Somatic-Based Therapies

Somatic Experiencing (SE™) is a body-oriented therapy for healing trauma and accumulated stress. It is based on a multidisciplinary intersection of physiology, psychology, ethology, biology, neuroscience, indigenous healing practices, and medical biophysics and has been clinically applied for more than four decades. It is the life’s work of Dr. Peter A. Levine.

The SE approach releases traumatic shock, which is key to transforming PTSD and the wounds of emotional and early developmental attachment trauma. It offers a framework to assess where a person is “stuck” in the fight, flight or freeze responses and provides clinical tools to resolve these fixated physiological states.

THE SCIENCE

Trauma may begin as acute stress from a perceived life-threat or as the end product of cumulative stress. Both types of stress can seriously impair a person’s ability to function with resilience and ease. Trauma may result from a wide variety of stressors such as accidents, invasive medical procedures, sexual or physical assault, emotional abuse, neglect, war, natural disasters, loss, birth trauma, or the corrosive stressors of ongoing fear and conflict.

HOW IT WORKS

The Somatic Experiencing approach facilitates the completion of self-protective motor responses and the release of thwarted survival energy bound in the body, thus addressing the root cause of trauma symptoms. This is approached by gently guiding clients to develop increasing tolerance for difficult bodily sensations and suppressed emotions.

Dr. Levine was inspired to study stress on the animal nervous system when he realized that animals are constantly under threat of death, yet show no symptoms of trauma. What he discovered was that trauma has to do with the third survival response to perceived life threat, which is freeze. When fight and flight are not options, we freeze and immobilize, like “playing dead.” This makes us less of a target. However, this reaction is time-sensitive, in other words, it needs to run its course, and the massive energy that was prepared for fight or flight gets discharged, through shakes and trembling. If the immobility phase doesn’t complete, then that charge stays trapped, and, from the body’s perspective, it is still under threat. The Somatic Experiencing method works to release this stored energy and turn off this threat alarm that causes severe dysregulation and dissociation. SE helps people understand this body response to trauma and work through a “body first” approach to healing.

Brainspotting (BSP) is gentle, brain/body and mindfulness-based therapy that can help identify, process, and release stored traumatic stress and pain, which when left unresolved can result in dysregulation in our bodies. It helps to facilitate our brain and body’s innate ability to heal itself.

It was created by Dr. David Grand and carries the motto: “where you look affects how you feel”. Essentially, when something is bothering us, how we feel about it will literally change depending upon where we look. This is because our eyes and brains are intricately woven together, and vision is the primary way that we, as humans, orient to our environment.

THE SCIENCE

Signals sent from our eyes are deeply processed in the brain then reflexively and intuitively redirects where we look, moment to moment. The brain is an incredible processing machine that digests and organizes everything we experience.

But trauma can overwhelm the brain’s processing capacity, leaving behind pieces of the trauma, frozen in an unprocessed state (Robert Scaer, MD). Brainspotting facilitates the opening of these capsule so that this distress of the trauma can be released.

HOW IT WORKS

Brainspotting is enhanced by the attunement of the therapist and their supportive presence. Together, the therapist and client will locate somatic (body) cues/sensations and use the field of vision to find a ‘brainspot’ where trauma and unresolved emotional energy are being held in the brain/body.

Just as the eyes naturally scan the outside environment for information, they can also be used to scan our inside environments—our brain and body (sensations)—for information. By keeping the gaze focused on a specific external ‘brainspot’, we maintain the brain’s focus on the specific internal spot where trauma is stored, in order to promote the deep processing that leads to the trauma’s release and resolution. And thus, distress decreases.

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a mind and body-based psychotherapy that enables people to heal from the symptoms and emotional distress that are the result of disturbing life experiences. It was developed by Francine Shapiro after she discovered a connection between eye movement and persistent upsetting memories.

Repeated studies show that by using EMDR therapy people can experience the benefits of psychotherapy that once took years to make a difference. It is widely assumed that severe emotional pain requires a long time to heal. EMDR therapy shows that the mind can in fact heal from psychological trauma much as the body recovers from physical trauma. When you cut your hand, your body works to close the wound. If a foreign object or repeated injury irritates the wound, it festers and causes pain. Once the block is removed, healing resumes.

THE SCIENCE

EMDR therapy demonstrates that a similar sequence of events occurs with mental processes. The brain’s information processing system naturally moves toward mental health. If the system is blocked or imbalanced by the impact of a disturbing event, the emotional wound festers and can cause intense suffering. Once the block is removed, healing resumes. Using the detailed protocols and procedures learned in EMDR therapy training sessions, clinicians help clients activate their natural healing processes.

HOW IT WORKS

EMDR therapy is an eight-phase treatment. Eye movements (or other bilateral stimulation) are used during one part of the session. After the clinician has determined which memory to target first, he asks the client to hold different aspects of that event or thought in mind and to use his eyes to track the therapist’s hand as it moves back and forth across the client’s field of vision. As this happens, for reasons believed by a Harvard researcher to be connected with the biological mechanisms involved in Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, internal associations arise and the clients begin to process the memory and disturbing feelings. In successful EMDR therapy, the meaning of painful events is transformed on an emotional level.

Stress responses are part of our natural fight, flight, or freeze instincts. When distress from a disturbing event remains, the upsetting images, thoughts, and emotions may create an overwhelming feeling of being back in that moment, or of being “frozen in time.” EMDR therapy helps the brain process these memories, and allows normal healing to resume. The experience is still remembered, but the fight, flight, or freeze response from the original event is resolved.