Understanding Somatic Healing and Attachment Therapy
In this episode, Lisa Dawn answers common questions about what a somatic healing session looks like.
She explains the individualized and nuanced approach of somatic and attachment therapy using a metaphor of a chef preparing a unique dish. Lisa delves into how metaphors and storytelling impact brain function, the correlation between attachment styles and brain development, and how sessions are tailored to meet a client's specific needs.
She discusses the importance of addressing trapped experiences in the body, the interplay between nervous system regulation and attachment, and how therapy can help release survival stress for a more fulfilled life. The episode concludes with insightful quotes on trauma and healing from Gabor Maté and Adya Shanti.
Understanding Somatic Healing and Attachment Therapy
In this episode, Lisa Dawn answers common questions about what a somatic healing session looks like.
She explains the individualized and nuanced approach of somatic and attachment therapy using a metaphor of a chef preparing a unique dish. Lisa delves into how metaphors and storytelling impact brain function, the correlation between attachment styles and brain development, and how sessions are tailored to meet a client's specific needs.
She discusses the importance of addressing trapped experiences in the body, the interplay between nervous system regulation and attachment, and how therapy can help release survival stress for a more fulfilled life. The episode concludes with insightful quotes on trauma and healing from Gabor Maté and Adya Shanti.
Greetings, my friends, and welcome to another episode of Healed Now What? A podcast where we discuss life, relationships, connection, and trauma through the lens of somatic and attachment psychology, nervous system health, relationships, and self discovery. I'm Lisa Dawn, and I'm on a mission to teach people how to transform their deepest wounds into their greatest strengths by first transforming the relationship they have with themselves. So whether you've had trauma, years of failed partnerships, or just want a better relationship with your body, I've got you covered. I am a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, Educator, Relationship Mentor, and Trauma Survivor. With a lifetime of experience helping not only myself, but countless others transform their lives by learning how to become the fullest versions of themselves. Learn more at www. somatic. com We do this through self awareness, connecting with their bodies and changing the way they perceive themselves and others. I have coached innumerous people how to heal their wounds and create lasting change so they can live a more joyous, passionate and fulfilling life. Thank you so much for tuning in and enjoy the show. Hey guys, Lisa Dawn here. Welcome back to this week's episode. I've had this question come up a number of times since I've been in clinical practice. So I wanted to address it here. And that question is what does a somatic healing session look like? Can you explain or give an example of what a session with you would look like? Now, up until this point, my answer was usually something like, well, that really depends on the person. And then I may have rattled off a few scenarios to provide some examples. And the truth is that everyone has different needs. That require different interventions and sometimes it's hard to articulate an internal experience as it differs from person to person, but this time I wanted to expand on this while using a metaphor since I love a good metaphor and speaking of metaphors. They have been shown to successfully access different parts of the brain for learning. So some people are better at understanding things literally and some metaphorically. And I also want to add to that, that previous studies have suggested that our understanding of metaphors and may be rooted in our bodily experience or our somatic experience. Some functional MRI brain imaging studies have indicated, for example, that when you hear a metaphor such as she had a rough day, regions of the brain associated with tactile experience are activated. How cool is that? Or if you hear he's so sweet, Areas associated with taste are activated. And when you hear action verbs used in metaphorical context, like grasp a concept or regions involved in motor perception and planning are activated. I also want to say on another note that. that our brains develop based on what information they are fed. So in the attachment world, there is a correlation between left and right brain development that stems from getting certain needs met and other needs not met. So for example, if If you identify that your strategy in relationships are more of a dismissive or avoidant attachment style, then it's highly likely that you are more oriented to the left hemisphere of the brain, which contains logic, reason, we're thinking verbal, analytical, like reading and writing. If you are someone that identifies with the strategy of preoccupied or ambivalent, you are likely more oriented to the right hemisphere of the brain, which is visual, intuitive, and can also be prone to emotional flooding. And if you are fearful avoidant or disorganized, usually there is a lack of the linkage in the associative cortex and the amygdala, the amygdala is often stuck in trauma. So, why is all this important? When we can introduce metaphors and storytelling while also leaning on logic, we are helping the brain to have a flow of energy between the left and right hemispheres and so much healing can happen there. Okay. Also last nerd thing. They've done some fascinating studies around what happens when a group of people are listening to the same thing. So EKGs show that when a group listens to a story while being measured separately showed that heart rates of each participant would rise and fall together, which is also pretty dang cool. So from auditory narrative, i. e. storytelling, can synchronize heart rate flunk fluctuations. So, God, we humans are so cool. We are always syncing with each other, whether that be through language, our hearts, our nervous systems, or any one of our senses. Okay, back to my metaphor. So imagine that you're asking a chef what they do in the kitchen. Some might think a chef just follows recipes step by step, but a seasoned chef knows it's much more nuanced than that. So imagine that When you step into a somatic and attachment therapy session, it's like walking into the chef's kitchen. The therapist, like a chef, doesn't just follow a strict recipe. They have to assess the ingredients, your current emotional and physical state. They have to understand the flavor profiles, your past experiences and traumas, and then decide how to best bring out the dish's potential, your path to healing. Just as a chef observes the freshness of ingredients and adjusts the cooking process accordingly, a therapist observes how you carry yourself, your physical and emotional responses, and tailors the session to meet your unique needs. Are you tense and hypervigilant, like a stiff piece of meat that needs tenderizing, or are you more like a delicate souffle that requires a gentle touch? In the same way a chef might taste and adjust seasoning throughout cooking. The cooking process, a therapist continuously gauges your responses, adjusting their approach to help you release trapped experiences and learn to regulate your body signals. Sometimes the dish, your healing process, requires simmering slowly, allowing flavors to meld and develop over time, while other times it needs a quick sear to lock in essential juices. No two dishes are exactly the same, just as no two therapy sessions are identical. Each one is a unique creation, crafted with care and attention to the individual needs and the history of a person in front of the therapist. I really love that metaphor. Now for you literal folks. So somatic and attachment work is real time. So it's happening in the now, which is where all healing occurs. So when I see a person, in the first moment when we meet, whether that be online or in person, is the moment I get to see how they carry themselves, how they hold their bodies. Are they collapsed in their nervous system state or are they in a hyper aroused state or hyper vigilant state? Are they always joking and deflecting and not able to sense their body or are they overly sensitive and empathic to everything? Do they have access to memories? What about access to sensations in their body? Are they emotional or non emotional? Where are they physically, emotionally, and mentally? And do they have some knowledge of somatic therapy or not? So knowing the basics of survival stress and how that works with fight, flight, or freeze, and how things get trapped within us, that can be very helpful in some cases. Do they have a nervous system, an understanding of our nervous system physiology? or not. And again, the answer to that will depend on how much education will go into each session. So these all give me clues about what the person sitting in front of me right now may need or may require from our sessions and from our work together. Now, when we talk about attachment therapy, it's a similar process since attachment work and nervous system work pretty much go hand in hand, especially when there's early trauma or even when there's not. So over time we adapt to what life has thrown our way, which is incredibly intelligent of us, and can also be maladaptive if we have a system that is living in the past. And if we do, we get really good at hiding, repressing, micromanaging, and compartmentalizing things. There are a few indicators that early attachment wounds may be present and so we begin to feel into the person's history and how they experience relationships. Did this person receive care growing up? Do they have, do they currently have intimate relationships and partnerships that feel fulfilling or do they feel stuck, fearful, find themselves in toxic situations where they stay too long? Do they hyper focus on one person and forget about all of their other relationships? Do they find it hard to be alone or find themselves worrying about being left or abandoned? Are they in one sided or codependent relationships? Do they throw themselves into work or avoid intimacy? So these things all give me clues as to where there may be trauma or a blind spot. So in sessions we are essentially helping folks to digest and metabolize some of these trapped experiences that are living within them. And I just want to highlight that all of these things live in our muscles, our organs, our fascia, and throughout our bodies, they over time become part of our physiology. And the cool thing is, is that our bodies are always offering up opportunities to help us to digest them, to release them. And it's super helpful if we can tune into its language. So when we do this work, we are freeing up our body's resources so that the energy can go into other places. If we're stuck in fight, flight, or freeze chronically, all of that energy is bound up and not. able to be used to build our businesses, plan a family, go on vacation, or live our best life, or even having deep and meaningful relationships because everything is going towards these stuck survival responses within us. And that's exhausting. So the other element of the work that we do is educational, so teaching how to regulate, build, and tend to our capacity, and ultimately discover who we are beyond the survival responses that have been running the show. So in essence, One on one sessions include what your body is telling us it needs moment to moment, and I'll give an example of this. So someone may come in and want to work on, let's say, people pleasing or codependency. And so we begin just casually chatting and maybe they'll start to feel their heart rate pick up. So maybe their heart is racing a little bit, and then they notice that perhaps they begin sweating. And then maybe a memory resurfaces of a car accident. Now we may think that this has nothing to do with the people pleasing or codependency, but it might. We just keep following this thread to see if there could be something more by listening and watching. And perhaps some of that survival stress had to be witnessed and digested in order for the body to feel safe enough to begin to work on the people pleasing or codependency. So all of this is to say that there is no one way to do this work. And I think that sometimes because of the name of the work, Somatic Experiencing, um, that there is a misunderstanding that there is like a set list of movements or breathwork that take place during a session. And sure, it might be about, getting emotions out. It might be about shaking it out. It might be about letting out some tears, processing some anger or disgust, but it might not. It might be about making meaning about our experience or what we are sensing internally. We may work through a single event that paralyzed us or overwhelmed us. We could complete some self protective responses that result in shaking. And then we might just be spending a whole session Helping the person to find safety and learning how to self regulate. So healing trauma is not just about moving the arms and the legs or getting the body moving in a certain way. It is more dependent on what that particular body needs. Again, it's history, it's adaptations, it's patterns. It's about expanding and tending to someone's capacity to deal with difficult things in a way that fits their particular nervous system. So yeah, I could sit here for hours and give examples of all the different scenarios and ways that I've seen clients move through things, but they are all unique to them, just like yours will be unique to you. So in summary, what I want to say is that this work is complex, intricate, and more nuanced than what we may think. Just like you, just like all of your life's experiences. Okay, so I think I'll leave that there. And I also just want to end with a few quotes. The essence of trauma is the disconnect from self. Therefore, the essence of healing is not just about uncovering one's past, but reconnecting with oneself in the present. And that one is good old Gabor Maté. And this one is called Suffering and Resistance by Adya Shanti. We suffer in the present from past experiences in direct proportion to how much identity we derive from that suffering. The easiest way to keep dreaming is thinking your dreaming is true. Don't get mixed up with the whys. They will not help you. Whatever you resist, you become. If you resist anger, you are always angry. If you resist sadness, you are always sad. If you resist suffering, you are always suffering. If you resist confusion, you are always confused. We think that we resist certain states because they are there, but actually they're there and prolong. Because we resist them. Okay folks, that's all for this week. We will see you again next Wednesday. As always, thank you so much for listening. Life is busy. So it means even more that you're carving out time in your day to be here. Listen, we've got so many great episodes coming up, so please make sure you subscribe to follow along on Apple podcasts or Spotify. And for those of you who like to watch your podcasts, we are now uploading them to YouTube. And if you appreciate these episodes, please do us a favor and leave a rating or a review and share it with anyone you think could benefit. See you again next Wednesday.
