From Disorganization to Organization: Working with Somatic Experiencing® – Nancy Napier

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After years of doing body-based trauma resolution work, as a psychodynamic, relationally-oriented psychotherapist, I have arrived at the conviction that what lives in the body determines much of what we feel and how we perceive ourselves and the world. We think the body lives in the present, but it actually responds most vividly to unmetabolized trauma responses that are alive and well in the nervous system.

Somatic Experiencing® offers approaches that allow us to help clients move from the disorganization of unmetabolized trauma responses to the organization of a coherent, regulated system. We are, in a very real sense, bringing the body up to date when we invite clients to notice their physiological responses and help them to learn how to allow old responses that are “stuck” in the body to move through and complete themselves.

Because we each carry a blueprint for health at the core of our body-mind being, the natural tendency of the body to move toward health and wholeness becomes our constant companion in this healing journey. We also cultivate the benevolent observer, so that clients are supported to be able to move through unresolved trauma responses with awareness and a whole, integrated brain. 

1. Demonstrate to clients’ methods to track their body’s activation responses that help support both regulation and developing capacity for discomfort. 
2. Apply titration to the process of working with client’s trauma responses. 
3. Propose ways to clients that help normalize their responses as natural to trauma states. 

The importance of embodied presence  

• Orienting to the inherent blueprint for health and wholeness 
• Reinforcing client wholeness 

Cultivating a sense of benevolence in response to understanding trauma’s impact on the body and psyche

Moving from disorganization to organization

Increasing the capacity to be uncomfortable

Elements of Somatic Experiencing® 

• Bringing the body into the present 
• Orienting to the felt-sense 
• Titration 
• Slowed-down processing 
• Pendulation 
• Understanding the threat response cycle 
• SIBAM and coupling dynamics 
• Deactivation and reorganization 
• A return to curiosity and orientation