Mind/ Somatic Therapies
What are Mind/ Somatic Therapies?
Somatic and mind therapies are very popular topics today. Doctors such as Deepok Chopra, Dr. Gabor Mate and Dr. Daniel Amen have talked often about the connection between our intuitive ‘gut’ and how our emotions run in our unconscious mind to create physical responses and often physical illness. Beyond physical health, mind/somatic therapies offer the opportunity to connect to a deeper sense of our Selves and our true wants, needs and desires providing us with tools to heal trauma and limiting belief systems that we wouldn’t have access to other ways. Through forms of mind/somatic depth work we can learn about what goes on in our unconscious mind and learn to befriend parts of ourselves that we have avoided or looked at as ‘bad’ and this has affected our daily lives.
Here are a few examples of client session:
***NOTE: the names are changed for anonymity, I did receive the OK from each client to use their story without certain details.
Tim, Age 36, dealt with severe anxiety
Tim contacted me hoping to cure his social anxiety. It was something that had come up after college and he couldn’t understand why he suddenly had this when he used to be very outgoing in crowds. I offered we might wish to look at a trauma that could have caused this and we came to realize that his ex-partner had ways of saying things whenever they were going out that consistently made him feel awkward in front of others which had hit his self-esteem. Since they had broken up (due in a large part to the emotional abuse), he still felt awkward in public, even more so without her there with him to protect him.
I encouraged Tim to try a somatic/ NLP therapy session with me to see if we could get in touch with that part of him that was getting anxious. He agreed, and the next session we started by going into a light trance where I encouraged Tim to recall a time when his ex-partner said something abusive that made him feel awkward in public. When he recalled the event, I encouraged that part of him that was feeling anxiety to come forth. We spent some time talking to this part and found some unique ways to offer the ‘anxiety part’ healing. One interesting component of the session was that this part came forth as an inner child part about 6 years old. We found out in the session that Tim’s mother had some qualities that were very similar to his ex-partner and they were also abusive behaviors. This experience of recalling his mothers behaviors as similar to his ex-partner was deeply healing for him. We spent the last 15 minutes of session talking about what experience was like for him and I offered him some journaling options to continue talking to the part. As the initial session was so useful Tim decided to continue with this form of therapy once a month for a while. Overtime he found that these sorts of sessions allowed him the opportunity to go deeper within himself in ways he never had before and allowed him to heal some deep layers around relationships and how he ‘showed up’ in the world. After about 6 months he felt ready to explore a new relationships without the unconscious triggers of the past.
Sarah, age 48, healing after physical abuse
Sarah called me on a referral from her doctor who knew of my work with PTSD. She had been physically abused by a male friend in the violent manner and was having some severe anxiety and difficulties dealing with daily life. She had tried many medications but none of them were helping her heal from the abuse. In fact being on the medications was making her feel further from herself and causing her suicidal thoughts. As she had never been in a depressed type of person prior to the event, she new shoes help.
Due to the level of trauma I started with homeopathic treatment to help her come back to herself before attempting any somatic treatment. When she was feeling stronger on the homeopathic treatment, we talked about what she needed to heal. She felt she lost her power to someone she trusted and it caused her to second-guess her intuition. She didn’t know how to get back her inner strength when she no longer trusted herself as she never expected him to act this way.
I offer that it sounded like the first thing she needed was to be able to forgive the part of herself to let him into her apartment. It also sounded like she needed to provide that part with the knowledge that people like him actually exist and that she couldn’t have known this before the experience.
We began in inner dialogue with this part of Sarah and found out that part felt very trapped as if it was still stuck in the apartment where it had occurred even though she had moved to another town. We retrieved the part and did some work on reconnection with it. As the session is nearly over, we talk to the park to let it know we would come back to it next time and I gave Sarah some things to do in the meantime to stay connected to the part.
Sarah and I did four more sessions, one more with this part directly into more reclaiming herself after the event and connecting deeply to her intuition so that she thought confident in the future trusting her intuition with other people. Between each session I gave the practices to do to deepen her connection to herself and we agreed on one self-care item to do per week outside of sessions such as taking a day off work to play outside or getting a massage. Also I did give her two additional homeopathic remedies during our time together, one to feel stable on her body again and another to feel stable in her mind/ emotions while healing.
Leslie, age 28, healing from parental narcissist trauma
Leslie came to me with the awareness that the parental trauma that she grew up with was affecting her life and she wanted change. She had researched many of the techniques that I use and asked if we could in particular do an internal family systems / NLP session for the abuse inflicted by her narcissistic father and then soul retrieval (shamanic method) for any part that may be lost.
I always appreciate when someone does research and offers what they want in session. I was more than happy to explore these things with her.
We started with an intake so I could better understand narcissistic abuse that she endured with her father. We did some internal family systems work around this part and went back to some childhood memories that were extremely difficult for her. Midsession we needed to stop as there was a trauma that came up that she had not consciously known had occurred until came out. She realized that she had forgotten a few years of her childhood and slowly the memories started flooding back in. She saw her younger self looking at her, like a mirror but more connected. Her inner child was asking her to come get her out of this place.
We spent time with the child and helped her come ‘home’ to Leslie now. For homework, I encouraged her to connect with this inner child and write down everything that was coming up so we could work on it at next session. She asked me if I could get her in that week so we could continue and we did. Two days later we spent two hours processing what came up for her and deeply connected her with her child parts in empowering ways. After this her outlook on things changed dramatically.
At the end of session I offered to Leslie to contact me when she was ready for the next session rather than pushing her to schedule as it felt like the two sessions had brought up and processed some core aspects of her identity in new and empowering ways and that takes time to settle in and be able to discuss.
About 3 weeks later I heard from her, she wanted to schedule for the following week to touch base. She said she was still processing but wanted talk to me in the interim. For this one hour session we talked about everything that was coming up for her and rather than doing processing work she just wanted someone to give her some feedback on how she’s looking at things as she felt like her thinking had changed since our work and she wanted to ensure she was connected to her intuition in making new decisions for herself and her life.
She said the most dramatic event since the session was talking to your sister about her father and feeling nothing. After years of being triggered even by his name she now felt no triggers and it was like talking about someone from your past who you had nearly forgotten. Her younger sister who knew of the abuse but had not endured abuse herself said the dramatic shifts in her behavior were startling. Over the course of the next six months, Leslie and I worked together pretty much biweekly helping her to reframe and establish new patterns and internal strategies to empower her to create the life and relationships she truly wanted. After that point she would call me when she needed a session, usually when a part of her was struggling or she needed a new way of embracing an opportunity or change.
I truly appreciate her knowing herself to know when she needed assistance and over time I’ve watched her change careers, find a healthy partner and create a life vastly different than her life when she came to me.
I hope these were useful to see some ways I work with clients, for more of these experiences, please see my videos as well.
“Healing physical, emotional and/or soul trauma isn’t about getting back to a former version of ourselves, it’s about finding out who we are becoming at the next step in our existence. When we are feeling broken on any level, true healing is a journey to wholeness. We may find ourselves transformed into someone very different than we started. When we allow for the changes to occur, and have compassion, reverence and patience for the reconstruction of the Self, we can experience a level of humanity we didn’t know existed. JenSatya
Mind/ Somatic Therapies I Use Include:
Neurolinguistic Programming, Ericksonian Hypnotherapy, Internal Family Systems work, Parts Therapy, Clinical Hypnotherapy, Somatic Processing, Gestalt Therapy, Shamanic Trancework, Empowerment Coaching
Additional Modalities I often integrate with Somatic/ Mind Therapies include:
