Why Somatics?

Throughout my life, I've dealt with chronic pain, inflammation, gastrointestinal issues, and various other physical symptoms. My mental health and well-being have always seemed closely tied to my experience of chronic physical pain and discomfort. This connection drove me to understand it better, both for myself and for my clients.

When clients come to my practice, I often spend considerable time reviewing their chronic health conditions, including the medications and treatments they use to manage these issues. Many individuals seeking mental health treatment are coping with multiple debilitating physical conditions alongside their mental health challenges. This is the unmistakable mark of complex trauma.

Somatic psychology is gaining momentum in helping survivors of complex trauma connect their chronic conditions with the unmet needs they experienced during childhood.

Researchers, authors, and thinkers like Judith Herman, Janina Fisher, Resmaa Menakem, Hillary McBride, bell hooks, Peter Levine, Richard Schwartz, Bessel van der Kolk, Gabor Maté, and many others are illustrating the various ways our bodies retain trauma.

When our bodies feel like a war zone, it can be frightening and confusing to start tuning in, trying to listen to and decode its messages. In fact, for many trauma survivors, it can feel much better to be dissociated from our bodies. Feeling numb, floaty, spacey, hollow, and blank are some common ways dissociation manifests for complex trauma survivors. This is the power of dissociation, our most primal defense. When the trauma was occurring, the best thing to do was to go away. Understanding the language of dissociation, how our bodies hold onto traumatic charge by numbing the pain, is at the heart of treating trauma.

Many survivors oscillate from this dissociative state in their felt sense to intense activation, almost seeming to come out of nowhere. This is what it feels like to be triggered. The more activated we are, the more out of control we feel. This can be terrifying, especially when the trigger comes with some form of flashback or re-experiencing. This swing from dissociation to intense activation is another crucial way our bodies try to alert us that we are not OK! When we learn the language of somatics, we can work directly with that charge instead of talking around it. We can reprocess that intensity and come through to calm. Understanding the language of activation, how our bodies desperately fire off fight and flight energy, is essential to understanding how our bodies remember what happened to us.

It may be scary, exciting, activating, or overwhelming to recognize yourself in any of what you just read. Please take a moment and orient to the room, noticing the elements of the space you are in, paying attention to details you may have previously overlooked, even if you've seen them a hundred times. Feel your body on your seat, feel your feet on the floor. You are not alone in this and there is help. Please see my resource page for hotlines and additional resources.

If any of this resonates with you, please read below for more resources to learn about the impact of childhood trauma on overall health:

The groundbreaking ACE study demonstrated a significant positive correlation between traumatic experiences in childhood and a heightened risk of mental health challenges, chronic illnesses, infectious diseases, addiction, and other issues (https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/aces/about.html). To discover your ACE score, visit: https://americanspcc.org/take-the-aces-quiz/