Somatic Therapy to Support EFT Couples
Working with your Couple’s Therapist
I offer very focused somatic work with individuals to support the EFT couple therapy process. Particularly if you have a trauma history, somatic work may allow EFT to continue in a deeper way. Perhaps you have a history of trauma, sexual trauma , childhood trauma, shock trauma, or athletic trauma. Or you may have no memory of trauma but you feel stuck. Your EFT therapist may have a sense that somatic work could help.
We work somatically while you continue EFT and I am available to consult with your EFT therapist to coordinate care.
Unresolved Trauma & Negative Relationship Cycles
If you are in EFT couples therapy and you have unresolved trauma you may feel stuck in your negative relationship cycle. Even though you know past trauma may be driving the ways you cope, when activated, you may not be able to react differently. It may even feel like sometimes all the work you’ve done in EFT goes out the window. This is not your fault. Your reactivity may be driven by different parts of the nervous system than the emotions you are working with in EFT. This kind of wounding deserves tremendous compassion and care because it is often the result of overwhelming life experiences. I specialize in healing unresolved trauma responses to help people progress in the EFT process. This brings much needed relief internally. It can shift your negative cycle and help you and your partner build a more secure bond.
Uncoupling Trauma Responses from Emotions
If you are a survivor of overwhelming life experiences such as trauma in childhood or adulthood, your emotional responses may be either really big or really absent at times. You may feel overwhelmed, rageful, frozen, collapsed, anxious, panicked, dissociated, spaced out, foggy, numb, or like you are living in survival mode. This is because your emotional processes may be combined with trauma responses - fight, flight, freeze, or collapse responses in your nervous system. Reaching for your partner as well as appeasing your partner may also be connected to trauma responses if you have a history of childhood trauma.
In a very focused kind of trauma work, we uncouple the trauma response from your emotional reactions so that you can feel your feelings without the intensity of past trauma. This happens by working somatically with the brain, body, and nervous system. Once the trauma responses are healed, emotional work can progress in EFT, individual therapy, or both.
My Speciality in Somatic Therapy
Feel free to browse below about the somatic therapies I use. I’ve found that different people need different methods at different times. I’ve also found that one method may work for one layer of trauma or wounding while another method works for the next. If needed and wanted, I also integrate these methods into frameworks you may already be finding helpful such as Internal Family Systems or Emotionally Focused Therapy. We decide together what feels right for you.
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Brainspotting
Brainspotting evolved from EMDR and somatic trauma methods. It uses focused eye positions to heal wounding held in deeper subcortical parts of the brain. Recent research has shown that Brainspotting may be as effective or even more effective than EMDR, which is my experience.
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Somatic Experiencing
Somatic Experiencing works with the nervous system to heal trauma and stress. It is very gentle, harnessing your body’s innate power to heal itself. It focuses more on physical sensations than thoughts or emotions. It resolves trauma through corrective experiences in the nervous system in a safe therapeutic relationship.
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Sensorimotor Psychotherapy
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy is a combination of body-based therapy and talk therapy. It can feel more accessible for people who enjoy talk therapy for healing. It can be helpful with all kinds of trauma. It is also designed to bring healing in complex cases when there may be many different types of trauma and wounding at one time, such as with childhood trauma and complex trauma.
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EMDR or IFS-Informed EMDR
Eye Movement Densitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a highly effective treatment backed by research that uses bilateral stimulation. This could happen with eye movements, tapping, or sound. Integrating Internal Family Systems or IFS-Informed Parts Work into EMDR can be especially helpful with childhood trauma and complex trauma.
Many people do not realize how much they suffer with unresolved trauma until healing happens and they finally feel relief.
How Does Somatic Therapy Work?
Healing unresolved trauma responses is about allowing the nervous system to complete processes that needed to happen at the time of the original trauma but could not.
This does not mean that you have to remember, relive, or describe what happened. Somatic trauma work focuses on how trauma lives in the body and nervous system in present time.
Using somatic methods, you do not have to relive or describe the trauma to heal it.
What to Expect in Somatic Trauma Therapy
You will be invited to notice how your thoughts and emotions are connected to your physical sensations. This is called interoception and it is foundational to overall mental health and somatic trauma work.
In Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and Somatic Experiencing, you may learn somatic techniques to regulate your emotions to support trauma processing
In Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and Somatic Experiencing you may mindfully and gently notice processes in your body and nervous system that did not get a chance to complete at the time of the trauma.
In Brainspotting, you may be asked to look at a specific point in your field of vision associated with reactivity to mindfully notice what unfolds. You may be invited to listen to bilateral music during this process.
In EMDR, you may use bilateral stimulation through your eyes or body to process past memories until they are not longer overwhelming to your nervous system.
In IFS-Informed Parts Work, you may be invited to befriend and become curious about parts of yourself that may still be feeling alone, overwhelmed, and coping in various ways. This can be a huge relief for young parts that did not get what they needed at the time.
You may feel your body come out of freeze or collapse responses which can be associated with tremendous body sensation for a short period of time. Some people report feeling reconnected to new parts of their life force after this happens.
Freedom to Feel without Trauma Responses
Healing unresolved trauma responses allows you to feel emotions without the intensity the trauma response brings. Here are examples:
Feeling anger without rage
Feeling anger without overwhelming impulses to criticize, defend, attack, or fight
Feeling fear without freezing up or becoming panicked
Feeling fear without an impulse to flee or exit
Speaking about feelings instead of freezing up or shutting down
Feeling painful feelings such as shame without shutting down, helplessness, or hopelessness
Feeling your feelings and needs instead of being dissociated, spaced out, disconnected inside, or numb
Feeling your feelings instead of being focused on pleasing / appeasing your partner
Feeling calm instead of being in survival mode
Reaching for your partner without overwhelming immediacy
Feeling your anxiety resolve as opposed to getting stuck
Feeling your sexuality as opposed to avoiding or freezing up (read more about healing sexual trauma)
What Causes Trauma Responses?
Any overwhelming life experience can leave an unresolved trauma response in the nervous system. Childhood trauma such as physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse or neglect are common ones. Research also shows that having a parent with unresolved trauma can lead to trauma responses in the context of parenting that then cause unresolved trauma responses in children. Medical procedures, assaults, bullying, accidents, car accidents, injuries, war, domestic violence, major disasters, sports injuries, and the birthing process can all leave unresolved trauma responses.
My Speciality in Somatic Trauma Healing to Support EFT Couples Therapy
I am a trauma specialist with years of training in several different somatic and brain-based trauma treatments. I am also an EFT therapist at heart.
I have EFT couples therapy experience working with complex trauma, childhood abuse, childhood sexual abuse, sexual trauma, anxiety, depression, intrusive thoughts, chronic illness, parenthood, perinatal issues, infidelity, DCFS, substance abuse, 12-step, and addiction recovery.
For some clients, particularly when there is a trauma history, I draw from IFS-informed parts work through the attachment lens of the EFT model.
