, meaning I know how the sessions feel and can speak to my own personal experience of evolving from being completely disconnected to my body and my reactions, to feeling closely connected to myself and having more agency in my choices in responding to situations. I consider myself an “ongoing success story” in Somatic Experiencing, and I find fulfillment and joy in helping others find their most successful selves with it too.

If you're intrigued by this different approach to therapy, please reach out to me for a free consultation.