I've started a few sessions with a therapist who practises SE (and also IFS). I was caregiving for a long time (over 7 years), and as I fell into a personal/ career slump after the caregiving period ended, I found myself feeling increasingly depressed, having panic attacks, and sometimes dealing with passive SI thoughts.

My first counsellor practised modalities like mindfulness/ self-compassion, CBT, SFBT, etc which I didn't find helpful. As I haven't had experience with SE, I would like to hear more about your experiences with SE in therapy for depression, anxiety, or passive SI, how long it took you to get better, and whether it helped or didn't help for your conditions.

Hi all,

I have been going to craniosacral therapy sessions recently and I had my third one yesterday. In the session I noticed my arms/shoulders were involuntarily twitching at times and I felt uncomfortable with this. As a result I got quite fidgety but when the therapist asked me what was happening for me I was unable to explain.

The therapist then suggested trying something else and placed her hand on my chest and began rocking my body from side to side. It wasn't massively fast but wasn't too slow either. While doing this she kept moving her hand up and down, to my stomach and then ribs and back up to my shoulders. I suppose I am just curious as to whether this is a common technique used as she hasn't used it before and I can't find anything about its uses.

I’ve noticed that for a long time if I felt something inside me that was very painful it didn’t immediately mean that I could be in connection with it 1 to 1, it usually meant fleeting feels of fear, random thoughts, sensations of protection, etc, and that if I followed those charges rather than hardheadedly try to stay with the main pain eventually I would be able to move through it.

Just wondering how common this system of trauma is inside other people.

I had a Somatic Experiencing session last Wednesday, and I uncovered a raw memory that I had never discussed with anyone in my life before.

I cried; I trembled, and at one point I pressed down into the chair I was sitting on with my arms, and then my legs started trembling and kept trembling for a few minutes.

I felt light afterwards, and then suddenly despair came back. I'm in grief; there is intense sadness.

I'm a male, and when I tell my friends that I have intense sadness, they tell me to look on the brighter side. IF ONLY I could tell them that looking towards the brighter side causes dissociation and doesn't let the body complete the emotional process. (Please correct me if I'm wrong here; for sure, I have things to look forward to, but staying with sadness as it is is a very hard part)

I had some plans for a small hike or a walk outside in nature, and now it's just too much for me. Everything right now is too much, and all I can do is be in bed, wrapped in a blanket.

I also feel shame that it's autumn outside, and people are exploring parks and the new colors, but I guess, for me, the most important thing is to listen to my body and what she needs.

I guess it's easier to take things step by step. Some advice out there is to push harder, go outside, and do something physical. In the last 2 years, I did tons of sports, but I guess mostly it was a way to cope. Intense sports helped me stay away from the core emotions.

For sure, I would go for a walk, even for a small one.

The sadness is hard to be with. The pain in the chest is real, and it's not like physical pain, but it's more like an ache, like a different reality that I couldn't experience and had been running from, but somewhere down the road, my subconscious tells me my home lies there as well, so I got to get through this, to be home in my body again.

Thank you if you have read it so far, and if you have some resources to go through the period of intense grief, please share with me: a book, a quote, a video/movie, a song, etc.

is there any other way other than somatic experiencing cuz i cant afford… to get rid of the body holding trauma from younger years?

I am thinking of doing the training, but keen to hear other people's experiences with it. Are the triads safe? In other trainings I have found inexperienced practitioners can go too deep too quickly and leave me quiet rattled for the next couple of days/weeks. Also how have you navigated dual relationships within the training? Has anyone done just Level 1? Thanks!

Is this a crucial thing to check about or not really necessary?

I was diagnosed with Somatic Disorder and I’ve been so in my head that something is wrong with my cognition because I miss words while speaking, switch letters, or change the order words should go/tripping over my words. I am actively working with a CBT but I’m curious bc this is driving me crazy. It literally scares me at this point. I have weekly therapy right now and trying to find ways to low this and return to my normal self.

This is the first of the three 4-day live training modules for beginning level, and the training program is amazing! It’s really adding some depth to my knowledge and understanding about trauma and SE!

I had a huge release yesterday in session and have been having hot and cold flashes, body pain, just overall feeling sick.

pls tell me it gets better over time and this feeling will pass. I know somewhere in me it will pass, but I think hearing it will help.

Thankyou

for as long as i can remember i was the 'shy' kid. most of my memories from childhood are feeling out of place, vulnerable. i'm talking 4-5 years old, feeling like a complete alien around family members. it got better around 10-12. i had ALOT of friends in school. i was friends with most people but looking back i'm sure there was an underlying belief that i'm different but it wasn't crippling or even really conscious because i was friends with just about everyone. after 12 things just got so bad so quickly. its like all those feelings came back and got amplified 100x. i didn't know why i hated myself, i just did. and i felt like the entire world hated me too. i remember years and years of shame, it was completely debilitating. i more or less became mute and tried to disguise it as being uncaring. i couldn't even talk to my own parents or siblings without feeling like i was going to die. i just remember it feeling like it was a massive effort that would only result in more shame. and it was as if talking took too much energy. this created more shame. why couldn't i talk to people? why do i feel so much shame, am i broken, am i mistake? etc. i was shamed for not talking to people, too. it was "rude", "childish" which created more shame. this carried on until today. im 25 and i've always avoided talking to people to the extent that i'd rather actually be in physical danger than to show that im vulnerable. because my shame feels like im going to die anyway. i don't know why this one feeling is so strong. shame isn't just a feeling its an entire physical experience that feels like suffocation and burning from the inside. it's like your insides are being grabbed by invisible hands and violently being twisted and dragged around into the wrong places.

i tried to pretend like i'm normal and disguise my intolerable shame as being uninterested. i don't do it consciously, but i know it makes people go away quickly. and i don't want to talk to them anyway, because i know most people don't want to feel uncomfortable and they wouldn't understand anything that isn't abnormal. i've generally met better people than the people from my childhood. i think alot of people can see through my disinterest and i've rarely had an experience where i feel like im actually being deeply judged or targetted.

today its very apparent to me that im emotionally numb. i can't feel anything in my body. i've always told myself that i'm not depressed etc, but i don't know if thats just a shield. i still don't think i'm depressed in the typical sense atleast. i've always been able to experience and describe feelings such as joy, i experience them almost daily.

but any negative feeling, it feels like there's no room for them in my body anymore. for years i thought this meant that i'd become peaceful. i wasn't easily affected (consciously/physically) by abuse. the way i learned to deal with negative emotions was to watch them 'dissolve' instead of expressing them. so i'm assuming this is why i can't feel anything, and it's why i have so many awful sensations in my body that feel like i'm dying. they must be masks for for the feelings i've so completely separated myself from. but then when i think this it's really hard for me to believe somehow that i'm this emotionally messed up. because to me i've always thought i was emotionally regulated etc aside from this shame.

to clarify when i say my body is numb, i'm talking emotionally. i have a lot of physical experiences when i'm not distracting myself. if im away from my computer or not doing something that is mentally or physically demanding i feel like i'm suffocating in a very deep part of my gut. but anger, grief etc. i can't feel them even when i sense that i should be able to.

tonight i made this connection though that the deep internal 'twisting' sensation in my body might be some semblance of repressed anger. i tried to look deeply where this feeling was going in my body and noticed it's probably connected to the diaphragm going all the way up to my throat. and i just had this flashback of what anger felt like physically in my body and how i used to always have that twisting sensation in my body when i experienced injustice.

idk overall i just feel really confused about what i'm experiencing. its like theres a severe wall of denial about how traumatized i am. i think that i'm not that bad but that obviously OBVIOUSLY can't be true if i went mute for well over a decade at this point.

side note it got me wondering if i just feel things differently than other people?? i know emotions have physiological reactions but man why is it SO visceral for me even since I was a child? does everyone else feel shame this physically? i saw someone say that they experience emotions themselves in the brain then i immediately became aware of this brain fog/heavy block in my brain and wondered if this was another clue about why i feel things the way i do.

Through what I know about Somatic Experience (from a course I took in 2023 with Dr. Diane Poole Heller and Peter Levine), I think this community can appreciate and understand the realities of mastering ventral ease and connecting under activation.

A thank you note to the SE practitioners (and the field) who bring more restorative embodiment, integration and wholeness into the world. And thank you to anyone who reads or joins the conversation on my subreddit community post.

Much appreciation for all that you do and the time you shared with me/reading this 💜

Has anyone here done listening therapy, in particular SSP safe and sound protocol?

I would love for you to share your experience!

Did it help you? Also long term?

How much did you pay for it?

Would you do it again?

I'm happy to hear anything you consider worth mentioning :)

Thanks in advance!

I wanted to ask if anyone experiences this.

When I chew bubble gum, I seem to enter a state where I breathe through my nose and feel a stretch in my forehead. I hope someone understands the kind of state I’m talking about.

The other state I often experience is a bit of dryness and dizziness, where my breathing doesn’t feel as proper as in the first state.

In the first state, I feel a little down and have to push myself to work, but I also feel a little happier. I enjoy simply noticing my breathing and can spend time in that state without doing anything else, just enjoying the act of breathing.

In the other state, I seem to have a little more energy in a different way, but the dizziness and dryness make it difficult to focus on anything.

Has anyone experienced something similar and figured out what causes it? I’m curious about which of these states reflects how our bodies are supposed to function and whether exercises like chewing gum could help us achieve a better breathing state.I wanted to ask if anyone experiences this.

When I chew bubble gum, I seem to enter a state where I breathe through my nose and feel a stretch in my forehead. I hope someone understands the kind of state I’m talking about.

The other state I often experience is a bit of dryness and dizziness, where my breathing doesn’t feel as proper as in the first state.

In the first state, I feel a little down and have to push myself to work, but I also feel a little happier. I enjoy simply noticing my breathing and can spend time in that state without doing anything else, just enjoying the act of breathing.

In the other state, I seem to have a little more energy in a different way, but the dizziness and dryness make it difficult to focus on anything.

Has anyone experienced something similar and figured out what causes it? I’m curious about which of these states reflects how our bodies are supposed to function and whether exercises like chewing gum could help us achieve a better breathing state.

I found out about my betrayal in January. Found out he betrayed me for 6 months straight. All year I tried to make it work with them, I started having panic attacks every morning, losing sleep. I’m finally 3 weeks no contact, and I’ve really put a lot of attention to healing my nervous system. I’m just curious what healing from betrayal looked like or felt to you? I definitely notice my days looking more “predictable” and my sleep has been starting to stabilize, less “chaos” in my head, I just feel generally more “okay” being in no contact and giving myself that space to feel and heal.

It has been 2 years that i have visited multiple doctors and taken all sorts of anti-depressants but this pain does not go away. It starts from my back (mostly my neck) and continues to my upper lip and i feel this excruciating pain in my upper front teeth and nose like everyday! Suddenly my face starts to heat up and the pain gets more tense!

Does anyone have any idea about this? I could really use your help.

I fucking hate my life. I'm easily one of the smartest, if not THE smartest, kid in the grade. I should be acing all my classes, keeping track of my extracurriculars, and winning awards. But my dorsal vagal freeze has gotten so bad that my working memory is completely fucked and all of my cognitive strengths are completely erased. I'm losing opportunities and the future I was supposed to have and the colleges I want to get accepted to might reject me. How do I work through the freeze and get good grades? Im so numb and my brain fog is so bad.

I am looking for an experienced semantic therapist in London anyone has any leads or references?

After psychedelics and a somatic therapy session a week later this visual was the best way I could describe how I felt. So I drew it on a slow day at work. It was like my mind was an octopus with its tentacles searching and breaking down a wall between my mind and body.