trauma: a somatic approach to healing

Trauma has been defined as anything that happens too fast and too soon; event(s) or circumstances that overwhelm the capacity of our nervous system and our ability to cope. When we encounter external distress before our system is prepared to handle it, we are pushed outside of our window of tolerance and this creates a traumatic situation. From the vantage point of somatic psychology, trauma is the fragmentation of somatic unity. Psychosomatic unity is an organized mind-body connection, where there is congruence with our thoughts, feelings, and somatic experiences. But with trauma, the tear or fragmentation happens when our body goes in one direction and our mind, thoughts, and feelings go in another- this is where psychosomatic unity is disrupted. Oftentimes folks who experience trauma have expressed not feeling "connected" to their body or having an "out of body experience." Somatic healing asks the question of: how do we bring the parts of ourselves that have been fragmented, into congruence again? A somatic approach in therapy acknowledges that we cannot simply intellectualize trauma, but there is a felt, somatic, bodily component that is integral to the healing process. Using a somatic approach to therapy we work together to create an environment of felt safety using somatic resonance and by developing your resources both internally and externally (at Calamansi Counseling, this is a huge part of where “culture as a source of healing” comes in). We then engage with the trauma both explicitly: what is it that you remember consciously, and implicitly: what are the preconscious, felt memories, held in you body. Through a process called pendulation, we slowly move back and forth between resourcing, so your body feels anchored, nurtured, and safe, and gently engaging with the memories and past experiences. This process supports your nervous system, recalibrating it out of its arousal state, and little by little helps you put the fragmented pieces back together.

Sources

We are grateful for Dr. Albert Wong’s training in “Somatic Approaches to Healing Trauma” which informed the content for this blog post. If you’re interested in learning more, check out Somatopia.