Core Principles of Somatic Therapy
Somatic Psychology focuses on a few fundamental principles. Licensed Clinical Psychologists who emphasize these behaviors and skills help their clients work through trauma and other negative emotions to establish better mental, emotional, and physical well-being.
Developing Inner Resources
Somatic therapy encourages patients to develop resources within themselves that allow them to better regulate or handle emotions.
The fight, flight, or freeze response associated with trauma is a good example of this. When you experience a traumatic experience, your body defaults to either fighting back, running away from the situation, or freezing in place. Even after the traumatic event, your body can get stuck in these instinctive reactions—especially freezing. Somatic therapy teaches you how to recognize and manage these physical reactions until they’re no longer disruptive or dangerous to yourself or others.
Through mind-body awareness, Somatic Interventions, and other techniques, you can release the tension, stress, anger, and other emotions that linger in your body after a traumatic experience. By working through the ways trauma and other negative experiences affect your body, you can release these negative thoughts, feelings, and behaviors from your mind as well.
Physical Awareness
Somatic therapy also aims to improve your physical awareness of your body. This practice revolves around observing and addressing physical sensations that stem from negative thoughts or emotions. A licensed clinical psychologist can help you practice physical awareness by asking you about certain emotions and where they exist in the body.
For example, if you’re upset, your psychologist might ask you how you know you’re upset. The answer might be a tightness in your chest or an upset stomach. By focusing on these physical sensations and observing how a client reacts, we can better understand the specific effects of stress, anxiety, or other mental health conditions on your mind and body.
Centering
In addition to physical awareness, centering is a useful technique that helps you better feel and understand what’s going on around you and how that affects your mind and body. Centering improves your awareness of your muscles, breathing, and mood to improve mind-body awareness in the face of trauma and other negative emotions.
Bodywork
Another key technique in Somatic therapy is bodywork. This practice involves working with the motion of a patient’s body through structured and deliberate techniques like breathing exercises, guided meditation, or tissue manipulation.
How Somatic Therapy Helps
Somatic therapy can work on its own or as a supplement to other forms of psychotherapy to treat a wide variety of mental health conditions and disorders, such as:
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- Traumatic disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder
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- Anxiety disorders
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- Stress
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- Clinical depression
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- Grief
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- Addiction disorders
Somatic Psychology is also useful when treating physical conditions such as chronic pain, digestive disorders, and sexual dysfunction.
Somatic Therapy and PTSD
Because trauma often has a significant effect on the body, Somatic therapy is particularly useful when treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Somatic Psychology techniques, such as Somatic Experiencing Therapy, allow patients to work through trauma instead of letting it linger in the body. Somatic Trauma Therapy is an effective way of working through negative memories that can lead to disruptive flashbacks, panic attacks, and other detrimental experiences that are common symptoms of PTSD.
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Different Types of Somatic Therapy
Various types of Somatic therapy have been around for centuries. Today, licensed clinical psychologists use a variety of Somatic Psychology techniques to treat patients, including Somatics and Somatic Experiencing Therapy .
Somatics refers to using body movement to improve mental health. This is a broad term that has traditionally included practices such as yoga or pilates to promote overall mental and physical well-being. Somatics takes on a more structured practice in Somatic Psychology. With Somatics, your licensed clinical psychologist can guide you through intentional movements—similar to a physical treatment routine—that can revitalize the pathways between the body and the mind.
Somatic Experiencing Therapy aims to guide patients through the physical sensations they experience in response to negative thoughts and emotions or traumatic memories. As with other forms of treatment, patients undergoing Somatic Experiencing Therapy discuss their thoughts and feelings with their licensed clinical psychologist. Rather than focusing solely on these mental experiences, though, your psychologist will guide you through the underlying physical feelings that accompany these thoughts and emotions. Somatic Experiencing Therapy also incorporates physical exercises such as breath work, visualization, and sensation awareness techniques to help patients better understand and redirect their physical reactions to trauma, anxiety, and other negative thoughts and emotions.
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