How Can Somatic Therapy Help Heal Trauma
Thanks to pop culture portrayals, the concept of therapy may have an unfairly narrow image. You see, not every session involves talk-talk-talk until the client has a breakthrough. Did you know that some forms of therapy can be body-centered? For example, somatic therapy includes talk therapy, but it also includes methods like massage, yoga, dance, deep breathing, and more. The term somatic literally means “of the body.”
This approach is effective for a broad range of issues — ranging from anxiety to depression, from sexual dysfunction to addiction, and beyond. Somatic therapy is sometimes the treatment of choice for someone struggling to heal trauma.
How Does Somatic Therapy Generally Work?
Mental and emotional issues are often tied to distressing memories. In turn, those memories may be related to pain and/or cause pain. Your somatic therapist will bring your awareness to that pain and its sources by addressing its presence in your body. The goal is to help you release the residual physical discomfort related to something like trauma.
When you work with an experienced somatic therapist, the treatment helps your body heal. In turn, this gives your brain the signal that it’s safe to release negative emotions rooted in your past. Obviously, this is particularly critical for anyone seeking to resolve trauma.
What Are the Physical Signs of Trauma?
Here are just a few of trauma’s physical red flags:
● Unexplained aches and tension throughout the body
● Trembling and shaking
● Extreme perspiration
● Headaches
● Dizziness
● Blurry vision
● Fatigue
● Appetite swings (with related weight change)
In addition, traumatic experiences can place people in a perpetual state of high alert. They just keep experiencing and trying to process the negativity, fear, and suffering. For some folks, that means fight-or-flight — but it can also mean “freeze.”
Unlike a more active reaction like fight-or-flight, freeze is precisely what it sounds like. If, in the throes of a dangerous event, you get the sense that escape is not possible, your mind and body freeze. This is especially common with children.
Such a response becomes very problematic if the person feels stuck there even after the threat has dissipated. For one thing, your body holds onto the emotions that led to the freeze in the first place. It just keeps reacting to fragments of traumatic memories and can thus cause the symptoms listed above.
How Somatic Experiencing Can Help
Rather than diving deep into the underlying emotions, somatic experiencing (SE) guides you to examine the associated bodily sensations. This helps to demystify the role of the nervous system and how you’ve reached this point. From there, you’ll be guided through three common SE tactics:
Resourcing
When trying to cope with trauma, you will likely find that your mind defaults to negative and distressing thoughts and memories. Resourcing is the act of replacing those default memories with positive, grounding thoughts that serve to counter the freeze-like tension slowly.
Titration
Using the positive thoughts accumulated through resourcing allows you to begin revisiting the trauma. You come to terms with what happened and connect that with the body sensations that arise. Your therapist monitors your responses to help identify the associations.
Pendulation
When titration causes arousal, your therapist will be there with the positive images from resourcing to counter the momentum. Over time, you’ll be able to access this calming technique yourself.
Connecting With a Somatic Therapist
Somatic therapy is a specialty. Hence, you’ll want to connect with a therapist with the proper certification and experience. It’s also important that they bring positivity to your sessions! To get this process started, reach out to learn more about somatic therapy.