Somatic Experiencing® – integrative psychophysiological (mind-body) approach to dealing with stress, anxiety, and trauma issues. It utilizes somatic awareness and mindfulness as a primary orientation.
Somatic Experiencing is a widely respected, innovative, body-centered approach to emotional healing & trauma resolution developed by Peter Levine, Ph.D. based upon over 35 years of research and study into stress and trauma. SE is a unique approach, which draws upon the latest scientific research of how our triune autonomic nervous system mobilizes to respond to threats. SE is modeled off of animals in the wild, who engage innate, instinctive, physiological processes to discharge the massive and freeze energies associated with survival. As a result, wild animals are rarely traumatized, even though their lives are routinely threatened.
Although humans have virtually the same innate self-regulating mechanisms as animals, often override or inhibit these processes thwarting our own capacity to heal. When we fail to discharge the high levels of arousal associated with survival these massive energies stay trapped in our neuromuscular and central nervous systems and wreak havoc on our bodies and our minds. It is this trapped energy that develops into a whole constellation of post-traumatic symptoms including pain, anxiety, anger, depression, intrusive thoughts and imagery, and cognitive impairments. Somatic Experiencing provides the steps needed to reconnect individuals with the innate wisdom of their bodies. Through focused conscious awareness of bodily sensations, the individual is able to access these restorative physiological patterns, resolve their traumatic symptoms, and reengage in life with renewed optimism, creativity, passion, and joy.
Somatic Experiencing shows that trauma is not in the event but rather in the deregulation of the nervous system.
– Cited from Dr. Peter A. Levine, Foreword in Crash Course, A Self Healing Guide to Auto Accident & Trauma Recovery
—Somatic Experiencing shows that trauma is not in the event but rather in the deregulation of the nervous system. It is for this reason that different people react to what appears to be the “same” event very differently. Hopefully, this knowledge will reduce the sting of self-blame that people have when they can not get over their symptoms.
When we experience a perceived threat, our nervous system is instantly aroused to mobilize for survival. The energy involved for life-preserving defense is vast; it is the energy that allows a hundred-pound mother to lift a car to rescue her trapped child even when her muscles tear and bones break. When we are sitting in our car, patiently waiting for the light to change and someone unexpectedly smashes into us from behind, that same kind of intense energy is mobilized, but in a fleeting moment. However, there is little that we can do to defend ourselves. We cannot fight or flee…we cannot respond purposefully. It is for that reason the vast survival energy gets locked in our bodies and in our minds.
But that energy must go somewhere; into the symptoms of trauma it goes. Our necks and backs brace and seize up in painful spasms. Our nervous system is so aroused we cannot sleep or rest well. Our minds begin to fret in anxious worry. We may begin to develop a phobia of driving or more general anxieties. When this goes on for months we become fatigued and depressed from the pain, lack of sleep, and feelings of anxiety and helplessness.