Somatic Experiencing
Creating a new experience of safety in the body.
FOLLOW
Your chest tightens.
A held breath. An impulse to pull away. Your hands start shaking. Your stomach drops. Your jaw clenches. Heat rises to your face. The urge to move, freeze, brace, or disappear.
Sometimes your body responds before you consciously understand what is happening.
Somatic Experiencing offers a way to slow down and work directly with these responses as they show up.
What is Somatic Experiencing?
Somatic Experiencing is a body-oriented approach to trauma and stress rooted in the physiology of survival. It grew in part from observations of how animals in the wild respond to threat and then return to equilibrium, even after intense survival activation.
The approach focuses on how fight, flight, freeze, and other protective responses show up in the nervous system, and on helping those responses become more flexible rather than remaining stuck or easily reactivated.
HOW EMDR WORKS
01
Notice
Identifying the memories, beliefs, emotions, sensations, or situations that continue to feel charged or unresolved.
02
Follow
Using bilateral stimulation, noticing what arises as memories, associations, emotions, and sensations begin to shift.
03
Regulate
The experience becomes more fully connected to the past, allowing new meanings, responses, and perspectives to emerge.
EMDR can help with:
+PTSD
+Complex trauma
+Childhood trauma
+Relational trauma
+Anxiety
+Medical trauma
+Distressing memories
+Persistent triggers
+Negative beliefs connected to earlier experiences
+Reactions that feel much bigger than what is happening now
Creating More Flexibility in the Nervous System
I integrate Somatic Experiencing throughout therapy rather than treating it as a separate exercise that has to happen every session.
In therapy, we may slow down and notice sensation, movement, breath, impulses, or shifts in activation and settling. The work is gradual and pays close attention to what your nervous system can manage without becoming overwhelmed.
If This Resonates
If you would like to learn more or explore whether we might be a good fit, I would love to hear from you.