You’ve decided something needs to change. You do your research, get a good therapist and begin the hard work of therapy. You talk, intellectualize and eventually make meaning of the material you slowly excavate. And yet, the anxiety remains. The patterns continue. Your reactions still feel bigger than they should in the moment, or smaller, or you completely avoid situations you know you need to address. You feel stuck. Somatic therapy for trauma offers a different path forward, one that begins not in the mind, but in the body.

Insight is powerful and real change can come as a result. But sometimes you need more than insight in order to make the leap from awareness to breaking maladaptive patterns. Here’s why. Trauma doesn’t just live in our thoughts, it lives in our physiology. It’s in the tension we carry in our jaw and shoulders, in the constriction in our gut, in the sense of urgency that never abates, and in our held breath. According to Dr. Peter Levine, creator of Somatic Experiencing® (SE™), when we experience something overwhelming, our basic survival strategies of fight, flight and freeze are activated. These are brilliant subcortical responses with one goal: to keep us safe. Sometimes, these responses are thwarted from completion and the body never gets the message that we are now safe. The activation, the internal tension remains long after the danger has passed.

What we experience as tension in the jaw, the held breath, the braced shoulders, these are the body’s ongoing attempt to communicate that something remains unresolved. Trauma creates rigidity in our thoughts, in our patterns of response, and in these physical holding patterns. Healing is the process of restoring flexibility and flow where constriction has taken root.

What Somatic Therapy for Trauma Actually Does

Somatic therapy works by tuning into the body rather than just our thoughts. Our body tells a story that our mind can’t always access or understand. Bodily sensations are messengers that we work with to help the nervous system complete what was interrupted and bring balance back to our body. And over time we gain what we have lost: a felt sense of safety. With that new, steady foundation, we no longer rely on old ingrained patterns, we have the choice to create real change in our lives.

I’ve witnessed this time and time again in my clients and in myself. Before I was a therapist, I was a commercial airline pilot and abruptly lost my career on September 11, 2001. It was in the silence that followed that I turned my attention to the childhood trauma I had spent a lifetime outrunning, and began the decades-long healing journey that eventually led me to somatic therapy and Somatic Experiencing® (SE™). Here I found a shift I hadn’t found anywhere else. Not because talk therapy had failed me, but because the body holds what the mind can’t always reach and healing it requires a different language.

If you’ve been working hard and something still feels stuck, it may not be that you need to try harder. It may be that your body is ready for a different kind of conversation.

Ready to take the next step?

If this resonates with you and you’re curious about what somatic therapy for trauma might look like, I’d love to connect. I offer a free 15 minute consultation, no pressure, no commitment, just a conversation.

Schedule a free consult here.