Somatic Experiencing® (SE) is a body-based method that helps people process trauma and other symptoms of stress, shock, and anxiety.
SE® is based on the idea that healing the physical experience of trauma (as it’s felt in the body) can also heal the emotional experience.
WHAT IS TRAUMA?
Peter Levine is an author, teacher and the creator of the Gold Standard of trauma therapies, Somatic Experiencing® (SE).
Dr. Levine says that trauma may begin as acute stress from a perceived life-threat or as the end product of cumulative stress. Both types of stress can impair a person’s ability to function with resilience and ease and live in the present moment.
Trauma may result from a wide variety of stressors such as accidents, invasive medical procedures, sexual or physical assault, emotional abuse, neglect, war, oppression, natural disasters, loss, birth trauma, epigenetics, systems, or the corrosive stressors of ongoing fear and conflict, and chronic shaming.
Years ago, trauma was defined more by external events rather than the responses human beings have to those events.
Today, it’s understood that “trauma is not WHAT happens to you, but what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you,” according to Dr. Gabor Mate
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COMPLETING FIGHT, FLIGHT AND FREEZE RESPONSES
According to Dr. Levine, trauma can happen to anyone when they perceive a situation as a threat and are unable to complete a satisfactory fight, flight or freeze response.
Our nervous system is designed to keep us psychologically intact when we perceive we cannot keep ourselves safe in a situation. However, if we do not address the way in which our nervous system and memory categorized the event, it can take a toll on us emotionally, mentally, and physically over the years.
Dr. Levine was inspired to study stress on the nervous system when he realized that animals in the wild are constantly under threat of death from predators, yet they rarely show symptoms of trauma.
He discovered that deep trauma has to do with the third survival response to perceived life threat, which is freeze and collapse. When fight and flight are not options, both animals in the wild and humans freeze and immobilize, like “playing dead.” Its actually a brilliant system at that moment because it makes us less of a target.
However, this freeze reaction is designed to be time-sensitive, in other words, it needs to run its course, and the massive energy that was prepared for fight or flight needs to get discharged through shakes and trembling. If the immobility/freeze phase isn’t completed, that charge stays trapped in the tissues of the body, and, from the body’s perspective, the body is still under threat.
SOMATIC EXPERIENCING® IS A BODY-BASED APPROACH TO HEALING TRAUMA
The Somatic Experiencing® method works to release this stored energy and turn off this threat alarm that causes dysregulation and dissociation to the nervous system. SE® helps people understand this body response to trauma and work through a “body first” approach to healing. Within their scope of practice, SE Practitioners work with these responses in a way that supports their clients. You can learn more about how Somatic Experiencing works here.
Like, Dr. Gabor Mate, Dr. Levine believes that the traumatic event isn’t what causes long-lasting trauma, it is the overwhelming trapped response to the perceived life-threat that is causing an imbalanced nervous system.
Somatic Experiencing’s aim is to help one access the body memory (procedural memory) of the event, not the story. In SE, we focus less on the narrative of the story. The objective is to diffuse the power of the narrative and remap the body memory to regain aliveness and flow.
Somatic Experiencing® is a body first approach to dealing with the problematic (and oftentimes physical) symptoms of trauma. It helps individuals create new experiences in their bodies; ones that contradict those of tension and overwhelming helplessness. This means that healing isn’t about reclaiming memories or changing our thoughts and beliefs about how we feel, it’s about exploring the sensations that lie underneath our feelings and beliefs, as well as our habitual behavior patterns.
Resources:
https://traumahealing.org/