What will we work on in these sessions?

First, we will build connection to the felt sense. In other words, we'll begin to notice what’s happening in your body. At some point in life, you may have disconnected from the body due to physical pain, overwhelming emotions, or a traumatic event. When this happens, body sensations can feel very unpleasant. To defend against this, you may have cut off connection to the body. Over time, this temporary solution to pain can become its own problem though. Disconnection from the body can cause (1) limited intuition around safety or danger (2) difficulty sensing emotions as they come up, and (3) chronic pain or syndromal patterns caused by bracing. All of this can make life very challenging to navigate... so our first job is to rebuild this bridge to body sensations, then go from there.

What happens after I’m connected to my body?

Once this connection to the body and emotions is online, we begin working on regulation. This will allow you to feel things, even unpleasant things, without feeling overwhelmed. You can experience low levels of fear without it becoming a panic attack, anger without it turning into rage, or any emotion without it turning into dissociation. This part of the work is about teaching your nervous system a different way to be. As you experience this new way of being, your nervous system will say “I like this” and continue to regulate more naturally in this way. Typically clients feel calmer, sleep better, and feel less fear of being out of control.

Okay, so I have better regulation. Now what?

Now we turn the focus to expanding your window of tolerance (your capacity to feel things without being overwhelmed). I sometimes refer to this phase as “stretching”, but really it's about building up the ability to tolerate difficult sensations or emotions. It is akin to lifting weights in the gym: building up to heavier weights over time, increasing strength and solidness in order to take on more. With an expanded emotional capacity, you will be able to stay calm and grounded when difficult situations arise in life. This will be especially helpful if you choose to move into trauma processing. Benefits during this expansion stage include taking on bigger challenges with much greater ease.

What are some specific considerations if I have trauma?

If both Somatic Experiencing and myself as a practitioner feel like a good fit for you to do deeper processing, then the previous steps are important prerequisites. However, it's also important to have a solid support system such as an understanding partner, supportive friends, a good psychotherapist, and a physically and emotionally safe living environment. With a basic support system in place, we can work through any past traumas that stand in the way of living your life to the fullest.

Trauma is stored in the body as bound up energy and dysregulation, as well as in the brain as implicit memories (snippets of sound, images, smells, and sensations). A major myth around trauma is that it is necessary to tell and retell the story of what happened. Although this can be helpful for some, more often it is quite destabilizing. Together we'll gently work with implicit memories while also tracking the body’s sensations. Sometimes small releases in the nervous system take place, and at other times full completion of survival responses can occur. This ultimately leads to the release of constriction in the body as well as lessening suffering around daily triggers.

I've supported clients in overcoming medical trauma, crashes and falls, sexual trauma, inescapable attacks, traumatic grief, environmental disasters, and relational or developmental trauma.

How is this different from talk therapy?

It differs in two major ways. First, we are working within a coaching model which means that we are more forward-leaning in terms of moving toward the life you want rather than strictly focusing on the past. Second, this is what’s known as a "bottom-up process.” This means that in order to heal, we don’t spend all our time talking about events and meaning (as one would in traditional talk therapy). Instead, we address disorganization and dysregulation in the physiology. After bound-up energy discharges from the body, meaning will naturally arise through your intuition and the felt sense. My experience has been that the deep insights that come from this process can be far more powerful and long-lasting for clients than mere intellectual realizations.