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There are violence and beauty to an ocean wave, and we would never ask it to change a thing because we know this is impossible. This is you; this is your inner work. We only seek to know a wave, or ourselves, better. There will always be mystery and struggle being ourselves, living in the waters of who we are is not easy, but it is life. We think we become something, but just like a wave, we already are something and there is a lot to learn about the mystery of being in these waters of our ‘I am’-ness. Even when we seek to be safe on the sand, somehow, we are waiting for ourselves to curl and crash. I have always learned a lot from nature; it’s a church, a classroom, a museum of knowledge on the way things are, never the way things should be.
When I started to develop The Toolbox Approach® and the phases of healing, it was not to say I know how to heal, but to try to accept the way things are with healing. Phases run themselves, they don’t have a prescribed time, I liked that the definition is “a distinct period or stage in a series of events or a process of change or development”. A phase is distinct, but it is also part of a process of change, you can’t rush it or miss it and you are always on the right track because there is no track. Healing is not a cognitive process, although it can change the way you think, and that has tremendous value. What I have learned is that the post profound thing about healing is the non-cognitive tools that can look into somatic memory, and that is our topic today.
The Experience of a Somatic Memory: A Case Example
Christine is recently married, age 42 years old. She has two kids between her and her new partner, one hers, one his, and she is trying to learn how to re-process what happens in her life because she is aware she feels things and gets internally “extra” but is never able to start a conversation about it. She has a vague sense there were traumas growing up with parents who married young and kept secrets from each other and themselves but finds it hard to remember. She is learning to tell me how it felt in her body and memories that come up when I say “what was the situation before you were born?” or “what did it feel like being 8 years younger than your brother?”. She came to session distraught about a comment from her boss, “we don’t do things that way”.
She explained to me that the day prior she ended her weekend horribly with a phone call from her older brother. She had told me in the past that when they were growing up, he had occasionally taken her out for a treat and paid for it. At the time, she felt like “that’s my big brother taking care of me”, but she found out later that their parents were struggling and he had done something and gotten in a fight with them. She felt he was “trying to pretend like he was some other version of himself”, so their parents couldn’t be mad, and at the time and for a long time she believed this version of him. As she grew up, it became more evident there was another story line that was kept from her, with direct attempts from her brother being this other version. Her parents were too stressed with the family business to notice, and she thought they needed to believe he could be a helpful caregiver occasionally. Presently, they both had kids, she did not need him to be the false big brother type, and she felt like this phone call was “so inappropriate to tell me he knows better how to raise a 4-year-old, he bought me things, and he does this with his own kids, he is not the present parent he pretends to be”.
We looked at the boss comment and the brother experience next to each other as I told her about ‘Riding the Wave’ of a somatic memory. This is when the pre-frontal cortex logical brain is in the present trying to tell itself what is unfolding but the body is in the past remembering something about the way a similar situation felt. The body has a different way of detecting the familiarity or the situation, but it was clear to me watching her body language that the boss comment and the brother experience felt familiar, and this was one of her “extra” moments that she couldn’t put into words.
Over-functioning, Numbing, or Avoiding
I asked Christine if she hadn’t been coming to therapy for a few months now, what she thought she might do; Over-function, numb, or avoid. She was pretty sure she would run, plan her weekend, check in with friends, answer e-mails and also avoid her brother’s texts. She told me she would likely ruminate and have trouble sleeping or get lost in anger putting on her make-up and feel off for a few days trying to over-function. We talked about outsourcing the emotions that were coming up.
Somatic Memory
When a somatic memory surfaces—often through a bodily sensation that feels out of place or disproportionate—it can defy our cognitive system. The mind may struggle to make sense of the feeling because it doesn’t match the present moment. This dissonance between body and thought creates an urgency: we need to do something with the feeling. But instead of processing it internally, many of us unconsciously outsource our emotions.
Outsourcing emotions means handing off the responsibility of feeling, regulating, or even acknowledging our emotional experience to something or someone outside of ourselves. This can look like:
Avoidance: Distracting ourselves with tasks, screens, or other people’s needs.
Numbing: Using substances, overworking, or dissociating to dull the intensity.
Over-functioning: Becoming hyper-responsible, fixing others, or controlling environments to escape our own vulnerability.
These patterns are not failures, they are adaptations. Somatic memories often originate from moments when feeling was unsafe, unsupported, or overwhelming. So when the body remembers, it doesn’t ask for logic, it asks for protection. Outsourcing becomes a way to survive the emotional flood without drowning in it.
But healing begins when we recognize the impulse to outsource and gently turn inward. The Toolbox Approach® invites us to notice these patterns with compassion, and to ask: What does this feeling need from me right now? Not from someone else. Not from a coping strategy. But from the part of us that is ready to stay.
Riding the Wave
When we come to recognize our body’s sense of unsafe, unsupported, or overwhelmed it is usually a somatic memory, we can ride that wave knowing it feels like the present situation wants us to internally or externally think or say, “you hurt me, you are doing this to me”. The next part of the ride is hard, a need surges. We are needing the situation or person to understand what they are doing, triggering the stuff inside your somatic or body-based memory system. They most certainly cannot understand, and so with that understanding, here is where we must have the curl in part. Here, we go inward and crash the wave, spread it out for our understanding. Here you ask, “where do I feel this in my body”. For Christine, she was clenching her fists and bracing her abdomen.
Christine was in a session with me, so we went to a feelings wheel to look at the basic feelings; Surprised, Bad, Fearful, Angry, Disgusted, Sad, and Happy. She realized the anger category fit best and in fact that the qualifiers “let down”, “humiliated”, and “betrayed” were there for her. As she saw it all there splayed out, we went back to how the work comment may have felt worse and like all three of those words, given the proximity to the issue with her brother, and her boss also being an older male seeming to talk down to her. We explored if she has the energy to change the dynamic with her brother or if it made more sense to set a boundary with him and direct her change motivation to her workplace, where she needed to show up every day. She was shocked how easy the choice was and reported to me that what was ahead felt “good hard”, by which we both agreed, it felt like inner work!
Return for a Better Run
So, when we return to the wave experience for “a better run”, we come to it knowing we are still ourselves and life is messy, but we have cleared out the fragmented past and created intentionality. Christine addressed what boundary to set.
The Internal Steps of Boundary-Setting: From Somatic Clarity to Relational Accountability
Setting a boundary is not just a conversation, it’s a somatic and cognitive alignment. It begins inside, often triggered by a feeling that something is off. That feeling may come from a somatic memory, a nervous system response, or a subtle emotional shift that signals: this interaction needs attention.
Here’s a trauma-informed way to walk through the internal steps before setting a boundary:
1. What Was Okay?
Start by identifying what felt safe, respectful, or aligned in the situation. This helps regulate the nervous system and prevents all-or-nothing thinking. It also honors the complexity of relationships—most interactions are not entirely harmful or entirely safe.
“It was okay that they called and were checking in with me.”
2. What Was Not Okay—and Why?
Next, name what crossed a line. Be specific and somatically honest. This is where the body often speaks louder than the mind. The “why” matters—it connects the boundary to your values, needs, or healing goals.
“It was not okay that they expected me to listen to them degrade my parenting knowledge. It triggered my over-functioning pattern and made me feel shrunken and disappointed.”
3. What Do I Need to Feel Safe Again?
This is the heart of the boundary. It’s not about punishment—it’s about protection and clarity. Ask yourself: What would restore a sense of safety, dignity, or mutual respect?
“I need to tell him I like that we are equals now, both parents, and I want him to talk to me as a fellow parent not as a little sister who knows less, otherwise it is not enjoyable to talk.”
4. What Might They Be Willing to Take Accountability For?
Boundaries are relational. Consider what the other person might be capable of hearing or owning. This helps you tailor your communication and avoid re-traumatization. You’re not responsible for their response, but you can prepare for it.
“They may not realize they have let me down this much. I can name it and ask if they’re open to adjusting how we talk about parenting as equally experienced at it.”
This process supports Relational Healing by integrating somatic truth with cognitive clarity. It also helps prevent outsourcing emotions—because instead of reacting from overwhelm, you’re responding from alignment. Then, with that boundary in place, one is free to show up in the rest of life. For Christine, she wanted to be seen at work as approaching things more creatively, but equally effectively, and with the added bonus of enlivening a sense of teamwork that is missing where she works. She decided to ask her boss for a check-in meeting to discuss two creative approaches she had and became excited about language she could use that could build respect for the current way of doing things while also showcasing her experience in a prior setting with her ideas.
As, per usual, The Toolbox Approach® is constantly evolving to your inner work. The introductory book and accompanying workbook are available on Amazon, scroll down as the workbook is a popular immediate download and listed first! There are more goodies are available on the author’s website. Please consider the live events listed there, my goal has always been to invite you to this, and we are going to try to hold true to that by avoiding overuse of social media posting because inner work is an invitation to “do the work” not watch it! Please subscribe, SHARE THIS, and consider commenting on what you want me to write about next! HEAL ON!
