"Trauma is perhaps the most avoided, ignored, belittled, denied, misunderstood, and untreated cause of human suffering" - Dr. Peter Levine.
Somatic Experiencing (SE) (https://traumahealing.org/) is a therapeutic modality developed by Dr. Peter Levine (https://www.somaticexperiencing.com/) when he studied animal behaviour and observed that despite the ongoing potential for attack, prey animals experience no long-term impact from being under a constant state of threat. Extrapolating that human beings experience similar reactions to animals when exposed to threatening situations, he explored why some human beings are unable to "shake off" the effects from the threat in the same way that animals were able to. Dr. Levine believed that it was not the traumatic event itself that causes the long-lasting effects of trauma, but an individuals' nervous system becoming overwhelmed and unable to complete a full cycle of adrenaline being pumped into the system to prepare a body for fight or flight response, and instead experiences a freeze which then becomes trapped in the body, and is unable to be released/expressed. An individual's inability to release the adrenaline is not due to a personal failing, but rather, is an acknowledgement of the lack of safety, whether from the environment, or that the threat to safety is not removed, such as in the case of a child with an abusive or emotionally unavailable caregiver or any individual within an abusive relationship. "Trauma is not what happens to us. But what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness" is Dr. Levine's belief.
An example can be shared about a young child being scared by a large, barking dog, and running to an adult caregiver after the dog is removed. In an ideal scenario, the adult caregiver would offer safety and comfort to the child, and the child, experiencing the removal of the threat and ensconced in the security of an emotionally available and attuned caregiver, would sob with their whole body; in essence, completing a full cycle of adrenaline being pumped into the body when startled by the dog, and the excess adrenaline being released through their body shaking when they are comforted in safety. This would be seen in any nature documentary where an antelope, after being chased by a lion, would play dead, and after the lion runs away to bring the rest of the herd to feast, the antelope would stand up, shake off the excess adrenaline, and would continue about their day, without any lasting effects from the threat. See an example of this enacted for an animal in the wild playing dead after being captured and then released by a predator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ox7Uj2pw-80.
Our educational school system introduces us in elementary school to music, art, creative pursuits, movement through physical education, recess, drama, and dance, and emphasizes learning through play, and reading and writing. As a child moves through the school system the amount of art, music, creativity, movement, and free play decreases to focus more time and energy on math, science, and emphasizes the value of standardized testing to determine a youth's fitness to pursue academic pursuits. What this has led to over time, is the over-emphasis on the value of logic, problem-solving, and thinking through issues from a cognitive lens, and places less importance on the value of what our body may be telling us about how we feel about things. Conceptually, this looks like an individual who primarily lives their life in their head, relying on their cognition to make their decisions, which objectively, is only a small proportion of our body, and devaluing, or negating the information being received and felt within the rest of their body. Have you ever felt a knot in your stomach, or tightness or tension in your body around a decision that you were able to make, and ignored what information your body was providing you with, and chose to move forward with a solution based solely on your thought process?
In addition to the emphasis that our society places around making primarily cognitive decisions with minimal accounting for felt body sensations, some professions, such as First Responders, are trained individuals who are taught to ignore their felt survival responses for the rigours of the job. Picture a firefighter who is running towards a burning building, ignoring their body's survival response that would intuitively tell them to run away from a fire. Over a career that spans many years, First Responders may feel "safer" remaining in a heightened state of readiness due to their developed sense of responding to threat and danger as a "normal" state of being. This builds over time; the emphasis on the value of disconnecting from one's body in order to operate purely from a cognitive functioning perspective as connecting with emotions may impact impartiality and the ability to make difficult and challenging decisions. Differentiating "safe" and "comfortable" from familiar is often an important step in therapy, and would acknowledge that abuse, neglect, and deprivation are real and not being normalized or minimized.
A feeling of disconnection would serve a young child who grew up in an abusive or neglectful household who would feel more familiar in a state of chaos or abuse rather than kindness and care, as their ability to maintain a bond with an adult caregiver due to their survival needs of food, water, and shelter would be more important than how they felt towards them. Individuals who grew up in emotionally unavailable, abusive, or neglectful households are often drawn to professions where the value of the team and belonging are attractive. This may also include childhood environments where grades/goals and high-achieving performance were the only ways to receive positive attention, and perfectionism and people-pleasing were inherent ways to minimize negative attention received. Individuals who recognize themselves in any of these descriptions often recognize that they ended up in organizations where they felt similarly treated to their childhood environments.
When an individual experiences a trigger or activation of their nervous system from a reminder of their past trauma, the more primal parts of the brain which developed first; activate your body's survival responses, which do not allow for the ability to think calmly through things. Your brain stem, also known as your reptilian brain, controls your heart rate, body temperature, blood pressure, and coordinates movement and arousal to mobilize away from the perceived threat; a reminder that your nervous system experiences emotional threats in the exact same manner as physical threats. For individuals who have experienced periods of trauma in their lives, whether this be from childhood, abusive relationships, and/or in their professions, your nervous system is primed to help you stay alive, and in conjunction with your limbic system, otherwise known as your emotional brain; which is responsible for your emotions and regulation, helps you to survive but does not always allow for your pre-frontal cortex, the part of the brain that was developed later to be fully functional and online. If you acknowledge that you feel stuck in survival mode as opposed to feeling fully present in your life, you may want to consider SE as a modality that may help you move through your past traumatic experiences, supporting you to embody self-awareness and lessening the numbing felt from dissociation and the feeling of disconnection from body and self.
SE is about restoring and building a bridge between heart and head where the value of felt body sensations is built, and to access the memory of the trauma through the body to support diffusing the trapped energy to allow for greater flow in the nervous system. Healing with this modality would emphasize the importance of what the body is trying to communicate and the immense value of SE is that it does not require any details from the trauma history. Clients who have engaged in SE as part of their therapy report that it has allowed for a decrease in anger, resentment, shame, and guilt, decreased intensity from triggers, increase in emotional regulation, increased connection with their emotions and experiencing the value of their emotions, and a deepened sense of connectedness with self, just to name a few. The work of SE builds awareness to felt sensations which can support embodiment which is the ability to experience one's self without cognitive judgment and being in the present moment without interpretation.
If you're interested as to how SE can significantly improve the quality of your life, support you to process past trauma (whether you have explicit or implicit memories of the event(s)), bear witness to your past pain and suffering, improve the intimacy in your relationships, and ability to build connection with others, I'd love to offer you healing using this modality.
Click here to hear Dr. Peter Levine describe more about the work of Somatic Experiencing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFUZHz6_0XE (10:09) and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmJDkzDMllc (27.33).
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