Dr. Gabor Mate describes “trauma” as “…not WHAT happens to you, but what happens INSIDE you as a result of what happens to you.”
Until recently, we humans have collectively believed that in order to find relief from past trauma:
1. we need to let go of what happened in the past and allow it to stay in the past because “time heals everything.”
Or…
2. we need to talk about what happened and work with the story. If we can only understand what happened on a rational, logical level, and mentally understand how to look at it differently, we will eventually not be so affected by it.
Or…
3. We need to have a cathartic “release” from our past trauma — a big dramatic, sometimes painful series of moments where the pain then disappears forever. This might happen with crying, deep breathwork, immersive therapy where the environment mimicking what your trauma was like is recreated, or other intense methods.
I have personally experienced several of the above techniques during phsychotherapy for years and none of it moved me forward in a significant way. Most of the methods involved talking about or reliving the events, which left me feeling drained and even more emotionally activated than when I arrived at the therapist’s office.
Using the Somatic Experiencing® method
There is a different, effective, gentler, and less emotionally-taxing way to work with trauma called Somatic Experiencing®.
Somatic Experiencing® or SE, works somatically, or with the body and brain together to gradually allow the activated charge, that has been trapped in the physical body since the event, dissipate or dissolve.
The significance of the body when working with trauma is key to releasing the grip of trauma, even when the physical symptoms of that traumatic event show up months or years later as chronic physical pain and physiological symptoms of stress and anxiety. (For more information about how to recognize the physical symptoms of anxiety and hypervigilance, read this blog post.)
The SE® method is slow, gentle, and titrated (which means we work little by little, based on the current capacity of the person’s nervous system). We bring the focus of the session into the person’s body, where the thwarted energy of the traumatic experience is stored and present.
Who benefits from Somatic Experiencing®?
SE® is designed to be effective for people who have experienced the following types of traumatic events:
Auto accidents
Medical trauma including anesthesia
Physical injuries, including sposts injuries
Relational injury (and attachment trauma)
Emotional abuse, including narcissistic abuse
Physical abuse
Sexual abuse
PTSD
CPTSD (childhood)
“Startle” and “Protect” physiological patterns
When someone has experienced a traumatic event, or ongoing events as in childhood, or relational abuse, a person’s physiology can stay in a “startle” pattern which includes bracing throughout the system or a “protect” pattern which includes contractions throughout the system.
A person might be aware that they, for example, clench their teeth or hands, or hold their breath. Or they might round their shoulders forwards and they may feel constriction in their throat or chest and tightness in their belly. Sometimes they have chronic digestive issues—either constipation or extremely loose bowels. Or they have back, neck or shoulder pain. These muscular habits of hypervigilance show up throughout their entire physiology— but they may just feel it as “normal” for them. But all of this can be part of the same nervous system pattern.
Seemingly normal habits like nail biting or constant foot swinging or tapping is the nervous system’s attempt to self soothe and self regulte. Usually there is deeper physical “holding” on the musculoskeletal level throughout the person’s system.
This method works with people who experience musculoskeletal patterns of anxiety and hypervigilance, or bracing and contracting.
For more information on how these physiological patterns show up in the body, link here.
How we work with the body to release trauma
If someone has had an auto accident, they likely hold muscle tension patterns from the experience. In such an experience we often have powerful energy build up. Our nervous system naturally gathers all it’s power and looks for ways to flee or engage in fighting against impact. That powerful energy surge is thwarted and becomes stuck in the joints or muscles. This is a common cause for neck pain or things like frozen shoulder, on top of any physical injury that ocurred.
In SE® we begin a slow process to revisit the experience from within the sensations of the physical body — beginning with resourcing the client until it’s clear they have the capacity to touch into the different pieces of the event. We work with nervous system regulation techniques so that they aren’t re-traumatized as we approach significant moments that make up the event.
The nervous system processes at a very…very… slow… pace. So we go very, very slowly—at a pace that the sensory part of the brain can accommodate, and so that the brain can re-experience small pieces of the event. And this time, re-exepriencing it in resourced, manageable way, the body is successful in finally moving that stuck, thwarted energy, either through physical movement or doing something differently and in a more resourced conscious way in the imagination.
Because our brain doesn’t know the difference between what actually happened in the past and our imagination in the present, it can reprocess this information sensorily and muscles can finally relax and let go permanently.
Discharge of energy
Often clients will have the discharge that their body’s didn’t get the chance to have the first time around. Discharge can include crying for no apparent reason, shaking, shivering, trembling, yawning, or deep sighs. This discharge is what animals are able to experience naturally in the wild after a big chase. They move this powerful fight-flight energy through their bodies vs storing it as anxiety. You rarely hear about a stressed out tiger!
Some events take a number of sessions to let go of that thwarted muscle energy, as in cases that have multiple dimensions to them like childhood abuse or mistreatment. One-off events can take less time, but it depends on each situation, each person and each practitioner.
A growing number of psychotherapists have SE® training, but because they’re bound by their license not to use touch, they often resort to a more talk therapy approach. If you like the idea of trauma-informed bodywork done through the lens of a trauma-informed framework, then finding an SEP (Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner) who can integrate the SE® with robust somatic hands-on bodywork may be a good choice. There’s no right way — only the way that feels right to each individual person.