Somatic experiencing® in my own words or how do I like to work with it.
- Life is agreeable when we have the possibility of making choices.
I AM ABLE TO AND I DON’T NEED TO. - Life gets more complicated when we cannot choose, though bearable if we manage to achieve our tasks without too much suffering.
I AM ABLE TO AND I NEED TO. - Life gets really hard, limiting and unbearable when we are unable to make choices and can’t perform the tasks we would like to achieve.
I AM NOT ABLE TO AND I NEED TO.
In this situation, SE sessions will help you to rediscover your capacity of moving freely and will bring back flexibility to your nervous system. That way you will be able to love again, hate, laugh, cry, look forward, grumble, say “yes” or “no”, and experience the whole range between these extremes.
WITHOUT FEAR.
How ?
To be able to evolve and change, we need to feel this impulse in the most inner part of our body, in our guts. That’s what I have experimented with all through my life.
The brain can’t do anything about it. Considerate friends or numerous therapists and counsellors can give you good advice. You may find yourself agreeing with them…..but you find yourself unable to put their advice into practise. Why? Because healing never comes through the mind but needs to be understood on a much deeper level, deep inside your body. The SE practitioner will help you to listen to the other canals that inform you about how you are feeling. These other indicators are called the SIBAM in SE language:
S as sensation, I as image, B as behaviour, A as affect. M as mind, representing our well-known brain which often takes too much room and can give false signals. You have probably already come across someone who told you “I am feeling so well, life is great” and at the same time, this person is close to tears.
What should you believe? The words…. or the tears? (The Meaning or the Affect?). The SE practitioner is aware of those conflicting messages and will work with them.
There is no need to enter too deeply into the stories that traumatised people often keep repeating – like a hamster on a wheel. Continually telling these stories leaves people tied to the traumatic event. Together we’ll try and throw a new light on those events. Focusing on the here and now is essential.
How does it work ?
Dr Peter A. Levine based his technique on the observation of wildlife. Wild animals are instinctively able to expunge traumatic experiences. When they escape a dangerous situation it’s thanks to the famous 3 F’s – Fight, Flight, Freeze. The action of fighting or running away enables them to drain the trauma from their nervous system. In order not to be traumatised by the experience they’ve had, when they are out of danger they go through a trembling and reorienting process. They will then quietly go back to their peers.
For human beings, it is more complicated. The fight and the flight responses are quite often interrupted, and our society doesn’t encourage a trembling process. The mark of the trauma might stay in the nervous system because the 3 F’s responses to danger couldn’t be successfully dealt with.
During SE sessions, we’ll get the opportunity of renegotiating these interrupted or non-initiated processes to erase any traces left in the nervous system.
What about children ?
I truly believe that children will be alright if the adults around them are. However, SE sessions might be welcomed with them, too. Sessions can help to bring new light on the situation and a different quality of relationship than the one shared with the parents and/or the people around them. Children are very much at ease with the non-intellectual SE approach. Playing is a very good way to work with them.
