Why do body-centered psychotherapy?

 

Some aspects of traumatization are body-based and don't respond to ordinary methods of therapy. To mention just a few, there are frozen states, body memories, ANS dysregulation, flashbacks, speechless terror, and avoidance. Addressing these at the cognitive (thinking) or emotional level can be terrifying and won't change a thing. Unless, of course, it makes you swear you'll never do THAT again! Working under the level of emotions is gentle and safe and allows the physiology of trauma to self-correct. (That's a fancy way of saying the symptoms resolve.)

But just as there are frightening body sensations, there are also vast resources that lie within just waiting to be tapped. A felt sense of safety is just one of those resources, and many people that have been traumatized have lost or never experienced what it is like to truly feel safe. Many traumatized people lose the ability to experience their body as a source of pleasure, but it's in there. The ability to defend yourself (i.e. set boundaries) is another resource often lost in the wake of trauma, but it can be reinstated. The possibilities for somatic resources are endless!

Why are somatic resources important?
• Because trauma took control away from you, and resourcing gives it back.
• Which would you rather have, a therapist telling you to do things you already know but have trouble doing? Or the ability to do what you haven't been able to? Resources that are embodied are the most powerful and satisfying of all.
• Tapping resources at the body level integrates them. Instead of coping being effort-full, it becomes effort-less and automatic as resources integrate.
• Somatic resources give you portable "help," so you can have it anytime you need it from within, not just when you're in the therapist's office.
• Resourcing puts control of your body back in your hands so you're no longer at the mercy of knee-jerk reactions*.
• Resourcing prepares a person to better weather work on core trauma issues, and keeps you stable when the going gets rough.
Your body is the common thread that runs through all of your life experiences. Sensorimotor psychotherapy works with your state of being and how you experience the world. Instead of having to keep reminding yourself to cope, your energy is freed up to experience life as it is now. When your state of being is changed for the better, it is reflected in the way you think about life, look at things, and feel about things--including yourself.

So why do body-centered therapy? Because the body already knows how to heal itself and all we have to do is tap into it.
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* You will not, nor should you, lose your ability to instinctively and reflexively respond in the face of true danger. What integrates is the reaction to threat or danger that was there in the past.