#somatic trauma therapy

[somaticreawakening]

Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy is a holistic approach to trauma therapy that emphasizes the relationship between the body, mind, and emotions. This therapeutic approach recognizes that traumatic experiences can be stored in the body and that healing requires engaging both the body and mind in the process.

[jesusinstilettos]

Your life gets significantly better the day you stop pretending you’re a robot. You’re a silly little mammal, act like it motherfucker. Your ancestors made tools with rocks and sticks, ran around a lot, had sex, lived in communities, ate when they were hungry, rested, chanted together, felt the sun, breathed outside air, listened to the trees and birds. You have biological needs bitch!!!

[lets-talk-spirituality]

Let’s talk about: The Sacral Chakra

The sacral chakra, the second chakra located between the root and solar plexus, governs the reproductive system, pelvic floor and gluteus muscles, deep lower abdominals, and lower stomach area.

When people say they have a deep knowing, they are referring to the seat of sacral chakra energy. The sacral chakra is what houses our energy of creation, our legacy. It is the portal through which we materialize things we sense in other dimensions. It is where the kundalini awakening begins. It is where life begins. The only place where beings from other dimensions can translate into our dimension.

The sacral chakra is tied to the color orange, so consider eating oranges or surrounding yourself with orange to help feed some energy back into this chakra system.

Womb Trauma: Anatomically Female Body Karma

From histories of forcible impregnation, rape, forced abortion, miscarriage, stillborn, death in childbirth, death for not producing the right gender child, forced incest, incestual impregnation, and more horrors, the female body holds karma that male bodies do not.

There is something that happens when your DNA and another’s mix within you. Female bodies must integrate the DNA of the one who’s child she carries. Being forced to hold children from traumatic circumstances has created vast gendered karma that a lot of us women and modern aware men are attempting to work through as a team.

Women’s bodies have been used to bring evil into this world, have been used as a portal of the worst kind. It has brought a depravity and savagery to the human race. Men fear this power we hold, the power of the portal. And that fear is the basis of patriarchy and its need to protect women. It is why they subjugate us and hate us, something I’ve been thinking so deeply about recently. That is why male bodies have always protected female bodies. It’s not only about children, it’s what those children can become, can do.

For some women, choosing not to have children in pursuit of other passions is their own desired way of clearing the karma. For some, choosing to be a stay at home mom is their way of clearing the karma. That is why it’s not fair to judge women for their reproductive capabilities or decisions. Having the physical ability to give birth or not does not take away the creative power of the womb, even if it doesn’t “work” the way the patriarchy thinks it should.

Prostate Trauma: Anatomically Male Body Karma

Biologically male bodies do not have wombs, but they do have a prostate which is an important part of their reproductive system. This prostate holds the male seed of power and pleasure. It is no mistake that homophobic fears have been instilled within the human consciousness as a way to divorce men from ownership of their own pleasure in sex. It allows them to put all their sexual desires onto women. But what is lost is a core piece of their humanity.

I think it’s important for men to practice learning sexually about themselves with exploration on their own, without the crutch of porn or a partner. I believe men who may try prostate milking for themselves would allow a well of pleasure to free them from sexual addictions and other desires that are really a desire to connect more deeply to their own sexual center. It may result in crying. A lot of healing I’ve done through sexuality and orgasming has led to a breaking down of my defenses and I cry like a baby, so I can imagine many men who try to connect to themselves this way will at first feel grief for the self abandonment. The goal would be to hopefully reconnect yourself enough to where that outpouring of self love is ecstatic and not shameful or heartbreaking.

One of the cruelest parts of patriarchy is the way it shames men for sexual urges and completely disconnects them from their own agency as owners of sexual desires for purely their own exploration and pleasure, not tied to the masculine pursuit of fucking/subordinating sexually women (I have anew feminist theory I’m working on where I’m starting to think all sex is subjugation for women in a patriarchal structure, but I haven’t fledged it out, anyway, even in a female dominant sexual position I’d argue it’s still female subjugation because the change in power dynamics is the exact thing that makes it erotic, which therefore upholds the power imbalance) or procreation.

Circumcision Trauma: Horrors for all genitals

I remember asking my grandmother about female circumcision as a child because a model on America’s Next Top Model was mutilated as a child. She told me it was the removal of the clitoris in women. Female circumcisions are performed in the Middle East, and other places as a way to control female sexual pleasure. Because many Abrahamic religions teach that women are the root cause of male sexual desire, it is thought to be “clean” and “pure” to make sex literally only about procreation and not about pleasure.

Male circumcisions also reduce male pleasure by desensitizing the head of the penis. Male circumcisions are no longer medically necessary but are upheld for aesthetic or religious purposes. They are extremely common in America and it is a huge first trauma to a male child.

Both of these traumas are unnecessary and cruel in my opinion and there is healing to be had around genital mutilation for all circumcised women and men and for those who had their genitalia altered, such as those with ambiguous genitalia.

**I have heard my females friends talk negatively about uncircumcised penises and how they are gross, look weird, etc. If you are someone who has negative feelings towards the natural male penis, I urge you to heal this. Do not uphold the idea that child genital mutilation is okay because of your own ingrained concept of what a male penis should look like. If you reproduce, consider what it means as a human to believe you have the right to make choices about someone else’s body in such a profound way. It’s a violation of boundaries and personal rights**

Signs of a blocked sacral chakra:

- reproductive issues, menstruation issues, hormonal imbalances

- sexual performance issues, such as low libido (low for your normal, I know some people are asexual), inability to orgasm, pain during penetration and dryness for women, inability to stay hard for men

- fear around being seen or sharing yourself with someone

- literally blocked when it comes to writers block or some other block in your creative process,

- in men specifically, homophobia which was used to keep men away from the power of their prostate

- fear or disgust with sex or genitals

Ways to heal the sacral chakra:

- hip opening stretches/yoga

- orgasming to sacral chakra solfeggio sounds, for male bodies, prostate milking and orgasming can help clear held trauma

- strengthening your pelvic floor, lower abdominals, glutes, hip flexors through exercise

- twerking and somatic dance, belly dancing, pole fitness, any exercise that makes you feel sexy, is sensuous and can help you allow yourself to be in the sexual power of your body

- painting or engaging in some other form of art that requires you to transform immaterial matter into material, such as turning a thought into a painting or a song, creating a business, taking something and transforming it into something else

- for those with wombs, womb healing is a big thing that can help you heal very deep ancestral karma we carry in our sacral chakra.

- look into ways to heal your cycle, become more intune with your menstrual cycle and its rhythms, consider getting off birth control or approaching hormonal and reproductive health more holistically (if it works for you! Stay on birth control if it works for you! Get off if it doesn’t)

- working through any sexual trauma you may have, it’s very challenging but it’s rewarding, but follow what feels good and right for you in the moment, don’t push through something if it feels wrong, don’t override your system to give into sexual requests of partners

-connect to your body through exercise, begin to really feel your muscles and your material form, learn how to use breath to engage muscles and how to move your body, learn your body deeply, become the expert on yourself

- drink a glass of orange juice a day and imagine it cleansing your sacral chakra

-kegle exercises!

- being naked, or learning to embrace your body in its rawest forms

- massage and other forms of self love that involve touching yourself, so like a face mask, putting on lotion, painting nails, hair masks, hair brushing, things that make you connect with your body

- sweat! I love sitting in dry saunas to just sweat, it helps to cleanse your body including your sacral chakra and other more grounded chakras like root and solar plexus too.

[strangetownbellagoth]

Life with bpd, unhealed trauma is a hell of a drug. Like.. ?? I want to be finally free and I know what to do even but it's so difficult for me to relax and to do my dbt and somatic experiencing exercises. Im in functional freeze and Im just bed rotting, doom scrolling and when Im not in functional freeze Im in fight/flight filled with anger and stress but I can't release it.

[unwelcome-ozian]

[traumaalchemy]

[amyintherapy]

Embodying Feelings & Disassociation

Trigger warning: There will be brief mention of self harm and sexual abuse in this post.

I started therapy for the first time at the end of 8th grade. I was 13. I got pretty lucky and was a good match with my first therapist. Still, it took me a while to start to really open up to him about the hard stuff. I want to say that it was probably at least six months before I told him about my sexual abuse. I don't know when I told him about my experiences with disassociation, but I remember it being extremely hard to tell him, similar to the SA info. At the time, I had heard of PTSD, but I knew of it as something soldiers get from witnessing war. I knew it could make veterans react to fireworks as if they were bombs, but that was about all I knew about it, from what I recall. I had no idea what else could 'cause' it - if anything, or what the symptoms really were. I had never heard of disassociation.

So, when I'd get really triggered and felt like I was watching myself from up in the clouds...I thought this was something similar to a delusion or hallucination. I worried it might be something like schizophrenia that I was experiencing. As a result, it was a super scary thing to share. But I did, and he explained what disassociation was. When I was later referred out for diagnosis and meds, I was diagnosed with PTSD with features of depersonalization and derealization. I think I was 14 then.

So, I've been familiar with disassociation for a long time now. I don't know exactly when, but somewhere along the way I learned that it wasn't just when I felt like I was watching myself (which has always been a fairly rare occurrence for me), but also when I felt numb and disconnected from myself, which I experience more often. I started self-harming really young, and cutting in middle school and throughout most of high school. I don't remember when I realized that cutting was something that could take me out of disassociation. I think it was before I really knew what disassociation was, I just knew it helped me to sort of come out of the "frozen depression" type feeling. After a few years of therapy as a teen I was able to stop cutting. My mental health was in a better place, I had gained some coping skills, I hated myself less, etc. But I'd still disassociate at times, and I didn't know how to get rid of it other than to wait it out. So that's what I've done for years now when I've experienced it. And that's been okay, but I'd rather be able to "snap out of it" if I could. So, a recent experience that I had feels like a big deal.

For 2 or 3 weeks I was stuck in disassociation. My mind kept circling back to stuff related to identifying as being emotionally neglected. So I knew that was the cause somehow. Yet, I wasn't really feeling much. I was kind of numb emotionally and physically, while my mind felt extra hyperactive. I was making a lot of realizations in my head, but they didn't feel true, at the same time. I think most people have experiences like this. Examples might be...logically I know if I make a mistake, that is just me being human and is not a good reason for anyone to hate me. Yet when I make a mistake that impacts someone I care about, I still can't help but FEEL like they might hate me now, even though logically I know that isn't likely. Or, logically I know that the odds that a sound I just heard outside at midnight were likely a racoon or something...but I can't help but feel worried that it's a "bad guy". I have plenty of discrepancies between my logical and emotional brains that I've just kinda learned to live with for the most part. But over this few week period, I was changing my perspective of my childhood logically, but not emotionally, and that disconnect was new for me in this specific area. I felt sort of stuck, unable to continue processing these pieces of my childhood because my brain and my emotions/feelings were so far apart. Both of my therapists do some somatic work, but our couples counselor (who we basically see for 'regular' therapy that we just do together vs stereotypical couples counseling) does a lot more with us that is somatic. Nearly every session we have with our couples therapist he'll try to help us embody our feelings about something. I find it awkward, emotionally draining and sometimes embarassing - but it also feels quite powerful. He's also really into AEDP therapy, which is a type of therapy that talks about disassociation/numbing, etc as a defense from feeling a core feeling. For those reasons, I thought that speaking with our couples therapist about this might be a better fit than my 'main' therapist who I see weekly and therefore just have a deeper relationship with. During the appointment I explained my dissociation, sense of being kinda stuck or frozen, and how I knew it was related to processing being emotionally neglected, but how when I talk about it I wasn't feeling any feelings. It was all 'in my head' and not 'in my heart'. There was this big disconnect. He agreed with my assessment that I had unresolved/unfelt feelings. I don't remember exactly how we got there, but he asked me some questions that led to me sharing a specific phrase that I remember being said to me as a kid. "What the hell were you thinking?" It was phrased as a question rather than a statement, but I wasn't expected to actually answer the question. At times, I thought I had good reason for doing whatever I did, and I would have liked to explain, as it felt like they were assuming the worst possible intentions, which weren't my actual attentions at all. But I felt like I couldn't respond as it would just upset them more. Even though it was a question, responding would be taken as 'talking back'. He took the implied answer, and asked me what my first thought would be today if someone told me "you're stupid."

Honestly? My knee-jerk response is "....yeah."

Having to admit that out loud brought the emotions. Tightness in my chest, burning behind both ears, anxiety, a little anger, and some sadness. A few tears. The therapist told me to try to relax my body and let it out. I tried, but only managed a couple more tears. He had me turn to my partner and try to express to him what it felt like as a kid to have things like that said to me. This brought emotion up again. It's so hard to even look at him when I'm on the edge of spilling over with my emotions. He is such a safe person to me, that just seeing him tears down all my defenses. Although the whole point of this appointment was to try to drag out emotion...the parts of me that try to avoid it are so strong. I struggled to look at him, and it took me a while to find words to try to explain. But I did...and I collapsed into his chest and really cried. It didn't feel good, of course. But I felt so much lighter after this, and I had this sense of unthawing and waking up. I had never experienced disassociation being removed that quickly in any way besides self harm before. It was really cool.

Longterm, I want to learn how to push myself through 'exercises' like this so that I can try to do this on my own. But it was really cool to see that even if I currently need assistance from a therapist to get myself to 'go there' right now, that I seem to have found a tool to move through disassociation now. I am back to feeling like myself which is awesome, but I also have made big jumps in how I'm perceiving my childhood now. The idea that I was neglected doesn't just seem like something I logically believe, I FEEL like it's true now. And I've jumped a step farther ahead, realizing I was actually emotionally abused as well - and that feels true, too. As I said in a previous post, I kinda knew that I tend to make big growth after coming out of disassociation, so I was hopeful I'd be seeing growth soon...but it's really cool that I have.

[lifebydesign66]

Releasing Trauma in Body

Trauma can manifest not only in the mind but also in the body, creating a complex interplay of emotions and physical sensations. 🌿✨

Listen to your body, honor its signals, and be patient with yourself. Remember, healing is a unique journey, and there's no one-size-fits-all approach.

Somatic therapy is a supportive way to release the trauma from a mind-body perspective. Life By Design Therapy specializes in this unique form of therapeutic healing. If this resonates with you, head to the link in our bio to schedule a free phone consultation with one of our therapists today!

[unofficialchronicle]

Resiliency is our inherent capacity to see beauty, find connection, commune with something larger than ourselves, and create- even in or after horrendous experiences

Staci K. Haines 

Staci Haines is the author of “The Politics of Trauma: Somatics, Healing and Social Justice.” She is the founder of generationFIVE and the co-founder of generative somatics.

[cat-eye-nebula]

Dr Gabor is such a Gift🙏💓 His work is filled with compassion, knowledge and truth, giving clarity into our behaviors and minds… And there is no judgment nor blame at all.

[somaticreawakening]

Integrative Somatic Therapy Practice is an approach that combines traditional talk therapy with somatic (body-cantered) techniques. It is based on the idea that the body and mind are interconnected, and that by working with the body, we can access deeper levels of healing.

[bottle-cap-baby]

the most visceral expression of sadness through words, that i've ever heard, was spoken by my english teacher, on a particularly difficult day. she said, i feel sad in my body. as someone who is currently working through years of emotional trauma with somatic therapy, this phrase hit me very hard. i feel sad in my body today. in my body.

[imtheworst-imsorry]

If i’m going to have flashbacks can i at least have some fucking context or any memory at all or anything besides the physical somatic flashback bits? It’s so fucking horrible, and it’s even worse bc i have no clue what my body is remembering, i just have to wait for the feeling of them on me to go away even though i can’t remember what happened, i can just feel it. I’d genuinely rather have a full-on all 5 senses vivid memory to go along with this so i at least know what happened. I just want to know what happened. And why was i so stupid that night why did i do all that stupid shit it was so out of character for me like genuinely what was going on?

[queeringpsychology]

Connecting with your intuition/body via Somatic Work - Daniel Siegel’s Hand model

And we’re back to the long, long series where I’m showing y’all how to connect to your body/intuition using somatic psych theory.

We’re starting with learning your own autonomic nervous system. I’m using Daniel Siegel’s hand model of the brain to visually break down what I’ve covered so far!

Here’s the video!

And here’s the transcribed version on the QueeringPsychology blog!

Please check out the previous videos/blog post or this won’t make all that much sense.

The next video and blog post will go deeper into the fight/flight response!

[helenwhiteart-blog]

Freeze response: the intersection of autism, trauma and chronic illness

Freeze response: the intersection of autism, trauma and chronic illness

Peter Levine, psychologist and creator of Somatic Experiencing, has spent well over 25 years studying the immobility or freeze response to trauma. “It is one of the three primary responses available to reptiles and mammals when faced with an overwhelming threat. The other two, fight and flight, are much more familiar to most of us. Less is known about the immobility response” (from “Waking the…

[blameitontheanon]

I gave my resignation from my main teaching gig. I have decided to go full self-managed freelance teacher and focus on my health first. I’m not getting better, I’m actually getting worse. It’s not an option anymore to just keep going, pushing through, because I don’t have the resources to push through anymore.

It is weird, to do trauma therapy and go through this process of slowly undoing all the programming and conditioning that came from your youth. It’s a very long work. They know it, when you start trauma therapy (as in talk therapy) they tell you two things: 1) you’re gonna get worse before you get better 2) it’s going to take years. From 2 to 10 years depending on your progress.

That’s why now a lot of people in my situation (chronic conditions in combo with ptsd/cptsd) are also doing body centered somatic therapy at the same time. Because if you have to spend years digging through the mud of your soul, you need to be able to be gentle to yourself in the process, and make nervous system regulation and recovery your daily priority.

Which means healing is going to be your main task and everything else comes after. It sucks, it’s hard and sad and very isolating. But when you get to that point, it’s the only choice.