SOMATIC EXPERIENCING - Healing from trauma and restoring balance

Somatic Experiencing (SE) Therapy is a mind-body approach to restore health so your body, brain and psyche can recover from trauma. It facilitates the completion of the fight flight response and the release of thwarted survival energy that is trapped within the nervous system. Using a blend of neuroscience, biology and body-oriented psychotherapy, Somatic Experiencing enables you to self-regulate high states of arousal and intense emotions.

Trauma occurs when an event or series of events overwhelms our capacity to respond effectively. From this place of perceived danger, our nervous system goes into over-drive and elicits the survival responses, fight, flight or freeze. If these survival techniques are not fully completed, physical and emotional injury become locked in the nervous system.

Peter Levine, PhD developed the Somatic Experiencing method by observing animals in the wild that are in a constant state of threat by predators, but show no signs of post-traumatic stress. Dr. Levine theorized that animals suffer no long term effects from recurring threats because they immediately discharge the energy built up in their bodies. Once the threat to their survival is gone, they return to a state of body equilibrium. Humans on the other hand, do not always have the capacity to clear out their nervous system in the aftermath of a traumatic event.

Trauma takes many forms. We can experience it through violence, emotional and mental abuse, loss of loved ones, accidents, divorce and neglect. What is considered traumatic to one individual may not be to another. Some traumas aren’t so obvious. They are smaller less detected injuries, or micro-traumas. I believe these often overlooked causes of distress account for much of the chronic fatigue, anxiety and depression so many people experience. These can accumulate during childhood and into adulthood and are often inbedded in our most important relationships. We often dismiss them as either innocuous or too threatening to pay close attention to. However, these small pyschic hurts build up over time and undermine a person’s self-worth.

There’s not a person alive who hasn’t experienced some form of trauma. The good news is we have the power to heal it and replace these destructive processes with healthier ways of functioning. We can find wisdom in our trauma and heal.