Somatic Experiencing for Trauma Resolution

Somatic Experiencing is a body-aware approach that supports the nervous system in working with the effects of stress, overwhelm, and traumatic experiences. As a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP), I offer individual online Somatic Experiencing sessions for people seeking greater resilience, regulation, and connection.

Trauma can show up in many ways, including anxiety, sleep difficulties, migraines, chronic pain, numbness, disconnection, or a persistent sense of being on edge. Somatic Experiencing® offers a gentle, paced process that works with present-moment experience and the body’s natural capacity to settle, orient, and restore balance.

These Somatic Experiencing sessions are educational and non-clinical; they are not psychotherapy and do not establish a psychotherapist-client relationship. Psychotherapy is offered separately to clients located in California.

 

Here are some examples of how trauma may look:

  • Panic and Anxiety
  • Hyper vigilance
  • Nightmares
  • Difficulty sleeping
  • Addictions of all kinds
  • Eating disorders
  • Migraines
  • Gastrointestinal disorders
  • Chronic pain
  • Trouble paying attention
  • Sense of feeling disconnected
  • Numbness
  • Depression

How we can best understand how trauma both manifests and resolves is in understanding the biology of the body.

During a traumatic event the body experiences, at the cellular level, a surge of intense energy that can often stay stuck in the system. It is as though this stuck energy freezes there, taking hold of our vitality and strength and replacing it with often debilitating symptoms.

This freeze response holds the key to understanding trauma. Once aroused, our survival responses of fight or flight need to come to successful completion in order for our nervous systems to come back to a state of rest and balance.

When we are unable to complete these responses, our nervous systems become frozen. This frozen, immobilized state may look calm on the outside, but internally the state can be compared to what happens in a car when we step on the brake and the accelerator at the same time. A huge amount of energy is revving, creating the symptoms of trauma.

The Somatic Experiencing approach, developed by Peter Levine, is a gentle therapy for resolving and discharging unresolved survival energies, thereby healing the symptoms of trauma.

 

" I feel fabulous and so much in my body. Since working with Cara, I am more grounded and more on this planet than I've ever been. I'm able to live in each moment and breath and just be with myself." ~RG

"Cara is an extremely sensitive, gifted, and intuitive healer who offers post-traumatic stress therapy using a unique combination of verbal and somatic techniques. Cara's methods enabled me to recover relatively quickly from a very difficult life trauma without any negative physical impact. I highly recommend her to anyone who could benefit from a gentle, but extremely effective and rapid treatment modality." ~AT

"Thank you Cara, for staying with me through a difficult period of traumatic stress. Your presence and gentle approach along with practical tools I could use in my day to day life, have been a great help. I feel more ease and comfort overall in my life." ~PL

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