SELF-CARE: Somatic Experiencing 101: A Body-First Approach to Healing from Trauma + FREE Self-Care Time Hacker

You might know from your own personal experience that the wound created by a traumatic event isn’t something that exists solely in the mind. It can also be present in the body.

That’s why when you’re consciously or unconsciously reminded of a traumatic event from your past, you might not just feel panicked or become hyperaware of your surroundings. Instead, you might also notice that your muscles have tensed up, your breathing has become rapid, your palms feel sweaty, and your stomach feels like it’s in knots.

So if trauma can reside in both the mind and body, what does this mean for treating it and healing from it?

Many therapies that are used to help people heal from trauma acknowledge the mind-body connection in trauma. But they’re what we call “top-down approaches.” This simply means that the therapy uses a client’s cognitive skills to access and process traumatic memories and the feelings associated with them. The idea is that once the client has addressed and processed the trauma, any physical symptoms associated with the trauma will improve too.

Top-down approaches to treating trauma are widely used. And many people find them helpful on their journey of healing from trauma.

But just like we don’t all find comfort in the same things when we’re sad or calmed by the same coping strategies when we’re stressed, we don’t all respond to a particular trauma therapy in the same way.

That’s why whereas some people find top-down trauma therapies to be immensely helpful, other people gravitate more toward other approaches, such as somatic experiencing.

Somatic experiencing is a therapeutic approach that’s based on the work of Dr. Peter Levine. It’s a bottom-up approach because it starts by exploring a client’s bodily sensations before moving on to other aspects of the individual’s experience.

Unless you’ve done lots of research or reading on trauma and trauma therapy, you might not be familiar with somatic experiencing and how it works.

That’s why in this blog post, I’m going to give you an overview of somatic experiencing.

Because who knows? Maybe it’s the right approach for you. And if it is, I want you to know that healing is right around the corner.

Sound good? Let’s get to it!

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What Is Somatic Experiencing?

As I mentioned above, somatic experiencing is a healing approach that was created by Dr. Peter Levine. It’s based on the idea that when we experience a traumatic event, the energy generated during the event gets trapped in the body. Somatic experiencing techniques aim to release this energy and reintegrate it into the body so that we can heal from the trauma.

Somatic experiencing is a body-oriented therapeutic model that’s primarily used to treat trauma and other stress disorders. It’s based on the principles of psychology, physiology, biology, neuroscience, ethology, and medical biophysics. It’s been used for over 40 years, and it’s been applied in a range of fields, including psychotherapy, medicine, physical therapy, coaching, and teaching.

What Is the Basis For Somatic Experiencing?

Trauma develops during an acute or ongoing traumatic event. This can be an event or long-term experience involving an accident, natural disaster, physical or sexual assault, abuse, neglect, war, loss, invasive medical procedure, or anything else that’s emotionally challenging.

Typically, when we come across a stressor, our body prepares us to either “fight” the stressor or flee from it and generates a massive amount of energy to allow us to do this. But if we become overwhelmed by the stressor and are unable to either fight or flee, we instinctively freeze as a way to try to ensure our survival. The freeze reaction is especially common in kids because they’re less likely to have the physical and mental resources needed to fight or flee.

When we freeze, we figuratively stop moving and immobilize to make ourselves less of a target—just like an animal that’s playing dead. You can probably imagine that this freeze instinct was very useful to our ancestors when they came face to face with a hungry bear or lion and needed to act quickly to survive.

Like both the “fight” response and the “flight” response, the freeze response is meant to be a temporary survival state that soon comes to an end (e.g., when the bear or lion loses interest in us and moves on to another target). But if we remain overwhelmed by a stressor, our body thinks that we’re still under threat, and we may remain in the freeze state. When this happens, we don’t discharge the energy that was generated during the fight-or-flight response, which is what would typically happen. Instead, we retain the energy and it becomes trapped in our body, causing nervous system dysregulation and preventing us from fully overcoming the traumatic experience.

Somatic experiencing is designed to release the energy that gets trapped in the body and turn off the internal “alarm” that’s been telling us that we’re still under threat. This “body first” approach helps us bring awareness to the bodily sensations associated with our trauma so that we can acknowledge and work through them.

How Does Somatic Experiencing Work?

Unlike top-down therapeutic approaches to trauma, somatic experiencing doesn’t focus on cognitively examining memories and emotions linked to your trauma. Instead, it focuses on identifying the bodily sensations and meaning linked to your trauma and helping you reintegrate the energy that became trapped in your body following the traumatic event.

During somatic experiencing, a trained practitioner gently guides you through the process of becoming increasingly comfortable with the difficult physical sensations that you experience in relation to your trauma. As you learn to experience these sensations without feeling scared or threatened, you start to feel more at ease and safe when you experience them. As a result, the energy that has become trapped in your body begins to dissipate.

This process of discharging and reintegrating the trauma energy restores balance to your nervous system and allows your body to biologically “complete” the reaction to the original event. In a way, it reprograms your body’s basic survival instincts so that you can feel safe and at ease in your body again. And according to proponents of somatic experiencing, when you heal from the bodily experience of trauma, you’re able to heal from the emotional experience of it too.

To bring the body and its experience into trauma therapy, somatic experiencing practitioners use a framework called SIBAM. This stands for Sensation, Imagery, Behavior, Affect, and Meaning. Here’s what each component represents:

Sensation refers to physical sensations that are generated within your body. These include kinesthetic, proprioceptive, vestibular, and visceral sensations.

Imagery refers to sensations that you experience via the five senses—sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell.

Behavior represents any observable behavior. This includes not only facial expressions, gestures, and postures but also observable physiological changes (e.g., an increase in heart rate, which can be measured).

Affect refers to the emotions you experience.

Meaning represents the words or labels that you ascribe to the experience generated by sensation, imagery, behavior, and affect. In other words, it’s how you experience the other components of the framework altogether.

The idea behind the SIBAM framework is that an experience is made up of the five components included in the framework (i.e., sensation, imagery, behavior, affect, and meaning). However, when we experience a traumatic life event, our relationship to the different components of the experience can fragment. As a result, some parts of the experience get overemphasized (e.g., a pronounced smell) whereas others get under-emphasized (e.g., the physical sensations we experience).

Using the SIBAM framework, somatic experiencing practitioners can help people explore the five components or “channels” that make up a complete experience and discharge energy that’s trapped in their body.

Is Somatic Experiencing Emotionally Challenging?

Just like any other kind of therapy, somatic experiencing has the potential to bring up painful memories. As a result, you might feel afraid, stressed, or generally triggered while using somatic experiencing techniques under the guidance of a practitioner.

This is normal because we consciously or unconsciously experience something as traumatic precisely because it is emotionally challenging. If it wasn’t emotionally challenging, it wouldn’t be affecting our happiness, lives, and relationships. And there would be no need to address it and heal from it. So for most people, confronting and processing their trauma can be uncomfortable or emotionally challenging at times.

Fortunately, a skilled practitioner (whether they use somatic experiencing or a different approach) will prepare you to confront challenging experiences by helping you develop coping strategies that you can use when you feel overwhelmed. In somatic experiencing, this is known as “resourcing.”

Resourcing is a tool that helps you access your inner resilience, strength, and peace. For example, a somatic experiencing practitioner might guide you to think of a positive memory whenever you feel triggered. By instilling a sense of resilience, resourcing can help you stay calm and present when you’re faced with challenging sensations or experiences linked to a traumatic event.

Is Somatic Experiencing Right for You?

As I mentioned earlier, somatic experiencing differs from many traditional trauma therapies because it takes a bottom-up approach. Instead of focusing on recalling and exploring memories of a traumatic event, somatic experiencing focuses on exploring bodily sensations as a way of restoring balance and promoting healing.

So if you’ve tried more traditional, top-down therapies for trauma and haven’t experienced the results you want or believe that you could benefit from doing further work, somatic experiencing might be worth considering.

It might also be a good option to consider if the idea of bringing the body into therapy and focusing on physical sensations seems like a good fit for you.

But what if you’re thinking, “To be honest, Vera, I really don’t know what kind of therapy or approach might be right for me”?

Or what if you aren’t even sure if what you’re struggling with is rooted in trauma?

If you’ve got a question like this running through your mind, I invite you to schedule a FREE strategy session with me. During the session, we’ll chat about what you’re dealing with in your life right now and what approach we could use together to help you experience the happiness, relationships, and life that you’re looking for. Click below to schedule a Free Strategy Session with me.

In the meantime, grab a copy of my FREE Self-Care Time Hacker. It’ll help you find time to love and care for yourself so that you’re in the right psychological space to heal, find joy, and build the life you want.

And finally, if you haven’t done so already, follow me on my Facebook page Vera Velini – The Assertive Happiness Coach. That way, you’ll be among the first to hear about new blog posts, resources, and courses.

Until next time!

Vera

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