Trauma can be understood like an injury or a wound that needs a treatment for it that goes beyond what happened. We don't fix people in trauma treatment. For example, if the wound is taken more literally, we don't treat the burn by saying "it occurred when I touched the burner that seemed dormant but was still hot from the boiling kettle that was on it minute before". The story of what happened does not help the individual get right treatment. The individual feels the burn and can sense that is not a sunburn but a stove burn. This is the interoceptive sense. This sense is an internal intelligence. This sense knows the treatment for sunburn verses stove burn without the storyline.
The storyline can help the rational brain come online and understand what has happened, that can have benefits to the entire system becoming regulated eventually. Still, often times we reverse these steps and put the knowing brain’s concept first for decades and never address the felt sense of someone's trauma. That is the value of Somatic Experiencing. Somatic Experiencing, which is a somatic therapy, can effectively heal people from trauma by using bodily interventions. There are many forms of somatic based or body-based interventions. Many of them fall in a category I call "Reprocessing Tools" in my Toolbox Approach to doing inner work. This approach consists of three sets of tools that can also act as phases of inner work and healing for anyone who senses they have struggled internally with a broken feeling and not quite resolved it, regardless of identified trauma or not.
Today I am only briefly explaining Somatic Experiencing. As mentioned, in terms of the body, it is made to target how our body is struggling to heal in terms of the way your nervous system has held what has happened to you in life. While events like natural disasters, wars, or accidents can be considered traumatic by most people, other events may be traumatic due to people’s subjective experience.
We know that it is sometimes the accumulation of unmet or threatening emotional experience that are "little t" traumas such as rejection, abandonment, betrayal, neglect, dismissal, violation and other relational injuries that can also create a chronic threat inside us. Experiencing a traumatic event can have either a transitory or an ongoing impact on psychological and physical states. Some people can easily overcome the impact of such an event because there are resiliency factors in their lives, while others can be deeply affected in their ability to cope with the same situation. This can negatively affect how they perceive their environment and themselves. The brain gets rewired to less adaptive physical and mental responses, and the body gets stuck in a constant stress response.
Developed by Peter Levine, Somatic Experiencing (SE®) is a body–mind therapy specifically focused on healing trauma by helping clients draw their attention to their bodies.
The sensations and experiences explored are described as:
Interoceptive (i.e., internal awareness of the body)
Proprioceptive (i.e., spatial orientation of the body)
Kinesthetic (i.e., movements of the body;) Payne, Levine, & Crane-Godreau, 2015).
Unlike other forms of trauma therapy, SE® intentionally avoids directly evoking traumatic memories and, therefore, does not focus on thoughts and feelings related to the traumatic experience.
SE® approaches these memories using the body as a gateway, exploring them gradually and indirectly by promoting more adequate, safer, and comfortable bodily experiences (Payne et al., 2015).
Understanding stress, trauma, and PTSD in SE®
Within SE®, we often identify stress as the inability of a very complex, deeply dynamic, and sovereign nervous system (that is not checking in with rational thought), to recover to normal functionality (Payne et al., 2015, p. 3). Trauma, therefore, is the way we can become in constant dysregulation of the nervous system and bodily experiences (Levine & Frederick, 1997).
This means that trauma resides in the body and not in the nature of the event, and that people will vary greatly in their ways of perceiving and responding to the event, depending on biological, psychosocial, and contextual variables.
The autonomous nervous system is dynamic and can respond paradoxically when facing stress, simultaneously activating the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems (Payne et al., 2015). Levine (1986) posits that the body can get stuck in an overwhelmed and dysfunctional response, which is reversible, though not modifiable by the external event.
This approach moves us away from pathologizing people into diagnostic categories and allows stress and trauma to be on a continuum. A somatic informed therapist can assess the level of activation of both the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems with the individual in session on a continuum. Furthermore, SE® considers trauma as an interrupted natural and non-pathological response that needs to be brought to closure (Levine & Frederick, 1997). The body has become confused about how to bring itself to what is known as the ventral vagal state where it is safe, secure and ready to connect; the initial goal of the threat or survival response to begin with.
When facing a threat, all animals – including humans – are evolutionarily wired to unconsciously and automatically respond with certain somatic behaviors to protect themselves, including fleeing, bracing, stiffening, and collapsing. The main difference between wild animals and humans is that animals naturally recover from these states by engaging in other action patterns such as yawning, trembling, and shaking to release the excess of energy generated by the threatening experience (Levine & Frederick, 1997).
However, humans have learned to hinder these counter-responses due to several circumstances, thwarting the natural response of resetting the nervous system. This interruption leads to the nervous system’s dysregulation, leaving a memory in the body with glimpses of the traumatic experience.
According to Payne et al. (2015, p.14), “trauma is a highly activated incomplete biological response to a threat, frozen in time.” From this standpoint, people experiencing trauma do not suffer from a disease, but rather their bodies have been caught up in a dysregulated state. And that is exactly what SE® addresses.
8 Therapeutic Techniques
SE® techniques can help clients reconnect with their body as the container of feelings and sensations, finding safety and containment in the body.
These techniques can develop a sense of grounding and centering through the body, help clients describe and track bodily sensations and feelings, and facilitate the discharge of activation from the fight-flight-or-freeze response (Levine, 2008).
Trained SE® therapists monitor sensations and behaviors with the aim of regulating clients’ responses and avert overriding the nervous system by purposefully concentrating on self-soothing behaviors. The following techniques can help people learn how to soothe themselves and calm the nervous system by drawing upon their own resources.
Noticing Physical Comfort – Feeling physical support and experiencing your physical boundaries in a safe space can bring feelings of comfort.
Self-Soothing Touch – Boundaries are usually broken with trauma, and it is essential to recover this by working with the body. Touch can instill containment and create a soothing sensation.
Soothing Breath – Breath and touch can help soothe both the body and the mind. Slow deep breathing can activate the parasympathetic nervous system, bringing a feeling of relaxation and calmness.
Grounding and Centering – People commonly experience a loss of grounding and are thrown off balance. Grounding allows feelings of safety and inner strength to emerge.
Evoking Kindness – Remembering a time when you experienced kindness from someone can evoke pleasant physical and emotional sensations.
Recalling Being Yourself – Coming back to yourself can provide a greater sense of being grounded and feeling comfortable in your own skin.
The Voo Sound – Making sounds and vibrations with your own voice can have a soothing effect on the body and can also be a means to discharge activation.
Shake It Off – Animals often shake themselves to release the excess energy produced from the stress response. Allowing your body to connect with the trembling sensation produced by a stressful event can enable your system to settle.
The one I will briefly demonstrate is the self-hug exercise. Please consider a paid subscription to hear it demonstrated.
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