What is Somatic Experiencing?
SE 101
Somatic Experiencing (SE™) aims to resolve symptoms of stress, shock, and trauma that accumulate in our bodies and nervous systems. Trauma, from an SE lens, is focused on how it shows up in the nervous system and how that dysregulation impacts life. When we are stuck in patterns of fight, flight, or freeze, SE helps us release, recover, and become more resilient.
It is a body-oriented therapeutic model applied in multiple professions and professional settings—psychotherapy, medicine, coaching, teaching, and physical therapy—for healing trauma and other stress disorders from a nervous system lens within a practitioner’s scope of practice. It is based on a multidisciplinary intersection of physiology, psychology, ethology, biology, neuroscience, indigenous healing practices, and medical biophysics and has been clinically applied for more than four decades. It is the life’s work of Dr. Peter A. Levine.
The SE approach releases traumatic shock, which is key to transforming patterns that get stuck and impact people’s daily life. It can be used to support the resolution of PTSD and developmental attachment trauma. It offers a framework to assess where a person is “stuck” in the fight, flight or freeze responses and provides clinical tools to resolve these fixated physiological states.
SE provides effective skills appropriate to a variety of healing professions including mental health, medicine, physical and occupational therapies, bodywork, addiction treatment, first response, education, and others. These SE skills support healing professionals holistically apply their work in supporting individuals and groups.
Information sourced from traumahealing.org
Full article can be viewed at- https://traumahealing.org/se-101/
What Does Each Session Look Like?
Somatic Experiencing Touch Session
So what does Somatic Experiencing Touch work do exactly?
SE Touch works on supporting the central nervous system to come back into regulation/security within our bodies.
Initially, we will begin with focusing on co-regulating safe touch on the Kidney adrenals, brain stem, digestive system, and scar tissues.
By providing co-regulating touch to these areas, the capacity for true/authentic regulation to occur within the Parasympathetic nervous system increases.
Then, as the clients system is feeling more secure/regulated, we then will focus on coupled dynamics and self protective responses within the nervous system. (Allowing for trauma to be re-organized and regulation to come in)
Number of sessions? This depends, each person has a unique nervous system.
Who is this helpful for? Those with attachment wounds, or any trauma from pre-verbal/early childhood. And for those who have developed medical/auto immune conditions due to the trauma that occurred in childhood.
SE touch is about empowering the central nervous system to come back into regulation, to feel more secure within our bodies, to enhance the ability to have choice and agency. To have our body working in coherence 🙏
SE Touch also provides an experience to build somatic trust with a safe practitioner to help move out of flight, fight, freeze and into ventral vagal - tend and befriend.
SE touch helps us experience embodiment with a safe/empathetic witness.
This encourages empowerment for the client's innate ability to heal within their body 🙏
"Co-regulation opens the door for a felt sense of safety. The clinicians' role to self-regulate and then co-regulate is a vital piece of therapy.
The clinician takes on the care giver role, providing secure attachment/base for the client, and together they develop new neural pathways for regulation."
-Nurturing Resilience, by Kathy L. Kain, PhD and Stephen J. Terrell, PsyD
By supporting regulation, we can unlock vitality gently, within the concept of safety.
Working gently to support the client, in access to her survival physiology, to experience a survival effort in completion.
Somatic Experiencing Therapy Session
Using SE techniques developed by Dr. Peter Levine I assist my clients in the regulation of the nervous system. When trauma occurs an intense energetic charge is created in the system, and if not properly resolved it can store in the body affecting the central nervous systems ability to regulate itself. SE therapy helps the client release the stored charge, which allows the body to return to normal working order.
Meet Your Somatic Experiencing Touch Practitioner
Whitney Breshears, LPC SEP
A Somatic Experiencing Practitioner with more than 10 years of experience in trauma therapy. Having previously worked with an Inpatient Facility for children and as an outpatient therapist with Therapeutic Foster Care. Whitney continues to work with children, adolescents and adults, focusing on developmental and attachment trauma.
Whitney has also completed extensive trauma training, including but not limited to Somatic Experiencing, EMDR, Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TFCBT), Play Therapy and Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy. Whitney is also trained in Somatic Touch, which combines Somatic Experiencing with the latest research in touch for trauma therapist. She is currently finishing advanced touch training in Seattle, WA with leading researcher in the field, Kathy L. Kain.
Due to her own struggle with an autoimmune disease, Whitney was drawn to Somatic Psychology, after determining that her health struggles were a result of how her body was processing and holding onto emotional and early life experiences. As a result, Whitney offers an intuitive and highly skilled healing process that blends her trauma training with traditional and holistic modalities to meet the needs of each unique individual and nervous system. Whitney is also trained in Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy.
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