Somatics

When did you hear about the word “Somatics”? As a young therapist in graduate school, (many moons ago), I was in Abnormal Psychology class, and was taught that some client will present with psychosomatic symptoms. We were taught that these were emotionally rooted physical symptoms that one would see in our more emotionally repressed clients and cultures. How far we’ve come and yet, not that long ago, I said something to the tune of, “This body pain I’m feeling could be an injury, or it may just be psychosomatic”. My hands shot up to my mouth. My professional counseling training had taught me that psychosomatic was synonymous to phrases like “all in your head” and implied less real or valid than an “true symptom”. Oh boy.

Janina Fisher, Pat Ogden, and Peter Levine, now our biggest trainers on trauma work and what would become the somatic field were merely contemporary trailblazers in the field. In 2004, when I graduated from my Community Counseling Masters program I had not sat through one lecture on body work or psychomotor interventions as they were called. There was no course offered within any counseling tract or program. I was also told that I would never have a client with Dissociative Identity Disorder. 20 years later, over half of the clientele of my caseload could meet criteria for such a diagnosis. In one of her numerous trainings on trauma, Janina Fisher taught , “Brain scan research demonstrates that traumatic memories are encoded primarily as bodily and emotional states rather than narratives. But, when trauma is ‘remembered’ without words, it is not experienced as memory. “

The now trauma-informed field of mental health counselings has new words. They have terms like “affective memory” and “unrepresented past” and “implicit memories” . Affective memories are memories that have felt or acted out instead of remembered. Unrepresented past or implicit memories are experiences that are stored in our unconscious mind yet still drive thoughts and behaviors. The manifestations of unremembered memories are powerful drivers of psychological distress, emotional dysregulation, and physical illness.

As a profession built on talk and processing troubling events and perceived relational patterns in our family of origins, we were failing to reach trauma where it lived. Trauma remained free-floating, unknown and disconnected from our bodies, desperately needing to find its way to be acknowledged, released, and healed. Many of my clients have failed to provide a falsely placed burden of proof for their pain. Trauma when invalidated becomes complex trauma. 

The definitions of the current prevailing somatic interventions used in trauma work: 

Somatic movement

Movement is done mindfully and focuses on the internal experience. The goal is to help people reconnect with their bodies to identify and release stored emotions

Somatic therapy

The umbrella of therapy that focuses on mind-body connection and incorporates that in to the process of session is somatic therapy. Its aim is for people to relieve pain and stress, regulate emotions, and increase self-awareness. It can also help people recover from trauma and manage, reduce or resolve symptoms of grief, anxiety and depression. Somatic therapy can be beneficial for many people, including those with chronic pain or auto-immune disorders. Athletes and performers, and persons within physically demanding professions find benefit from somatic support. 

Somatic education

This can help people relieve chronic muscle tension, improve posture and movement, and recover from musculoskeletal conditions. The psychoeducation can help people improve motor control and change learned muscular patterns. As we have seen in fields of occupational therapy and working with neurodivergent populations, the body can be retrained causing neuro-networks to be rewired in the brain. 

Some techniques used in somatic therapy include: 

Breathwork: Intentionally breathing to increase body awareness and learn self-regulation 

Body awareness: Recognizing and identifying areas of tension in the body, as well as calming thoughts and feelings 

Grounding: Connecting deeply to the body and the earth 

Titration: Recalling a traumatic memory and noting any physical changes in the body 

Attunement or Corregulation: Can help people borrow peace and a sense of inner safety from the somatic practitioner 

Pendulating: Stepping in to as much undesired emotion as one can access and stepping out of that emotion and in to as much peace or joy as one can imagine. This reduces the distress level of the undesired emotion