Somatic Experiencing (SE)

As I walk into the lecture hall…

… I can see it is already full of people.

I know I can sit for only 15 minutes before I begin to feel my body tense and my legs pulse up and down faster and faster.

I find a place to sit. My back is against a solid wall, and I can see all the windows and doors. I notice everyone entering and exiting, but I cannot focus on the speaker. I hear words but don’t understand what she is saying. I thought this time it might be different.

The season is now Fall. I can smell the crispness in the air and see the early sunsets. The sun is warm, and the air is cool, yet I feel anxious… nothing has happened, but my body is shaky.

My friend asks me how are you feeling? I answered, “Fine, I’m fine.” But really, I’m not sure what I’m feeling. I ask myself, am I numbing? Am I gripping? Am I waiting for the next shoe to fall?

On the outside, I look cool and calm without a care in the world. But on the inside, I am paddling upstream and getting nowhere. I feel as if I have one foot on the gas pedal and the other on the brake. I feel stuck.

These scenarios seem familiar; perhaps similar characteristics have been with you for a while. Healing can be a reality, and this can end and allow you to live your life fully.

Let us remember that a traumatic event may have ended…

… but we can continue to experience the effects in our body for a long time, even years later.

Trauma is an injury, not a disorder. PTSD is an emotional wound that happens in the mind and body. The mind and body are not separate. Trauma resolution or healing must include top-down processing, which is talk therapy, and bottom-up, which is the body.

Somatic Experiencing (SE) is bottom-up or bodywork. When you feel difficult sensations and emotions such as fear, terror, anger, rage, and helplessness, what can you identify as a sensation in your body?

It might be a tightness in your chest or a clenched fist, or movement in your legs. It may even be shortness of breath or holding your breath. Maybe your heart begins to pound, and your palms become sweaty.

These sensations may be what happens in your body to tell you that you are experiencing fear. It’s fear that causes your anxiety or the helplessness and sadness that is part of your depression.

Human beings are mammals, and we share the same nervous system as all mammals. We have a primitive response in our Sympathetic nervous system, which tells us to prepare for fight, flight, or freeze when threatened. This response is designed for protection and survival. We may stiffen and prepare to fight. Your body is ready to protect you. Sometimes we get stuck in the preparedness or sympathetic engagement or sympathetic activation.

Feelings are often cut off with trauma.

SE is working with sensations and feelings that you are experiencing in your body – working with the most debilitating trauma symptoms such as numbing, shutdown, dissociation, feelings of entrapment, and helplessness.

If you are experiencing numbness, you may have cut yourself off from sensations and feelings in your body.

Perhaps this is a state of the “living dead” unable to engage in life fully. Unable to be with others. Unable to feel joy and love.

SE is about facing the trauma.

The inner landscape is our body’s internal experience, including sensation, image, behavior, affect, and meaning.

Meaning is what we attach regarding this inner landscape. Let’s refer to these elements as SIBAM. When a person is traumatized, thinking can become negative and limiting, or narrow. The meanings attached can become mantras such as “You can’t trust people,” “The world is not safe, everything is dangerous,” or “I’m unlovable.” These mantras can be based on past trauma and become pervasive.

Using the SIBAM model in SE, I guide the client to notice the physical location associated with the negative thought or the lack of feeling.

It is not uncommon for sexual trauma to cause disassociation or the absence of feeling in their body. Simply and directly, the client is invited to track and experience sensation by noticing and focusing on the sensation.

Healing can happen.

You don’t have to stay in the cycle of being frozen or trapped by your fear.

It’s time to live your life to the fullest, and I can help.

Call me today to schedule your appointment: (480) 431-4994.