Trauma gets trapped in the body and even after years of talk therapy, some people still struggle with the same triggers, repeated patterns, and ingrained defense mechanisms and maladaptive coping skills.
When you go to traditional talk therapy you might feel better for a while, or on the surface, but feel stuck when the same (or similar issues) arise again and again. You can’t out talk trapped trauma, you have to release it through Somatic Therapy (otherwise known as the mind/body connection).
Somatic work is a form of experiential therapy most often used in healing trauma. Somatic practitioners often work with verbal and non-verbal clues, which brings the mind/body connection to the forefront. In doing this, practitioners are able to flesh out an individual’s core beliefs and core emotions in a way that talk therapists are not able too. There are different ways to do this, such as Somatic Experiencing (SE), The Hakomi Method, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP), Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP), Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and Gestalt Therapy.
In all of these therapies, the premise is similar that our bodies are intuitive and hold our emotions, experiences and past traumas and by becoming aware of and exploring these sensations individuals can finally break though the stuck feelings that have been holding them back. It is a bottom up approach to therapy where traditional talk therapies are a top down approach. They focus on the way thoughts impact feelings and behaviors, and changing those thoughts. It works for some people and for some situations but for those who need more, somatic therapies are worth a try.