TRAUMA THERAPY / SOMATIC EXPERIENCING

 

The goal of trauma healing is to feel completely at ease in your body, ready for connection and exploration. It means being prepared for action when necessary while also being able to rest without restlessness.

 

Understanding Trauma

 

Peter Levine, the founder of Somatic Experiencing, emphasizes that trauma is not primarily a psychological process, but a biological one. The issue is not the story itself, but rather its impact on the nervous system—which can begin as early as one month after conception in the womb.

 

How Can We Release Unprocessed Traumatic Stress?

To better understand the healing process, it’s important to recognize how trauma disrupts the autonomic nervous system (ANS). The ANS functions automatically, beyond our conscious control, regulating mental, emotional, and physical balance. It coordinates billions of processes in the body, but when thrown off balance by trauma, its ability to self-regulate is compromised.

 

The restoration of this autonomic nervous system is called self-regulation. When everything is functioning properly, our body automatically performs this self-regulation through: 

 

• The sympathetic nervous system (accelerator): responsible for action and response to threat. It increases heart rate, breathing, and sensory awareness. It stimulates, sharpens focus, and prepares the body for survival.

• The parasympathetic nervous system (brake and delay): it slows down and conserves energy (freeze). Essential for rest, digestion, and recovery. It regulates blood flow, digestion, and heart rate. When disrupted by trauma, it may cause shutdown, emotional numbness, or chronic fatigue.

   

 

Regulating the nervous system means learning how to balance acceleration and deceleration—helping the body to speed up when necessary and slow down when safe.

Twelve cranial nerves emerge from the brainstem, while about thirty-three spinal nerves arise from the spinal cord. These include sensory nerves, which send information from the body to the brain, and motor nerves, which send commands from the brain to the body. Remarkably, 80% of communication travels from the body to the brain, while only 20% moves from the brain to the body. Trauma disrupts this vital communication, leading to dysregulation and imbalance.

 

Healing trauma requires re-establishing this connection, allowing the nervous system to restore its natural rhythm and regain a sense of safety and resilience.

 

Restoring Communication: The Goal of Trauma Therapy

 

The goal of trauma therapy is to restore communication between the body and brain, allowing the nervous system to regain balance and self-regulate naturally.

 

People who have experienced intense or overwhelming events often remain in a state of ‘functional freeze’ at an unconscious level. This means that, although they continue to function in daily life, their nervous system is stuck in survival mode.

 

The Role of the Vagus Nerve in Trauma 

 

The vagus nerve (cranial nerve X) is also called the ‘wandering nerve’ because it extends throughout the entire body, influencing all major organs. It has a dorsal and a ventral branch; it spreads deep throughout the entire body and influences all organs. In trauma therapy, working with the vagus nerve helps to regulate the nervous system and restore the body's natural state of safety and balance.

 

The freeze response occurs via the dorsal vagus when connection (seeking help), fighting, and fleeing are all impossible.

 

The first survival strategy is connection, instinctively activated by the ventral vagus—also known as the social connection system.

 

The ventral vagus connects the heart with the face, eyes, and ears. For example, when faced with a threat, we instinctively look around to locate danger, check whether help is available, and hold our breath to sharpen our hearing.

 

If connection with an ally is not possible, we are left with fight or flight. If neither is possible, the body shuts down and freezes.

 

The dorsal vagus controls the freeze reflex. It runs from the back of the head down to the intestines and bladder.

 

All traumatic experiences (situations of overwhelming force) involve freeze, because when you cannot fight or flee, the body has no other option. This is what makes trauma so difficult to access, even decades later—especially in cases of childhood trauma.

 

The ventral vagus is the key to restoring connection and emerging from dissociation.

 

This part of the nervous system only activates when the body instinctively feels safe. That is why safety is the number one rule in therapy and in any other relationship.

 

Our body holds all our sensations and emotions. It also forms the boundary that separates us from our environment and others. Trauma breaks this boundary, leaving us feeling unprotected. The skin is our first line of defense, while our muscles also provide a sense of separation between the self and others.

 

The skin and muscles have memory, and trauma can affect both, sometimes even leading to memory loss. Restoring connection—and therefore restoring boundaries—is essential for healing. A deeper level of boundary awareness, beyond the skin, is found in the muscles. The sense of safety is built at the belly level—the core of our being.

 

When you close your eyes and feel unrest, it means you lack a sense of safety. In such cases, rebuilding your sense of boundaries is crucial.

 

Perception of Boundaries and Safety

 

A boundary provides safety—your own personal space that belongs to you. This is mine, this is my body, these are my boundaries.

 

Source: ‘Childhood Trauma’ by Jan Bommerez

 

 

One of the least understood forms of trauma is ‘trauma from unmet basic needs.’

 

When a child's natural basic needs are not fulfilled, the organism instinctively perceives this as life-threatening and overwhelming. The associated pain is numbed by dissociation. As a result, the child begins to live defensively, rather than spontaneously and exploratively. It develops social survival strategies, which later manifest in various ways, especially in relationships.

 

When an experience is stored as trauma, it means the stress was too intense and lasted too long. The child was left alone, without anyone to provide co-regulation (comfort, touch, presence). As a result, the nervous system—the old brain—remains frozen, leaving the person with lifelong feelings of helplessness and powerlessness.

Fortunately, knowledge and awareness of this issue have grown significantly in recent years. The most important realization is that, with proper guidance, you can give your inner child or emotional brain a second chance to grow in a healthy way. As both a therapist and someone with lived experience, I am grateful every day to be able to support others in this process.

This co-regulation is the foundation of therapy. Slowing down second by second, in the shock, in the feeling, in the orienting, in the exploring, in the integrating. When this can be felt in the moment, then there is integration and healing in that moment.

 

Co-regulation is the core of therapy. It involves slowing down—moment by moment, in the shock, in the feeling, in the orienting, in the exploring, in the integrating. When this process can be fully experienced in the present moment, that is when true integration and healing take place.

 

From co-regulation to self-regulation.