What is Somatic Experiencing?
Somatic Experiencing (SE) is an evidenced-based, body-centered therapy modality that helps treat the physiological symptoms of people who have experienced trauma or adverse life situations.
SE believes that trauma or stress can cause dysfunction in the nervous system and prevent people from fully processing their experiences, creating the feeling of being stuck in an activation (stress/automatic trauma response). Examples of how people can experience an activation response are experiencing hypervigilance, loss of focus, chronic stress, or experiencing self-judgment, shame, blurry boundaries, and intrusive thoughts.
Somatic Experience helps create a mind-body connection where you can find self-regulation through your body and release the trauma or stress response by completing the initial response with the therapist that you did not have access to when the trauma occurred.