How Somatic Experiencing Improves Health and Healing Outcomes?
Somatic experiencing is a more impactful approach to the mind and body leading to trans-formative psychological shifts. It happens because our bodies hold onto memories of our past experiences. The trauma can’t be resolved without our body finding a way to release the memories.
Permanent healing only happens when our nervous system regains equilibrium. Somatic experience helps us move beyond the cognitive process of understanding the trauma. The process reprograms the body’s primitive survival instincts, thus allowing one to feel a greater sense of connection.
If you are looking for sustainable relief from trauma, anxiety or depression, you can consult somatic experiencing in Ottawa. At the Ospsychotherapy center, you will get counseling and will be able to relieve your stress. Get therapy in Ottawa easily.
Firstly, let’s learn about Somatic Experiencing in Ottawa:
To understand what Somatic experiencing is, begin by exploring a new way of looking at your suffering. When you often think about trauma, you might generally refer to it as an event of the unexpected death of a parent or an accident.
Even so, the founder of SE, states that trauma is not an event but it’s an energy that gets locked in your body around the real or perceived threat. The extent to which a person experiences pain is related to their ability to restore safety in the aftermath of the event. If you are unable to overcome it effectively, your nervous system gets stuck in a survival state of flight, freeze or fight.
Think about your own experiences, have you ever been going through a situation for no obvious reason? It is often due to unresolved trauma from the past that is locked in your nervous system.
For instance, let’s say your brain always acts in two ways: survival brain or safe brain. In a safe brain, you are open to learn new things and see a big picture of a situation. Here you feel calm, curious and peaceful.
On the other hand, the survival brain when turned on, you become hyper-focused with a sense of threat and cannot tolerate confusion. The fear dominates your decision-making skills and often loses the sense of ability. The longer your survival brain stays on, the harder it will be for you to turn it off.
The safe brain is huge and feels vital and joyful. Survival brain creates chaos, ambiguity, and threat. The better you manage your stress reaction, the easier it will be for you to keep out of the survival brain. It no doubt takes time and effort and also requires high-tolerance of uncomfortable sensation in your body.
If you are unable to tolerate being uncomfortable, you might try to numb them or distract from unstable behaviors. Grow your ability to tolerate the discomfort, it will help you gain the capacity to move through challenges and knowing that you can come through the other side of the negative experience.
Why should you choose Somatic Experience?
When trauma strikes, the nervous system loses its ability to maintain the balance. The captured energy from the painful experience causes the nervous system to be wired for survival responses including flight, fight and freeze. To control this, SE works to help bring the nervous system back to the line by backing you to restore the sense of safety. And it can only happen when your body releases the trauma energy, your body has the opportunity to re-adapt back into the body.
SE uses a clinical map to access the state of survival known as fight, flight and freeze while helping you to release the defensive responses. When trauma happens too fast, and you do not have the time or ability to deal with it, the survival energy gets stuck in your body as an incomplete reaction. This trapped energy then leads you.
The talk therapy allows you to relive the story, while it is important to be heard, the retelling alone does not enable the body to relive the trauma. Therefore, to relieve the pain Somatic Experience not only includes talking but also tracks the body sensation and meaning attached to the experiences. When you physically move through the experience with a sense of safety, the relationship to the experience changes and the stuck energy will discharge.
You might be wondering this all sounds good but how does it actually work?
How Does Somatic Experiencing Function?
A SE professional aids you to navigate through traumatic sensations using the framework of Sensation, Imagery, Behaviour, Affect and Meaning to incorporate the body and its experience into the process.
SE begins with a “bottom-up” approach of sensorimotor processing aim at guiding you through the most primitive to the most complex brain cells. Your therapist will guide you through the sensation and movements, helping you develop the sense of internal tension, relaxation and respiration cycles. It is a powerful mechanism to regulate the autonomic nervous system. Cultivating the awareness of these sensations is the basis of healing the trauma by allowing you to tolerate and complete the physiological impulses that are trapped in your body.
Just say that you are experiencing intense pain in your neck, your therapist may ask you to observe the tension while paying attention to neutral body parts. Through this process, you will be able to experience and develop a sense of being in charge of their physiology. You will gain confidence and the capacity to feel emotions without a sense of overwhelming.
Concluding
Even though the nervous system functions on its own, it has limitations around distress. Unresolved trauma can lead to more extensive mental and physical health issues. Therefore, with the long-term effect of SE, you will be able to restore a sense of healthy functioning, which includes resolved sleeping issues, coping skills, mood stabilization. When your body gains the capacity to self-regulate, it restores a sense of safety and balance. Thus, lowering stress hormones and produces good hormones.
