The word ‘somatic’ means ‘pertaining to the body’. Somatic Experiencing® is a therapeutic model developed by Dr. Peter Levine that has been found effective in healing trauma since trauma is stored in the body and Autonomic Nervous system (ANS).
In order to help us get through stressful or overwhelming events in our lives, fight, flight, and freeze survival responses are activated instinctively and subconsciously through the ANS that runs throughout the body. These events can involve anything that felt/feels like too much, too fast, not enough, and/or for too long.
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These fight, flight, freeze responses can get interrupted, inhibited, or thwarted for various reasons, which leaves the energy that fueled the survival impulse(s) to continue to cycle and be stored in the body long after the event has ended. It is also why we might experience a variety of physiological ailments as different parts of the body become strained from being in a chronic state of preparation for, fight, flight, and freeze long after the initial overwhelm has passed.
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SE™ is a method that works to support a resolution to these survival responses, so that optimal functioning of safety and connection can be restored in the ANS. SE™ can seem different than other traditional therapies since it is a bottom-up approach that offers collaborative and guided attention to the activation and capacity in your ANS as you recall and talk about different events and situations in your life.
This bottom-up approach also offers an alternative therapeutic approach for people to attain relief from symptoms of stress in their physiology even though they may not feel completely ready to talk to someone about specific events related to the initial stress.