Working With the Body and Nervous System After Trauma
Trauma affects far more than memories. It can also influence how we respond physically and emotionally to situations in the present.
You may find yourself becoming anxious or activated quickly, remaining on guard even when you know intellectually that you are safe, or shutting down and disconnecting when something feels overwhelming.
Somatic Experiencing® (SE™) is a body-oriented approach to trauma therapy that pays attention to these nervous system responses. Rather than focusing only on what happened, we also become curious about what happens inside you now—what you notice in your body, how activation builds, and what helps you remain present.
What Is Somatic Experiencing?
Somatic Experiencing is a trauma therapy developed by Dr. Peter Levine that incorporates awareness of physical sensations and nervous system responses into the therapeutic process.
Following overwhelming experiences, the nervous system may continue responding to certain situations as though danger is still present. You may become activated quickly, remain hypervigilant, or move toward shutdown and disconnection even when you understand intellectually that the present situation is different from the past.
This is one reason insight alone does not always change how we respond.
You may understand why something affects you and still feel your heart race during conflict. You may know that a relationship is safe and still brace for rejection. You may want to speak but find yourself shutting down when emotions become intense.
Somatic Experiencing provides a way of working with these responses as they occur in the present.
How Trauma Can Affect the Nervous System
When we perceive danger, the nervous system responds automatically. We may move toward fighting back, escaping, freezing, shutting down, or trying to maintain connection and safety in other ways.
These responses often make more sense when we understand them in the context in which they developed.
A nervous system that learned to remain vigilant, anticipate other people’s reactions, brace for danger, or disconnect when overwhelmed may continue relying on those responses even when they are no longer as necessary or useful.
For people who experienced chronic stress, childhood trauma, emotional neglect, or repeated interpersonal trauma, these patterns may have developed gradually over many years.
The body can react before the thinking mind has had time to determine what is happening.
What Somatic Experiencing Looks Like in Therapy
Somatic work does not mean focusing on your body throughout an entire session.
Instead, we begin to include what is happening physically alongside your thoughts, emotions, memories, and relationships.
I might ask what you notice happening in your body as you talk about something difficult. You may notice tightness in your chest, tension in your shoulders, a change in your breathing, an impulse to move away, warmth, trembling, or perhaps very little sensation at all.
We do not necessarily try to change what you notice immediately.
Instead, we may become curious about it. What happens when you pay attention to the sensation? Does it change? What happens if your attention moves somewhere else? What helps you remain present without becoming overwhelmed?
Over time, this can help you become more familiar with your own patterns of activation, protection, and settling.
Working at a Manageable Pace
Somatic Experiencing does not require you to recount traumatic experiences in detail or remain focused on distressing sensations for long periods of time.
An important part of the work is learning how much activation can be experienced without becoming overwhelmed or disconnected.
Sometimes this means approaching something difficult briefly and then noticing something that provides greater stability—a physical sensation, the support of the chair beneath you, your surroundings, or simply the awareness that you are here in the present rather than back in an earlier experience.
The pace matters.
When someone has experienced significant trauma or dissociation, pushing too quickly can reinforce the nervous system’s need to protect rather than helping it develop greater capacity.
What We Are Working Toward
The aim is not to make sure you never become anxious, activated, or overwhelmed. These are normal human responses.
Instead, therapy can help you become more aware of what happens as your nervous system begins to respond.
You may begin to recognize activation earlier, notice what contributes to shutdown or disconnection, and better understand what helps you remain present.
With greater awareness can come more flexibility and choice in how you respond.
Somatic Experiencing and Complex Trauma
Somatic work can be particularly useful when there is a gap between what you understand intellectually and what you experience physically.
This is common with childhood trauma and Complex PTSD.
You may know that you no longer need to please everyone around you, yet feel considerable anxiety when someone is disappointed with you. You may understand that disagreement is not dangerous but find yourself freezing during conflict. Or you may recognize that a relationship is different from relationships in your past while your body remains watchful for signs of rejection or abandonment.
Rather than treating these reactions as irrational, we can become curious about why the nervous system learned to respond this way.
A response can make sense given what happened in the past while also creating difficulties in the present.
Somatic Experiencing and Dissociation
Somatic work with dissociation requires particular attention to pacing.
For someone who tends to disconnect when emotions or physical sensations become intense, focusing too much attention on the body too quickly may itself become overwhelming.
The work may therefore begin with very small amounts of bodily awareness while maintaining connection with the present environment and the therapeutic relationship.
The goal is not to push through dissociation but to gradually increase the ability to notice what is happening without needing to disconnect from it.
An Integrative Approach
I am a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner (SEP) and use Somatic Experiencing as part of a broader, integrative approach to trauma therapy.
Depending on your needs, I may also draw from:
- EMDR Therapy
- Parts Work (Ego State Therapy)
- DBT skills
- Mindfulness-based approaches
- Attachment-focused psychotherapy
- Relational psychotherapy
Different approaches can help us attend to different aspects of an experience.
Parts work, for example, may help us understand what a protective response is trying to accomplish, while somatic work helps us notice how that response is expressed through the body. EMDR may be incorporated when more direct trauma processing is appropriate.
The particular approach depends on what we come to understand together and what feels manageable.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I have to talk about my trauma in detail?
No. Somatic Experiencing does not require you to describe traumatic experiences in detail.
We may talk about what happened when it is relevant, but much of the work involves noticing how experiences affect you in the present and helping you remain grounded while difficult emotions or sensations arise.
What if I have difficulty feeling sensations in my body?
That is not unusual, particularly for people who have learned to disconnect from their bodies or emotions.
There is no expectation that you should immediately be able to identify physical sensations. We can begin with whatever you are able to notice and work gradually from there.
Is Somatic Experiencing the same as EMDR?
No. They are different approaches to trauma therapy.
Somatic Experiencing places particular attention on bodily sensations, nervous system responses, and patterns of activation and settling. EMDR uses bilateral stimulation within a structured approach to processing distressing experiences.
I may integrate aspects of both approaches when appropriate rather than assuming one method is right for everyone.
Getting Started
If you find that your body reacts strongly even when you understand intellectually that you are safe, or that you become overwhelmed, shut down, or disconnected when emotions intensify, a somatic approach may be useful.
You do not need to know whether Somatic Experiencing is the right approach before contacting me. We can begin by understanding what you are experiencing and consider together what kind of therapy may be most helpful.
