Understanding Nervous System Regulation: Why Somatic Therapy Works
So many clients come to work with me because they are often finding themselves in a state of nervous system dysregulation that they want to correct. What people often mean by “nervous system dysregulation” is that they are feeling anxious, sad, or angry more than they would like to be. However, it is important to understand that when doing somatic therapy work for trauma healing, being calm all the time is not a helpful goal.
Understanding Nervous System Regulation vs. Nervous System Dysregulation
It might be helpful to start with the definition of nervous system regulation. Nervous system regulation refers to the ability of the nervous system to maintain a state of balance or calm in response to low amounts of stress or harmless external stimuli.
I always give this example of nervous system regulation to my clients:
Let’s say you are walking down the street on a beautiful, seventy degree spring day with your friend enjoying a cup of coffee. The birds are singing, you don’t have to go to work, and you are about to go book shopping. A well-regulated nervous system would feel calm, correct? Now, let’s say that you’ve gotten the green light to cross the crosswalk and a car comes flying down the road, not paying attention to the signal. A regulated nervous system would also feel a rush of adrenaline and run out of the way. Both are very different sensations within the system, but both are also very appropriate.
How Somatic Therapy Supports Nervous System Healing
Somatic Experiencing, a type of somatic therapy, helps to address the underlying cause of why somebody might not be calm when they are supposed to be. This would look like addressing why, when somebody is walking down the street with their friend on a gorgeous sunny day, that they feel scared and anxious. This is nervous system dysregulation. Oppositely, it would be dysregulated to not react if a car is coming while they are on the crosswalk. Somatic therapy helps clients to process through fight, flight, and freeze responses in order to help their nervous system behave in a way that is ultimately going to help them.
There are many reasons why nervous systems aren’t always “regulated,” or should we say, appropriately reactive.
Chronic Stress and Its Impact on the Nervous System
Chronic stress is sure to put our systems out of balance. Continuous streams of high amounts of cortisol and adrenaline can set people on a path of hyper-reactivity. Think about that person you know who is always really jumpy and has a strong response to loud sounds or somebody being in their space they didn’t know was there. This is because the system is almost “pre-loaded” for this type of response. This becomes extremely taxing after some time. Of course, there are different ways to experience chronic stress and this is just one example. Other possible sources of chronic stress are, but not limited to:
Racism
Poverty
Abuse
The Role of Trauma in Nervous System Dysregulation
Trauma is a major cause of nervous system dysregulation. When we are experiencing trauma, we need to either fight, run away, or get really still to try to protect ourselves. These are commonly referred to as fight, flight, or freeze responses. Learn more about the physical symptoms of trauma here.
Because of the way in which our brains deal with fight, flight, or freeze responses, our nervous systems get stuck in these patterns. Trauma also causes extreme over-associations (for example, a veteran afraid of loud sounds even if they are harmless), or underassociations (when a person has a difficulty connecting with the memories of the traumatic event and are not necessarily connecting to the sense of danger like they ought to be).
Here is a beautiful explanation from Peter Levine, founder of Somatic Experiencing, of what parts of somatic therapy can look like that aid in helping clients with these dynamics:
Somatic Therapy in Action: A Case Study
Somatic therapy work can help clients to understand their bodily sensations, which help both the person and the practitioner to identify how their nervous system is holding on to past trauma. Ultimately, somatic therapy work can help heal trauma. By following body cues and with direction of the practitioner, clients will be able to release tension and re-establish a more balanced state within the system. Here’s an example of what that could look like:
Sally comes to somatic therapy in hopes to heal trauma because she constantly feels hypervigilant. Sally grew up with parents who were always in conflict and her dad frequently threatened to leave the family, and did on occasion. Because of this, Sally has difficulty trusting safe attachments (connections) she has with others, even her partner of 10 years. One of the main symptoms Sally complains about is feeling hypervigilant about her partner’s mannerisms and tone of voice. She is constantly asking them, “Are you okay? Did I make you mad?” Together, the practitioner and Sally help Sally to identify that when she is acting this way, she often feels panic, noticing that her palms get sweaty and her heart starts racing and she feels nauseated. By going slowly and noticing how it is to experience these things in a safe context, Sally is able to understand that these are simply patterned responses that are not attuned to what is actually happening in her relationship. Sally gets to explore via her own imagination getting to do or say what she wanted to in the moment to her parents, which is healing as well. Sally is now able to trust her partner more than ever.
Why Feeling "Calm" Isn't the Ultimate Goal
While, of course, this is a very pleasant outcome, and clients often do report having access to calmer states more often than before treatment, this isn’t necessarily the ultimate goal. While we want our clients to feel more at ease, we have bigger goals in mind.
A broader goal of integrating trauma to heal from trauma is really what most people are after. What trauma integration really means is the ability to accept this part of the trauma as a part of one’s life story, and not a definition of that person. Trauma integration is the ability to create resiliency in order to continue living a full and robust life without the effects of trauma holding that person back. This is what trauma healing actually looks like.
It is helpful to help clients shift their goal from being calm to having greater capacity. Capacity is the ability to tolerate distress without being completely overwhelmed by it. The delightful added benefit of increasing capacity is that not only is feeling sad or anxious or even angry more tolerable, but people can feel a deeper experience of joy, happiness, and excitement as well. This is really what most people want out of therapy, and definitely what everybody deserves.
Why Somatic Therapy Works When “Regulation” Isn’t Enough
This is where it is super important to understand the difference between top-down and bottom-up approaches when it comes to therapy. A top-down approach to therapy would look like me telling my client to “do some deep breathing or find regulating activities like drinking cold water” while a bottom-down approach to therapy looks like allowing the client’s body to direct this process, empowering it to do what it needs to do without my brain or the client’s intellect managing it.
The aim here is to not keep putting coping skill bandaids onto a person. This is exhausting after a while, especially when a person is dealing with the symptoms of trauma. We want to figure out what is causing the leak in the dam, not keep patching it up.
Somatic therapy works by really “getting in there” to help the nervous system unwind all of these patterns of behavior that were originally to protect the person, but are now causing more harm than good.
Finding Support For Trauma Healing
Deeper work is hard, which is why safety and trust with your provider is key. Reach out to me at stevie@embodiedhealingkc.com if you have any questions about Somatic Experiencing, or to see if it could be a good fit for you.
Happy healing!
Stevie Spiegel is a Licensed Therapist and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner located in Kansas City. She uses Somatic Experiencing as her main body-based trauma healing modality, as well as EMDR. As an Intuitive Eating Counselor, she uses these principles to help her clients challenge their relationship with their cultural misconceptions about their body and food.
