Somatic Experiencing Research Articles

Listening to the conversations of our bodies: Somatic intersubjectivity in psychotherapy

ABSTRACT This article explores the opportunities for client and therapist when somatic therapies and psychotherapy are brought together. Through a case study I illustrate how understandings and interventions from Intersubjective Self Psychology, Somatic Experiencing®, and Integral Somatic Psychology™ all supported the client’s emergence from profoundly somatised childhood traumatic loss, allowing them to restore thwarted developmental processes, rebuild affect tolerance, process their grief, and inhabit their life in new ways. I explicate how a deeply embodied psychotherapeutic relationship, where the conversations between the client and therapist’s bodies are held at the centre of the therapeutic relationship, can support reducing client re-traumatisation in therapy, meet early developmental needs, re-link affective layers allowing somatic and psychological (re)integration. I also explore the impact on, and possibilities for, the therapist of combining somatics and psychotherapeutic principles and techniques.

Somatic small body map protocol: renegotiating trauma with LGBTQIA+ service users

ABSTRACT Background LGBTQIA+ service users suffer microaggressions on a daily basis within a heterosexual, cisgendered society. They may become so accustomed to feeling unsafe that this becomes unconsciously considered the norm. Context A Somatic Small Body Map Protocol has been devised that introduces a lived experience of a safe environment. The protocol has been used with twenty service users in an individual setting. This paper explores specific responses from three different service users. Approach The protocol integrates psychodynamic art therapy with Somatic Experiencing in order to create a guided process that pendulates between somatic verbal feedback and the lived experience of the creative process, moving back and forth between inner sensations and their visual expression on paper, changing constantly in response. Outcomes The service users report positive feedback following the protocol that includes reduced anxiety, greater awareness of the effects of social homophobia on their psychological and physiological states and improved ability to contact difficult emotions without being overwhelmed. Conclusions The protocol may be useful within art therapy as a somatic tool to renegotiate trauma connected to microaggressions, increase awareness of bodily sensations and support the capacity to tolerate potentially overwhelming emotions. Implications for research The necessity of integrating somatic techniques when working with trauma is widely acknowledged. The protocol offers a structured tool to facilitate this, and specific training is being organised for its use. It may be adapted for use with other minority identities or in general to renegotiate any situation where a person has felt unsafe. Plain-language summary People who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual or otherwise differ (LGBTQIA+) from heteronormative conventions concerning gender, biological sex or sexual orientation can often feel unsafe outside their home. They may be so accustomed to this, they don’t consider it unusual. To help change this, the art therapist has produced a guided process based around the completion of a small body outline that is coloured in according to the person’s physical sensations. Art therapist and service user then explore together what could be represented in the area external to the body outline in order to help the person feel as safe as possible. They will proceed to track the felt sensations created by these reassuring things, and explore what changes are now necessary inside the body outline to reflect how their feelings have transformed in this new environment. This paper examines three service users’ reactions to this experience. The process combines art therapy with Somatic Experiencing, the name given to techniques that use verbal communication to work with body sensations. The therapist supports the service user in contacting their body’s sensations and describing them so that they can be represented inside the outline. The body’s response to what has been drawn can then be explored. By introducing positive things during difficult moments, the art therapist can help the person become less anxious about feeling painful things. Many people believe that working somatically with body sensations is key when working with trauma and the art therapist hopes that this guided somatic art therapy process will be useful for other art therapists. She offers specific training for its use. This process may be helpful not just for LGBTQIA + people but for everyone who has felt unsafe at any time.

‘We are all in this together’: Coping with stress during uncertain times through somatic experiencing

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on all countries and induced excessive stress and anxiety among many who are dealing with this invisible danger. Stress and anxiety originate from a threat, and chronic exposure to stressors results in feeling overwhelmed. When the coping strategies are not effective in a certain situation, the person might demonstrate conditioned reactions like fight, flight, or freeze. Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a resiliency-based approach that focuses on these conditioned responses of the nervous system to support the innate regulatory capacity of the body through interoceptive awareness and bodily sensations. This study aims to increase resiliency factors through a SE-based group counselling process. Two groups, an intervention and control group, each consisting of nine individuals, attended a group process for eight weeks. In addition to these groups, a waitlist control group was formed consisting of 31 people. In addition to pre-and-post individual interviews, The COPE-Revised and the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale were administered to both experiment groups and the waitlist control group. An ANCOVA analysis found that the group process was statistically significant for both reducing stress and developing coping strategies. Furthermore, as a result of the qualitative content analysis of the interviews, five themes emerged: hope, universality, cohesiveness, insight, and interpersonal output (new behaviour).

Towards Trauma-Informed Buddhist Spiritual Care: A Mutual Critical Correlation of Vipassana Meditation and Somatic Experiencing

Towards Trauma-Informed Buddhist Spiritual Care: A Mutual Critical Correlation of Vipassana Meditation and Somatic Experiencing

Power-From-Within: Somatic Art Therapy With an LGBTQIA+ Teenager

The integration of somatic approaches in art therapy can counter the trauma of microaggressions. By adopting a power-from-within stance, art therapists can facilitate sessions for clients to affirm their LGBTQIA+ identities while resisting the impact of discrimination. This article, co-written by an art therapist and client, provides lived experience examples of somatic art therapy: Somatic Experiencing® integrated with body tracing, and sensorimotor art therapy (the Clay Field®). The authors concur that somatically integrated art therapy has helped replace automized behavioral patterns based on fear with behavioral choices that emerged from a place of safety. Implications for therapeutic alliance and power dynamics within art therapy sessions are explored as tenets of body-based self-reflection. Keywords: Cultural humility; LGBTQIA+; sensorimotor art therapy; somatic art therapy; therapeutic alliance

트랜스젠더, 젠더비순응 및 젠더확장자를 위한 자기조절 역량 향상 프로그램 효과성 예비 연구 : 변증법행동치료 기술훈련과 소매틱경험 집단의 비교

본 연구는 트랜스젠더, 젠더비순응 및 젠더확장자(TGNCE)의 자기조절 역량을 향상시키기 위한 프로그램 효과를 검증하기 위한 예비 연구로 진행하였다. 이에 22명의 TGNCE 사람이 변증법행동치료와 소매틱경험 집단 훈련 두 가지 처치에 무선할당받았고 각 집단에 8주간 참여하였다. 혐오폭력 및 미세공격 경험을 사 전에 측정하였으며 외상후스트레스 증상, 우울 증상, 정서조절곤란, 자아존중감, 사회적 낙인감을 사전, 사 후, 4주 후에 측정하였다. 미세공격 경험은 사회적 낙인감과 유의한 정적 상관을 보였다. 변증법행동치료 집단은 정서조절곤란, 자아존중감, 사회적 낙인감에서 처치 직후와 추후 측정에서 효과가 있었고, 우울 증 상에 대하여 처치 직후 효과가 있었으나 추후에서 효과가 유지되지 않았으며, 외상후스트레스증상에서는 직후 혹은 추후 효과가 나타나지 않았다. 소매틱경험 집단의 경우, 정서조절곤란과 자아존중감에 대하여 처치 직후 효과가 있었으나 추후에서 효과가 유지되지 않았으며, 외상후스트레스증상, 우울증상, 사회적 낙 인감에서는 직후 혹은 추후 효과가 나타나지 않았다. DBT와 SE의 효과성 차이는 유의하지 않았다. 치료 프로그램에서 습득한 기술을 실생활의 문제해결로 이어질 수 있도록 하는 기술 일반화가 효과의 관건일 수 있다. 본 연구는 미세공격 경험이 TGNCE 사람의 정신건강에 미치는 영향을 드러냈고 변증법행동치료 의 효과성을 발견한 데 의의가 있다.

Dyadic trauma and attachment: A monozygotic twin study assessing the efficacy of Somatic Experiencing®

Orientation: Monozygotic twins offer a unique opportunity to examine the contagious nature of trauma in attachment dyads when one twin experiences trauma, but the other does not. Dyadic trauma is antagonistic to secure phylogenetic attachment (SPA).Research purpose: Attachment perturbations in trauma may be complicit in psychopathology. Somatic Experiencing (SE) is an effective treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and attachment focused somatic experiencing (AF-SE) resolves dyadic trauma.Motivation for the study: Monozygotic twins may share a unique form of sibling attachment, described here as monozygotic attachment, characterised by elevated somatic congruence resulting in suboptimal attachment. The study was conducted to determine whether dyadic trauma is contagious and compromises SPA and whether SE and AF-SE are effective treatments to restore SPA.Research approach/design and method: A quantitative experimental approach was used to examine the nature of trauma in monozygotic attachment and the significance of trauma in relation to psychopathology. Smartphone devices were used to record seven autonomic variables pre- and post-treatment for both twins: heart rate variability (HRV), three HRV index variables, heart rate, sleep duration and sleep disturbances. Mean and small sample t-tests were applied to determine statistical significance.Main findings: Results conclude that trauma is contagious in attachment dyads and contributes to psychopathology. Somatic Experiencing is an effective treatment for trauma. The AF-SE resolves dyadic trauma restoring SPA as the antithesis of trauma.Implications for practice: Traumatology and attachment theory may be linked theoretically to resolve trauma.Contribution/value-add: Secure phylogenetic attachment offers a new category of attachment theory that defines trauma in dyads and its relationship to psychopathology.

Healing boundaries: a teenager's experience of art therapy integrated with Somatic Experiencing

ABSTRACT Background Sensorimotor Art Therapy acknowledges the importance of Somatic Experiencing (SE) in its development as a physiological technique to treat trauma. Both disciplines seek to regulate the nervous system, favouring stress management and affect regulation. This article promotes the integration of SE within psychodynamically-oriented art therapy pathways, so that psychological and physiological techniques can compliment each other. Context This paper is based on an interview with 13-year-old Federico Gentile (pseudonym). He has had weekly individual art therapy sessions for two years. Art therapy began 15 months after he began living with his adoptive parents. Approach Trauma can be defined as the rupture of a boundary on many different levels (physiological, psychological, social). A common thread throughout the sessions was the testing and repairing of boundaries. The therapist herself found it necessary to break two boundaries: giving the user a gift and integrating SE techniques from outside our field. Outcomes The young boy (as lived-experience-author) explains how he sees and defines himself describing which interventions helped him be ‘more controlled now’ and see his life ‘in colour, instead of just grey’. Conclusions Treating trauma requires a complex approach, focused in the here and now, ignoring the mind’s theory of ‘should’ and responding to the body’s ‘felt sense’. Implications for Research SE has enhanced my ability to work physiologically, integrating bodily sensations with affect and imagery. Further research could offer guidelines towards an integrative approach that could be useful to other psychodynamically trained art therapists working with attachment trauma. Plain-language summary Trauma has physical as well as psychological consequences and therefore needs healing in both these aspects. A form of art therapy known as ‘sensorimotor’ that focuses on bodily sensations and muscular (motor) responses has been developed for this purpose (pioneered by Cornelia Elbrecht), based on knowledge gained from Somatic Experiencing (pioneered by Peter Levine). I am trained in Sensorimotor Art Therapy and have found that further training in Somatic Experiencing is helping me introduce this outlook into my art therapy practice, allowing me to shift my focus when necessary from the art materials to the body, exploring the body’s response as it interacts with the materials. I believe this could be useful to other art therapists who wish to broaden their horizons in this direction. I interviewed 13-year-old Federico Gentile (pseudonym) in order to present his experience of art therapy from his perspective. At the time of interview, Federico had done art therapy with me for 2 years. We began sessions 15 months after he began living with his adoptive parents. I find it helpful to think of trauma as an experience that goes beyond our limits in many different ways: it challenges our physical, mental and social limits of toleration. As such it is no surprise that our therapy was centred around testing limits. As the therapist, I overstepped two limits: giving the boy a gift and integrating Somatic Experiencing techniques from outside our field. Federico talks about specific things in art therapy that helped him be ‘more controlled now’ and see his life ‘in colour, instead of just grey’. There is no one answer to healing trauma and sometimes, when we are beyond our limits and don’t ‘know’ what’s right, we can only respond by ‘feeling’ what’s right. Somatic Experiencing helps us contact and trust that ‘feeling’.

Somatic Experiencing: Enhancing Psychoanalytic Holding for Trauma and Catastrophic Dissociation - Contending with the Flood and the Fog

ABSTRACT I continue here the project of interweaving principles and approaches from a somatically based trauma therapy, Somatic Experiencing (SE), into psychoanalytic treatment. I focus on patients with severe early traumas who are chronically vulnerable to states of catastrophic dissociative dissolution. When dissociation takes this form, not merely compartmentalization, but dis-mentalization, there is no self who is present, who can hear, take in, and participate in desperately needed holding and containment. Traumas in the patient’s history and mind/body, which are precariously held behind a dam of dissociation, can burst through with such violence as to annihilate any semblance of “going on being.” While this must occur in treatment, and while we must accompany our patients there, it is a terrible dilemma when the floods, and then the fog, interfere with reception of psychoanalytic provision. When this goes on for too long, it may become iatrogenic more than therapeutic. I review various forms of holding and containment, but focus on one specific type of holding, protecting the patient from annihilating impingements. While Winnicott emphasized impingements from the outer world, I extend this to impingements that burst through from within, the catastrophic states themselves. I present a case to demonstrate how my drawing upon SE substantially enhanced this form of holding, and how it interwove more broadly into my psychoanalytic ways of looking, listening, thinking, and responding. I also illustrate how a somatically based therapy, such as SE, can be interwoven in ways that are constitutive and facilitative of psychoanalytic modes of therapeutic action.

Discussion of David Levit’s “Somatic Experiencing”

ABSTRACT The following is a discussion of David Levitt’s paper “Somatic Experiencing: Enhancing Psychoanalytic Holding for Trauma and Catastrophic Dissociation Contending with the Flood and Fog.” The discussion focuses on three major points: (1) the emphasis on psychophysiological hyperarousal and containment techniques in the treatment of traumatized adults has been a significant part of the relational trauma literature for at least thirty years. This author prefers to regard the significant contributions of Somatic Experiencing Techniques as evolutionary rather than revolutionary, building on much of the literature that has come before. (2) The notion that the self is not present during episodes of severe dissociation is challenged. This discussion asserts that during such episodes the patient’s “selves” fragment and a complex process of desymbolization occurs. However, some aspects of self are present to “take in” the non -verbal aspects of what the therapist has to offer. And finally (3) the relationship between patient and therapist is both a container in the Bionian sense, but also a trigger for the reenacted transference-countertransference paradigms that mark the treatment of traumatized patients. Although Levitt’s paper emphasizes the need for containment and holding, we cannot overlook the ongoing and ever-shifting presence of these self-other configurations as they saturate our therapeutic process. Here the therapist is both the container that makes treatment possible, but also the magnet that draws out these significant re-enactments.

“Looking, Standing, Moving, Connecting, Thinking,” A Psychoanalytic Mantra Through the Lens of Dissociative Disorders: Commentary on David Levit’s “Somatic Experiencing”

ABSTRACT Responding to a deficit in the psychoanalytic literature on trauma treatment, David Levit contributes a way to interweave Somatic Experiencing (SE) with psychoanalysis in the treatment of highly traumatized and dissociative patients. I agree heartily with the need for interweaving and integration that Levit notes, but I add that other trauma/dissociation treatments, including treatment of dissociative identity disorder (DID), can be integrated as well. Especially for patients with dissociative disorders, dissociation-oriented treatments are appropriate. Finally, I describe how integrations of the type Levit proposes, including other trauma/dissociation modalities, if they are guided by psychoanalytic principles, can be properly considered psychoanalysis, and come under the rubric of “trauma-analysis.”

외상 내담자의 Somatic experiencing 체험에 관한 현상학적 연구

The purpose of this study is to understand how clients with trauma would experience SomaticExperiencing (SE) as an approach to trauma therapy, and determine the structure of theexperiences. A total of six including 5 females and 1 male. The data collected were analyzedaccording to the stages of qualitative analysis based on Giorgi’s phenomenological method,which has resultingly drawn five components of experiences that clients with trauma had alongwith 26 sub-components. The components are <Having lived without noticing pain of my mindwhile my body kept speaking out>, <Using my body as a secure base>, <Observing what mybody with a scar remembers>, <Revealing wounds of their traumas entangled inside>, <Noticingchanges in body and mind>. The study results may provide useful baseline data of counselingintervention for clients with trauma for the reason that empirical basis of the experiences thatthe clients had during SE and vivid description of the counseling process has been provided,and the importance of the experience has been explored.

Clinical Considerations Regarding the Use of Touch in Psychotherapy

The use of touch in psychotherapy has been a topic of discussion since Freud stopped touching his patients. Psychology in general has moved away from utilizing touch as a therapeutic intervention. However, several body-oriented clinical approaches, such as Bioenergetic Analysis, Neo-Reichian therapy, Core Energetics, Hakomi, and Somatic Experiencing, include touch as approved interventions. This article explores how touch can be used ethically in clinical practice. Types of touch and ethical considerations are discussed as well as the need for training and more research.

Analysis of Domestic and International Research Trends in Somatic Experiencing: A Scoping Literature Review

본 연구는 주제범위 문헌 고찰을 통해 Somatic Experiencing(이하, SE) 연구 동향을 탐색하고 향후 SE를 활용한 다양한 연구의 가능성을 확인하고자 실시하였다. 이를 위해 2007년부터 2021년까지 국 내외에서 발표된 SE 연구 동향을 파악하고 기존 연구를 분석하여 SE 연구의 방향을 알아보고자 행 하였다. SE의 효과와 주요 요소라는 연구 주제에 해당하는 총 19편의 문헌이 선정되었다. 많은 논문 에서 SE가 외상 증상과 삶의 질적 향상에 미치는 결과를 보여주었다. 그리고 SE의 핵심요소로 내외 적 자원을 활용하는 점과 회복탄력성이 있음을 언급하였다. SE 연구는 초기 단계에 있다. 본 연구 결과를 기초하여 이와 관련한 연구에 도움이 될 수 있으리라 본다.

Somatic Implication of Somatic Experiencing® for Trauma Healing

Somatic Implication of Somatic Experiencing® for Trauma Healing

A systematic review of somatic intervention treatments in PTSD: Does Somatic Experiencing® (SE®) have the potential to be a suitable choice?

A systematic review of somatic intervention treatments in PTSD: Does Somatic Experiencing® (SE®) have the potential to be a suitable choice?

Australian Psychotherapy for Trauma Incorporating Neuroscience: Evidence- and Ethics-Informed Practice

Currently there are several psychotherapy modalities utilising theory and research from neuroscience in treatment frameworks for mental health and recovery from trauma. In Australia this includes: (i) the Conversational Model of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, a contemporary psychodynamic approach used for treating Borderline Personality Disorder and other trauma-related disorders; (ii) Electroencephalogram Neurofeedback, a brain training therapy which has been used as an adjunct to counselling/psychotherapy in traumatic stress and developmental trauma; and (iii) Somatic Experiencing, an integrative mind-body approach based on body responses to threat and fear, especially thwarted attempts to enact fight or flight in the face of threat. These modalities have a promising but still-limited evidence base. This paper explores the role of different types of evidence to frame a descriptive review of the current evidence base available for clinicians practicing in these three modalities. While large clinical trials can provide evidence of comparative effectiveness, case studies, observational, qualitative and practice-based enquiry can assist in discovering other aspects of therapy important for individual clients and practitioners. Existing frameworks of evidence- and ethics-informed health and clinical decision-making suggest an ethical approach can incorporate new, developing and evidence-building therapies. Recommendations include careful consideration of informed consent for therapy including disclosure of efficacy and safety, and specific to psychotherapies incorporating neuroscience, a need for practitioners to reflectively assess their own knowledge, competence, heuristic approaches and biases.

Travma Tedavisinde Farklı Bir Yaklaşım: Somatik Deneyimleme

Travma Tedavisinde Farklı Bir Yaklaşım: Somatik Deneyimleme

Continuing the Dialogue between Psychoanalysis and Somatic Experiencing: Reply to Bass, Leddick, Levine, Blakeslee, Sylvae, and Lombardi

I had expected that bringing together psychoanalysis and Somatic Experiencing (SE) might be controversial. That expectation was certainly not disappointed. Although Bass resonated with much of my thinking, he also challenged the whole idea of integrating these two forms of treatment. Leddick provided extensive critique, though more about how I drew upon SE, not so much the fact that I did. While Lombardi appreciated aspects of my work with the patient, he utterly rejected the whole notion of drawing upon SE, viewing it as mechanistic, simplistic, narrowly behavioral, and merely about modulation. To address these critiques, I revisit here the clinical process with Sue, highlighting how SE is about so much more than just modulation. SE can deepen our forms of analytic holding and can help patients (re)connect with their bodies in ways that are emotionally alive, intimate, and healing. In revisiting the clinical process, I draw upon Levine, Blakeslee, and Sylvae’s in-depth discussion of SE: its goals, principles, and techniques. Though I agree with Bass’s and Lombardi’s concerns about “integration” of psychoanalysis and SE, I do not propose integration of the two, but rather interweaving of one into the other. In essence, I seek here to continue to illustrate how SE can interweave into our work, enriching our psychoanalytic ways of looking, listening, and responding.

Somatic Experiencing: In the Realms of Trauma and Dissociation—What We Can Do, When What We Do, Is Really Not Good Enough

We know that the deepest disturbances must be reached to foster the deepest changes and growth. But what do we do when some of our patients suffer relentlessly through dissociated, dysregulated states of catastrophic proportons, when these states are repetitive but not generative, when our psychoanalytic forms of holding, provision, and containment are just not good enough? After a number of years in psychoanalytic practice, the author trained in Somatic Experiencing (SE), a non-psychoanalytic, bio-psychological model for treating trauma. He presents a psychotherapy case that began before his SE training and continued during and after. He illustrates how SE perspectives and approaches can inform and enrich our psychoanalytic ways of looking, listening, and responding. He emphasizes how SE can supplement and enfold into psychoanalytic processes of intersubjective regulation, crucial for patients who are exquisitely vulnerable to severe overactivation (overwhelming anxiety, panic, terror, agitation, rage, explosiveness, etc.) and/or underactivation (freeze, numbness, emptiness, deadness, etc.). He discusses the relationship between SE and major psychoanalytic paradigms (Classical, Kleinian, Winnicottian, Relational, and Self Psychology), looking at points of convergence, divergence, synergy and tension. He shares a professional and personal journey of interweaving SE into psychoanalytic treatment.