How Somatic Therapy Can Help Psychological Trauma
by Melody Wright, LMFT
When we've experienced something traumatic, we may not be consciously aware of the ways in which the trauma affects our everyday life. However, our bodies remember what has happened to us, and they store those memories as uncomfortable (sometimes painful) somatic sensations.
If you have survived trauma, you may find that you hold a lot of tension in your muscles or that you feel disconnected from your body. This can occur when our bodies are reminded of the trauma, even if our minds aren't aware of it.
Somatic therapy is a type of psychotherapy that asks us to listen to -- and learn from -- our bodily sensations. By strengthening the relationship between mind and body, we can heal from the effects of trauma, both physically and emotionally. Here is how it works.
How Our Bodies Remember Trauma
Unexplained physical ailments, like headaches or muscle tension, are common in trauma survivors. While they may be related to your traumatic past, they are not "all in your head." Instead, they stem from anxious energy that was not released during the traumatic event, when the fight-or-flight response was triggered.
Traumatic events can activate the sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for symptoms like a racing heartbeat and clammy palms when we are anxious, scared, or stressed. The fight-or-flight response is designed to help us flee from or fight back against potential dangers. However, in a traumatic event, it is not always possible to do either of these things.
Whether you were physically restrained or paralyzed by anxiety, you may not have been able to discharge the adrenaline from your body's fight-or-flight response in the moment. As a result, the energy from the fight-or-flight response is stored in the body, leading to tension, pain, and other unpleasant symptoms.
How Somatic Therapy Works
Somatic therapy is a type of psychotherapy that utilizes the mind-body connection. Pioneers of somatic therapy, such as Peter Levine and Pat Ogden, believe that the key to healing from trauma is discharging this anxious energy from the body. This means finding other ways to process and release the body's stored emotions after the traumatic event.
There are many techniques a somatic therapist can use to help you accomplish this goal. First, they will use interventions designed to help you develop greater awareness of your unique body and the ways in which it stores traumatic memories. Then, they will guide you through the process of expressing these stored emotions so you can move on.
Every somatic therapist works a bit differently. It's important to get to know your therapist so you can find the right fit for your individual needs. However, many somatic techniques are practiced by a wide variety of therapists. Understanding common somatic therapy techniques can help you get an idea of what to expect.
Common Somatic Therapy Techniques
Grounding
How often do you feel truly connected to your body? Trauma survivors may especially struggle to stay rooted in the present moment and notice uncomfortable thoughts or sensations. Grounding consists of exercises designed to bring us back into our bodies and mindfully take note of our sensations and surroundings. These exercises often rely on our five senses to absorb information from our environment.
Movement
Movement is a form of medicine for the body. Mindfully moving your body can help you cope with challenging experiences and discharge anxious energy. It can also give you a sense of accomplishment and help you feel more connected to your body. Additionally, movement is one of the body's primary methods of communication. We can pay attention to our natural movements -- such as body language -- to learn more about ourselves, our emotions, and our beliefs.
Setting Boundaries
Boundaries are limits we set to define the type of treatment we are willing to accept from others. Traumatic experiences inherently involve a violation of our personal boundaries. Setting mindful boundaries empowers you to take back control of your mind and body. Boundary-setting may be challenging for trauma survivors, who are often disconnected from the way their bodies feel about certain behaviors or experiences. By paying attention to the way our body feels in these moments, we can identify healthy boundaries that would improve our lives.
Want to learn more? Sign up for our free e-book, The Mind-Body Toolkit: A Beginner’s Guide to Connecting With Your Body. We provide 50 grounding exercises you can try when feeling anxious or overwhelmed and some of our favorite somatic tools and resources. This is a great way to learn more about the mind-body connection, especially if therapy is new to you. To get started, click here.
4 Benefits Of Somatic Therapy
by Melody Wright, LMFT
Somatic therapy is an approach to psychotherapy that emphasizes the mind-body connection.
Somatic therapists recognize that suppressed and unprocessed emotions are often stored in the body, showing up as physical symptoms like muscle pain, headaches, and nausea. Because of this, somatic therapy incorporates body awareness exercises into the healing process.
Here at Life by Design Therapy, we are passionate about practicing somatic therapy and strong advocates of its benefits for mind and body healing. In this blog post, we discuss four of those benefits, which may help you decide if somatic therapy is right for you.
1. Change your brain, change your life.
Our brains and bodies are creatures of habits. They internalize the thought patterns and belief systems we are taught from an early age. Much like a computer, these become the "programs" that run our lives.
When we experience trauma or emotional distress, our brains and bodies become wired for survival. The fight, flight, fawn, or freeze response becomes the "program" we're running on; however, living life on "survival mode" can quickly get exhausting.
By harnessing the power of the body through somatic therapy, we can rewire our brain's neural pathways to get ourselves out of survival mode and into a conscious state of emotional balance. In this way, somatic therapy can help you take back control of your life from harmful thoughts, beliefs, and patterns.
2. Gain insight into your thoughts and behaviors.
Our bodies communicate with us via sensations. Those aches and pains you may be experiencing are messages from your body that something is wrong. Sometimes, that "something" may be a medical issue, like an injury or illness -- while other times, it may be a sign of unprocessed, stored emotions coming to the surface.
Imagine how much insight you would gain into your thoughts and behaviors if you could translate the messages your body was sending you. How much better could you know yourself if you learned to understand the language your body speaks?
So many of us operate on "autopilot," leading us to live in a constant state of disconnect from our bodies. In this state, we don't pay attention to the messages our body tells us, or we choose to actively ignore them in favor of productivity or other concerns. Yet when we pause to listen to what our body has to tell us, we can gain a lot of insight about the thoughts, beliefs, habits, and behaviors that shape the quality of our relationships with ourselves and others.
3. Get the tools to overcome what's holding you back.
Stored, unprocessed emotions -- which often show up in the body -- hold us back. They prevent us from showing up as the best, most fulfilled versions of ourselves. Hence, somatic therapy isn't just about noticing and interpreting your bodily sensations; it's also about giving you the tools you need to overcome those physical and emotional blocks.
In order to achieve fulfillment, somatic therapy techniques that help you gain insight into your bodily sensations must be paired with actionable, therapeutic steps toward healing. Recognizing your unprocessed emotions is a start, but simply being aware of these issues does not solve them.
The key to overcoming these barriers is to work through them. One of Life by Design Therapy's somatic therapists can help you achieve this on a mental, physical, and emotional level. At each level of awareness, you will learn tips and tools to help you understand, process, and manage your emotions in real-time, to prevent them from holding you back.
4. Let go of self-judgment.
Finally, somatic experiencing, or noticing our bodily sensations, isn't just about recognizing the way we are feeling. It's also about letting go of the judgmental thoughts we have about our emotions and physical sensations, because our self-talk so deeply influences the way we feel, physically, mentally, and emotionally.
For example -- when your body hurts, how do you speak to yourself? Do you approach the sensation with curiosity, non-judgmentalness, and compassion...or do you criticize yourself by listing all the reasons why you shouldn't allow your physical pain to hold you back? You might even find yourself attempting to ignore or suppress those uncomfortable sensations.
Hence, somatic therapy is also about giving yourself permission to approach your bodily sensations non-judgmentally. Forget assigning physical, mental, or emotional sensations labels like "good" or "bad," and instead invite yourself to observe what you can learn from your body when you approach it with curiosity instead of judgment.
Why Understanding Your Window of Tolerance is Essential to Managing Stress and Overwhelm
by Melody Wright, LMFT
Do you ever notice yourself feeling stressed out, out of control or on edge? Or, the opposite: do you find yourself feeling zoned out, numb or shut down? These states of hyper- and hypo-arousal suggest that you're operating outside of your window of tolerance, a term used in therapy to describe the state when you're at your best and most able to cope with any challenges thrown your way.
Sometimes, traumatic experiences shrink our window of tolerance, meaning it takes less stress to throw us off-balance. The narrower your window of tolerance, the more intense and difficult it may be to manage your emotions and moments of stress. Here's how to understand what your window of tolerance is, what types of events may narrow your window of tolerance and how it impacts your overall mental health.
What Shapes Your Window of Tolerance
When you feel safe and supported, you are most likely to be able to cope with events that threaten to push you outside your window of tolerance. But when a stressful or traumatic event occurs, your window of tolerance may narrow. As a result, you may react to minor stressors with a disproportionate response of hyper- or hypo-arousal.
Traumatic events impact our ability to self-soothe and self-regulate. In other words, we are no longer able to comfort ourselves and reign in our emotions the way we are able to when we are within our window of tolerance. Trauma also changes our thoughts and beliefs, creating a new way of thinking and feeling that perpetuates the cycle of hyper- or hypo-arousal.
People who frequently operate outside their window of tolerance may be more likely to experience symptoms of depression (a state of extreme hypo-arousal) or anxiety (a state of extreme hyper-arousal). Someone who is often in a state of hyper-arousal due to a traumatic incident may develop post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, leading them to experience flashbacks, nightmares, derealization and depersonalization.
How to Manage Your Window of Tolerance
A trained somatic therapist can support you by beginning to identify your specific patterns of hyper- or hypo-arousal and can guide you through body-based techniques that can help you move from a more aroused state to a calmer state. This process includes increasing awareness around when you are operating within your window versus when you are feeling dysregulated and outside of your window. Some of these techniques include mindfulness, grounding and thought reframing.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness techniques encourage us to remain focused on the present moment, rather than living in the past or worrying about the future. Mindfulness practices can include meditation or deep breathing, as well as activities like listening to music, cooking or eating and practicing yoga. Anything can become a mindfulness practice if it is done with intention! Utilizing mindfulness in a therapy session can support you with learning how to regulate your nervous system and feel a sense of calm and ease within your body.
Grounding
Grounding techniques also encourage you to stay rooted in the present moment, or grounded, by taking stock of the world around you. Here's an easy grounding exercise to try next time you feel like you might leave your window of tolerance: name five things you can see, four things you can hear, three things you can feel, two things you can smell and one thing you can taste. Using our senses helps us stay grounded in the present moment and can bring us back down to earth when we feel hyper- or hypo-aroused. A therapist can support you in grounding when you begin to feel activated during session.
Thought Reframing
As we mentioned, traumatic events can generate thought patterns and beliefs that threaten to disrupt our well-being. For example, after hearing a verbally abusive partner's comments for long enough, a person may go on to believe that they are worthless and that no one will love them. Learning to examine the evidence for and against these thoughts can help you decide if these thoughts are worth listening to -- or whether they are negative beliefs shaped by your history. Our therapists utilize a wide range of tools such as expressive arts, sand tray, role playing, movement, and other tools to explore both the conscious and subconscious thoughts or beliefs you may be holding.
Learning how to expand your window of tolerance can be challenging to do by yourself. However, with the help of a qualified somatic therapist, you can learn to regulate your emotions and intentionally bring yourself back into your window whenever you are feeling stress or overwhelm.
Therapy Reflections
How do you know when you are feeling anxious? What are some of the first physical signs that you notice?
How do you know when you are feeling down or depressed? What do you do or say to yourself when you’re feeling down?
What have you done in the past that has helped you feel better in those moments?
What are some of your go-to activities that help you when you’re feeling stress or overwhelm?
The Importance of Body Awareness
by Melody Wright, LMFT
Too often the messages we receive from society take us away from our present-moment experiences, our genuine emotions, and our truest selves. As we attempt to navigate this culture of distraction we end up feeling lost, disconnected and unsure of ourselves. It’s become too easy to get lost in our thoughts, whether we get lost in thoughts about the future or the past. This split and physical disconnect is a large reason why increasing your body awareness is so important and often eye-opening.
What is Body Awareness?
Body awareness is being consciously connected as a whole versus mind and body being two separate entities. When we were born and progressively moved forward with body control, we learned body awareness in coordination with crawling, walking and progressed as most people do; such as how far to reach for something, or how to climb stairs. As adults, the concept of body awareness in this context becomes second nature given normal circumstances such as perception and spacial awareness of our physical selves.
What About Body Awareness in Therapy?
In this scope, it is much more than the physical part of ourselves. Body awareness represents our mind and body as one and the responses (behavior) we have.
Having body awareness is beneficial during therapy because our bodies hold on to past memories and experiences; it shows in our body language, posture, and our expressions. Physical manifestations of trauma can cause an upset stomach, migraines, hormone imbalances, and other medical conditions. Studies have shown that there is a relationship between trauma and our bodies.
What are the Benefits of Body Awareness?
The benefits of having body awareness in therapy help to understand your body’s signals in relation to what you hold within. Realizing your own breathing and other physical sensations foster a pathway for changes in responses to overwhelming feelings. For example, if you just disagreed with a coworker or friend, you may not notice the physical changes that happen during the exchange. Changes such as faster breathing, racing heart, shaking, stiff limbs, tightness or a clenched jaw. You may notice them after the confrontation, but during the confrontation you may be less aware.
What would it feel like if you were more aware of your body’s responses to a bad memory, a negative association to something in your environment or argument with someone close to you? With the help of a professional somatic therapist, you can begin to increase your body awareness. They can assist by helping you bring attention to your body and physical sensations during the session. With gentle guidance in a safe space, you can learn about your physical experiences, which can lead to growth, acceptance, and change. You can be more centered and freer of holding in the negativity that impacts both your mind and body.
The Power of Self-Acceptance
We are often our own worst critics and if we can neutrally observe our bodies, meaning what our bodies do isn’t ‘good’ or ‘bad’, makes it easier to focus more on the behavior, feeling or reaction. This component added to therapy will enhance your outcomes when working with your therapist.
If you find that this is a struggle at first, there are other areas that can be focused on. How many times have you been engrossed in a project with a deadline and you kept working despite you were starving? Your body tells you it needs nutrition, just like it gives you a signal when you are stressed or feeling anxious. By being more attentive to basic physical needs creates more awareness of the cues when your body is stressed or overwhelmed. This allows you to connect what triggers you may overlook in response to a traumatic event or troubling situation.
Working with a Somatic Therapist
As you work with a trained somatic therapist, you will understand your own body not just your mind and emotions. Somatic therapists track emotional and physical shifts to recognize signs that give clues as to what is going on internally. We have a huge toolbox of body-based resources to support you in building body awareness. Most human communication is through body language. Yes, we use words to communicate; however, our bodies say much more. Even when you are quiet while seated in a room with others, you are communicating. If you are nervous you may fidget without even realizing it. If you are having a bad day, your jaw may lock, and you don’t realize it. You may cross your arms tighter across your chest.
By recognizing how emotions are tied to your body brings a strong mind-body connection that opens the pathway to self-understanding, acceptance, and processing that enables you to respond better to your environment. Self-awareness is a great skill to have and use while in therapy and you will find more positive results in therapy by incorporating it into sessions.
If you are struggling with connecting your mind and body during therapy, talk with your therapist about different techniques or other options.
Therapy Reflections
Do you know what happens in your body when you feel anxious or sad?
When something or someone pisses you off, how connected are you to your body in that moment?
What signals does your body give you when you feel happy or grateful?
What can you do today to increase your body awareness?