Orange County Somatic Experiencing: An Ideal Therapy for Therapists.

Photo by Matteo Vistocco on Unsplash

As therapists we know we need therapeutic support for the work we do. Or, at least our training taught us this. Not all of us get therapy consistently. Our heavy lifting out in the field with our clients can cost us a lot on the emotional, physical, and relational levels. It takes a lot of energy to finance our work and to hold onto ourselves in the face of the stories we hear and hold, as well as the trauma we experience vicariously. Regular personal therapy, good supervision and peer support, very high levels of self-care, and scheduling real time off (and, no, I’m not talking about conferences, folks) are some of the things we can do to stave off burnout and maintain our own healthy stability.

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As Therapists We Don't Require Good Self-Care, We Require Extraordinary Self-Care.

As a depth-oriented Marriage and Family Therapist and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, I know how important it is to take care of myself. If I don’t take adequate care, things can start to get ugly. I like to joke around saying “It’s not my private practice that burns me out, it’s the rest of my life!” And it feels true. But here’s the thing, our lives can impact our work in the room and our work can and does impact our lives and relationships outside the office. Really, our need to Stay Awake to ourselves, our bodies, our work, and our lives is quite extraordinary. We need to stay awake for our clients, for our loved ones, and for ourselves. It requires diligence and a certain amount of humility, as well. 

The whole trying to take care of the world thing is a big job. Just because we know what good self-care looks like and teach clients how to care for themselves, does not mean we do the work of self-care on our own behalf, or do so consistently. This is one reason I dove into the three-year Somatic Experiencing training all those years ago. I knew my body and mind were taking a beating and at the same time, I had a deep respect for what the body/mind connection could accomplish in terms of promoting healing and wellbeing. Working somatically, both on the professional and personal level, is one way I build resiliency into my nervous system and my body. Somatic work now forms a cornerstone for caring for both my clients and myself.

What is Somatic Experiencing?

It’s likely you’ve heard of it at some point, as it’s been around for a long time, now. Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a dynamic biologically based trauma modality. SE was developed by Dr. Peter A. Levine over the course of over 45 years of interdisciplinary studies drawing on the fields of psychology, biology, stress physiology, ethology, neuroscience, medical biophysics, and indigenous healing practices. Somatic Experiencing emerges from the best elements of research science, therapeutic application, and traditional healing techniques. 

Specifically, Somatic Experiencing tracks the subtle sensations of the body to facilitate the release of trauma shock, the primary driver in the formation of PTSD, as well as early developmental attachment wounds and trauma. The underlying viewpoint of SE suggests the body holds all the experiences it has encountered, sometimes becoming stuck in the overwhelm of fight, flight, and freeze response. In SE, supporting the completion of incomplete survival responses in the body forms the basis of healing.

Did I mention I’m an Anxiety Reduction Specialist?

I know anxiety from the inside out. Oh. Yes. I. Do. I’ve spent many decades honing my own Anxious Habit to a fine edge and another decade plus learning how to promote anxiety reduction and healing for my clients and myself. If you’re an anxious caretaker then you’re exactly who I sit with every day, all day. In my office we’re working with anxiety from multiple viewpoints, using a variety of mind/body interventions, and doing everything we can to disrupt this anxious mental and neurological pattern of behavior. A lot of my clients are struggling with the kind of anxiety that not only has them popping out of their skins, but their last therapist was overwhelmed as well. You and I know nearly all our clients are anxious, no matter whatever else they are presenting with—my clients are just more anxious. And many of them don’t want to use meds. My holistically oriented, body/mind aware practice can sometimes seem like their second home.

Somatic Experiencing is a huge part of how I work with Anxious Folk.

You may know this from your own experience of your body or from your work with high-anxiety clients: our bodies are always chock full of sensation. Every body is, if we’re listening even half way close. Yet, Anxious Folk are experiencing still higher levels of sensation, higher levels of activation in general, and may be extremely and fully activated by any sensation they feel. I’ve had anxious clients who were initially unable to tolerate the sensation of relaxation. Letting go of their vigilant alertness, even for a moment, felt too unsafe. For the most anxious of us, anything unfamiliar is going to be triggering. The thoughts we anxious types are thinking fuel overwhelming and discomforting sensations within the body, which in turn triggers more anxious thoughts, and so on and so on. It’s a nasty endless cycle. Somatic Experiencing is a perfect tool for lowering the level of anxious experience in the body while learning to be with the powerful sensations anxiety produces.

But why does any of this matter to therapists?

We’re a pretty anxious lot, us therapists. I like to say I’ve taken my anxious care-taking “pathology,” reined it in, contained and constrained it within the scope and bounds of my helping profession, and put it to work for my clients and myself. It’s a great plan, as long as I make sure to take really good care of myself and do my personal work. It’s a recipe for disaster if I don’t.

True enough, Somatic Experiencing is a great tool for helping to identify sensation in the body, for creating more safety and capacity around feeling uncomfortable or strong sensations without becoming overwhelmed. We could even say SE is a form of desensitization therapy, lowering the level of anxiety overall while acclimating us to strong and potentially overwhelming sensation. Somatic Experiencing can be a powerful teacher regarding how to self-soothe appropriately, even in the most difficult situations. So, right there, it’s a great therapy for anxious clinicians. In fact, it’s the bomb for developing a deeper capacity for self-soothing, self-regulation, and building resiliency. What works for the people I work with works for clinicians, too.

Many therapists Carry a great deal of Unresolved trauma in their nervous systems.

The truth of the matter is most therapists aren’t merely anxious. As a group, we’re also likely to carry a significant amount of trauma history that not only contributes to our anxious habit formation, but is potentially acting out in our lives and on our bodies in a variety of ways. In my experience, many of therapists arose from homes where there were personality disorders, attachment disruptions, addictions, and/or chaos. Many of us were raised to be therapists. We grew up too early as anxious caretakers and vigilant survivors. This doesn’t even account for the amount of trauma we may have encountered over the course of our lives. This chaos, trauma, and attachment disruption is playing out in our bodies now, showing up as exaggerated startle responses, muscle and joint pain, anxiety, insomnia, autoimmune disorders, irritability, personality traits, and challenges with identifying and maintaining our boundaries. Our self-worth is often compromised and expresses problematically in everything from the relationships we pick to the difficulty we can have in setting, maintaining, and receiving our full fees or appropriate salaries.

And then there’s the powerful impact of Vicarious Trauma.

The destructive issue of vicarious trauma, so accumulative in nature, is one of the minefields of our profession. Vicarious trauma, that way in which we hold, contain, and experience our clients’ traumas within our own psyches and bodies, can be very damaging. It can be significant and yet so stealthy as it creeps up on you over time. Vicarious Traumatization can also be the primary and subtle contributor to burning out. In a big way. You don’t have to be working with First Responders, tsunami survivors, and Victims of Violence to become vicariously traumatized. Enough heartbreak and stories of broken or dysfunctional families will wear you down over time. There are big T and little T traumas in everyone’s lives. You’re sitting with it all. Attachment disruption trauma is a violent thing in terms of its overriding impact and it is also something you and your clients are dealing with day in and day out. Vicarious traumatization is a risk for all clinicians, not just those working with populations we characterize as highly traumatized.

When we talk about therapist burnout, it’s much more significant than just being tired and needing a vacation. A little more yoga, another glass of wine, or a weekend in Santa Barbara, is not going to cut it. And it’s so important to address. Burnout is the primary way therapists trip up and run amok with the BBS. Burned out, we lose our ability to be awake to ourselves, our boundaries may soften, and our decisions may falter. It’s one of the biggest professional liability risks we can encounter. Not to mention, it can drive you out of the field you once loved. Burnout can wreck havoc in your relationships at home. It can take your body down, as well. 

Somatic Experiencing Is an ideal therapy for therapists.

The need for therapists to have full access to their bodies is profound. Sitting in the chair with our clients requires all our senses to be fully engaged. The more elegant your connection to your own nervous system, the more enhanced is your ability to be with, hear, and mirror your client. It’s a professional and clinical advantage to be tuned in to your own nervous system.

If many therapists are generally wired to the anxious caretaking side of life, as I suspect is true, then any form of self care that lowers the physical and emotional impact of anxiety, lowers the level of anxiety overall, empowers one to be able not only tolerate their feelings of anxiety, but to flow with them, and helps smooth out the nervous system is going to be highly valuable for therapists on the personal level.

As Wounded Healers we’ve been engaged in our personal work for a long time. We’ve landed in a rich field of professional work and study that not only encourages and allows us to grow over the course of a lifetime, but also requires it. Doing the work of healing the manner our experience has been stored in the body and is impacting us on a daily basis is a huge bonus for therapists and care providers of all kinds. It’s not as if we haven’t been awake to and working “our stuff” for years. We have, but if we’ve only done so through insight oriented talk therapy, we may be missing out on the profound, juicy way our bodies can facilitate release, healing, and wellbeing. When it comes to releasing trauma from the body, Somatic Experiencing is much more laser in its approach than talk therapy ever could be or was designed to be. Both are supremely valuable. Immensely so. One, SE, can be remarkable at finishing the task and dealing with those hard to reach areas for more complete healing.

What if you have a talk therapist you love and trust already?

There’s no need to give them up. My own primary therapist is someone I’ve worked with since grad school and even before I trained as a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner. I’m not about to give him up. Therefore, my personal somatic work is done as an adjunct therapy for now. Unlike traditional talk therapy, where working with two therapists at the same time is usually counterproductive and for the therapists, potentially unethical, Somatic Experiencing can often be incorporated as a collaborative adjunct treatment along side an ongoing and established traditional therapy. 

Somatic Experiencing can form your primary healing modality, can be the work you are doing for this moment to deal with specific issues, and can also be an adjunct therapy in addition to your traditional talk therapy. Any of these applications are very common, viable, and rewarding.

If you have questions about Somatic Experiencing and how it might benefit you in your healing and self-care, as well as sharpen your own clinical skills, please give me a call. I love to talk about it. Obviously! In fact, it’s hard to stop talking about. I have to admit, I’m biased. In my experience, anyone with a nervous system is going to benefit from some Somatic Experiencing support. It’s just what our bodies find delicious. I love working with therapists and interns.  If you’d like to try it on for size, even for a session or two, I have some spots on my calendar for you now. 

Somatic. It’s a big word that means “body.” You have one. We can use it to create a happier more connected life for you.

VICTORIA WALLACE SCHLICHT, MA, LMFT, SEP
2030 East 4rth Street, Ste. 111
Santa Ana, CA 92705
In the beautiful Cabrillo Park area
[email protected]
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714.914.5565

"I help people who feel bad feel better."