What is Somatic Experiencing?
I am preparing to attend the first of my final two trainings to complete the coursework to be a Somatic Experiencing Professional (SEP). As I am preparing for this, I thought it would be helpful to write a little bit about Somatic Experiencing (SE) and how I use SE in my practice.
What is Somatic Experiencing?
Somatic Experience is a body-based trauma-healing therapy. SE was created by Dr. Peter Levine through his work studying stress response in humans and animals. SE theorizes that trauma symptoms are developed when we are unable to “complete” our biological responses to an imminent threat to our safety. For example, if we were in a situation where someone was yelling at us and our natural response was to run away, but maybe for some reason, maybe the social context or physical context, we are prevented from running away, our body may still want to complete that action. This may show up in ways like feeling antsy/anxious when we’re in a similar environment to where we were yelled at. In response to this theory, SE has developed a practice for slowly building our capacity to “complete” these actions and slowly process our trauma/regulate our nervous system. You can watch Dr. Peter Levine explain SE here (~6 min). You can also learn more about SE on their website - traumahealing.org.
What does SE look like in my practice?
Well, it looks a lot like slowing down. We have a tendency to rush in our society and that hustle culture mentality often leads us to pay less attention to our bodies. In doing so, we ignore some of our important cues. So, my practice looks a lot like slowing down and actually feeling what is coming up in our bodies when we recall these painful experiences in we are trying to process in therapy. We do this in a way that focuses on building your capacity, so that we’re going at the pace that works for you. This is something that I have found to be helpful with folks whether they identify trauma as a source of their pain or not. Our body gives us a lot of information and SE can give us the opportunity to listen.
This summary of SE and my use of SE is definitely limited due to the nature of what can be conveyed in a blog post, so I am happy to provide further information or resources, as needed.
As always, take what is helpful and leave the rest. I hope you have the week you need.
