Somatic Therapy
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) models are the most used interventions in traditional therapy.
CBT uses a “top-down” approach, meaning that the therapist brings the client’s attention to unhelpful thoughts which this theory believes creates difficult emotions and unhealthy behaviors.
Through re-patterning those thoughts and working on new behaviors, the theory is that emotions will become less overwhelming and clients will engage in healthier behaviors. What practitioners and researchers have discovered, though, is that people who have experienced trauma or live in a body under chronic stress largely cannot find relief through cognition alone.
“Somatic” means “pertaining to the material body” and originates from the Latinized form of Greek “sōmatikos” meaning “of the body”. Somatic Psychotherapy is considered a “bottom up” approach that prioritizes holistic awareness of our whole being, not just our thinking brain. Most people are aware that we have thoughts AND process our experiences through our five-sesnses, emotions, inner sensations like the tightness in our chest with anxiety or buzzing feeling that comes with excitement. We also process our experiences through movement impulses such as those that come with a fight, flight, freeze, collapse response or wanting to jump for joy. Oftentimes, when we have chronic stress or trauma (especially when trauma happens to the body) we develop an aversion to feeling things in our body and only have awareness of our thoughts which actually can be a way to avoid feeling the pain and distress that is in our body. We can also develop unhealthy behaviors that might temporarily help us cope like using substances to deal with anxiety or staying in unhealthy relationships because we are afraid to be alone.
Somatic psychotherapy uses something called “embedded relational mindfulness”. During a therapeutic session, the therapist creates a sense of safety to reestablish connection with the body by acting as sort of a mindfulness partner assisting their clients to orient their attention, in the present moment, to the building blocks of their experience (cognitions, emotions, inner sensations, sensory perceptions, and movement impulses). By guiding their clients toward awareness of their inner experience in small, manageable steps, clients are able to connect to their body’s wisdom or “felt sense”, which brings deeper understanding of all of the things that hijack wellbeing. Through this process, clints improve their capacity for dual awareness (one part experiencing and one part watching or witnessing the experience) which can lead to feeling more stabilized, resilient, and improve skills to recover more quickly from distressful events.
Through the process of “embodiment” meaning awareness of all of the ways our system communicates with us, we start to feel more confident to make different choices for ourselves and are no longer willing to treat ourselves poorly or be treated poorly by others.
Modern psychotherapists tend to employ an eclectic approach to weaving top-down and bottom-up modalities in their practices, however training programs for counselors haven’t quite caught up with the value of holistic methods to treat symptoms related to mental illness. We are seeking to change that!
Clients who might benefit from somatic applications of therapy might be struggling with overwhelming emotions, chronic pain, psychosomatic illness, or complex trauma. More and more modalities are popping up to be utilized for the treatment of these conditions, and here at TCA, we have practitioners of mindful movement, mindfulness, IFS and parts work, EMDR, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, and Trauma-Informed Yoga backgrounds to support collaborating with the body for healing.
Tucson Counseling Associates-Mabel
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