“Anybody can become angry — that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.”
Aristotle’s Challenge.
SOMATIC EXPERIENCING (SE)®
SE is a body-awareness approach to trauma. SE restores self-regulation lost to physical and emotional trauma and allows individuals to rediscover their sense of aliveness, relaxation and wholeness. The SE practitioner assists their clients to overcome physical and emotional symptoms by releasing the tension patterns associated with trauma.
Trauma and You.
Trauma comes to people in many forms and is not limited to the major impacts such as car accidents or sports injuries. It may also be derived from abuse, surgeries, or impact falls.
Pain, fear and anxiety can persist in the body long after the initial bruises have healed. Emotional trauma such as neglect, bad relationships and loss can be equally debilitating and cause long- term disruption to a person’s ability to respond appropriately to the world around them.
Trauma can show itself in a variety of symptoms including:
- unresolved physical pain
- anxiety, phobia, excessive thinking/worrying, and panic attacks
- depression, quick mood swings, feeling stuck or lethargic, chronic fatigue
- sleep disturbance, digestion problems, difficulty making decisions
- isolating or avoidance behaviors, shyness, shame
- attraction to extreme sports, dangerous situations, or edgy sexual play
- being extra sensitive to sound, light, touch, or transitions
- constant physical bracing
Ask Yourself
Are you feeling overwhelmed by pain, conflict or anxiety?
Does your life seem overly complex and difficult to manage?
Find it was easier not to speak up, be seen or protect yourself and these habits still persist?
Have you experienced trauma that you can’t resolve?
Are you feeling conflicted with the decisions you’ve made?
Do you feel like you have exhausted all the modalities of healing and still feel unresolved?
Have you been repeatedly told to relax and find it impossible to do so? Do you feel guilty for not following directions?
WHY YOU SHOULD TRY SOMATIC EXPERIENCING
SE has been shown to assist people suffering from persistent trauma arrive at a place of calmness and well-being.
SE can help calm frayed nerves and set you at ease to allow you to function in life.
SE helps bridge the link between tension or pain in your body and anxiety in your mind.
SE helps you find your own resources to manage the tension, anxiety and stress that is the source of your physical pain.
SE has been utilized successfully to help survivors of war, natural disasters and intense physical trauma; it can help you get through your own struggles.
HOW DOES SOMATIC EXPERIENCING WORK?
According to Peter Levine, founder of Somatic Experiencing;
“SE is not a form of exposure therapy; it specifically avoids direct and intense evocation of traumatic memories, instead approaching the charged memories indirectly and very gradually, as well as facilitating the generation of new corrective interoceptive experiences that physically contradict those of overwhelm and helplessness.” http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00093/full
The SE practitioner works by bringing attention to the internal experience with touch and guidance. The SE practitioner assists the client in releasing the tension that is the source of the dis-ease.
In the presence of safe and reliable support, we can free up the subtle tension forces in the body. You may feel more internal stability and calmness in a few sessions. This early beneficial effect sets the stage for the careful working through of past trauma and other physiological symptoms of stress and trauma.
What to Expect from Somatic Experiencing
Clients remain fully clothed and can be treated either sitting or lying down on a massage table. Physical contact through light touch facilitates the process, but is not necessary for healing and exploration to occur. SE practitioners invite you to sense into your body to notice the patterns of tension held from an accident or from the way you were always spoken to or from a life-threatening situation.
The body reflects experiences and they become an unconscious automatic habit. Intellectually we may know we are safe but the procedural habits can repeatedly warn us that the painful past experience is about to happen again. By bringing awareness to these body patterns, new options can become available and explored. It is difficult to move on from the past when our bodies automatically react as if the past were our present reality. Our bodies will defer to known patterns of survival, even if they are dysfunctional. This prevents us from making healthy clear choices and is the reason why we stay in the loop of poor choices or physical pain and the disease pathway.
SE brings awareness to what is holding us back allowing you to move through the trauma. It helps take the stuck emotion out of the body that is causing the dysfunction in the physical realm. In other ways, SE helps you find emotion that you may not have been allowed to express.
Typically after 2 or 3 sessions clients report states of more calmness, the ability to be in control when they were unable to previously. After 6 or 8 sessions, it is common to start to notice more relief.
Book your session online. Feel free to contact me for more information.
CATHERINE ALLEN
My career began in 1996 as a registered nurse working in small hospitals and outpost clinics in small towns in BC and the arctic. Realizing that health care goes beyond the ER stretcher, I began training and practising as a Rolfer of Structural Integration. For several years, I continued to study and explore other techniques such as Cranial Sacral and Visceral Manipulation that I believed would assist in changing the physical form impacted by trauma. After 16 years of structural work, I realized the deeply ingrained patterns of my clients were not being met and my goal has always been to find the most effective way to aid the release of long held physical patterns. These patterns are driven by emotion and survival physiology.
Within the framework of Somatic Experiencing, I have incorporated touch work to assist in relieving the emotional impact of physical trauma such as accidents or falls; as well as to facilitate a physical response for early childhood trauma where words are not always accessible. Speaking about our histories is part of the healing experience but not to be disregarded are our other senses that gathers information to help us make sense of how we relate in the world. When many of these facets have been in a state of freeze or never allowed to develop, the touch work allows the client to become more familiar with how their body may hold stress or avoid it in order to survive. This survival patterning that has been incorporated into their bodies causes physical dysfunction, disrupts sleep and leaves a sense of anxiety or helplessness. SE touch has been instrumental to me, in assisting client’s transition from a reactive, defensive body state to one of calm and balance. Throughout my exploration of healing I have found that SE incorporated with gentle touch allows the body to speak what the voice cannot.
I worked for short stints in the Arctic as an outpost nurse and share what I learned in the northern communities along with my Revelstoke practice. I am happy to answer any questions you might have, feel free to call or email me. It is my honour to have clients trust, me to find the space to heal when it is often been shameful or overwhelming to touch into these parts of their lives.
Contact Me
Catherine Allen
Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP), IFS Informed
Registered Therapeutic Counsellor (RTC) ACCT #2785
Somatic Experiencing Practitioner
107 6th Street West
(Studio is a silver building, located behind the house, accessed from the alley)
Revelstoke, BC
1-250-814-9842