Somatic Experiencing® in Columbus, OH
A body-oriented approach to healing trauma.
As much as you want to move on from what happened, it’s hard when the memory still feels so close.
Physically, you’re moving through the days, but your body still responds as though what happened isn’t over.
Maybe you notice…
Reminders of what happened can pull you into a flashback and put you right back in a state of panic.
Nightmares interrupt your sleep, and dreading them makes it harder to fall asleep.
You startle easily and feel like you’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Your body stays on alert—bracing, shutting down, or reacting before you have time to think.
Managing your responses to what happened in the past keeps you from being fully present, and the moments that make life meaningful keep passing you by.
What happened to you has shaped you. It doesn’t have to define you.
What is Somatic Experiencing?
Helping your body feel safe and recognize that the threat has passed.
Your body was there during the hardest moments of your life. When something happens too quickly, intensely, or unexpectedly for you to fully process in the moment, your nervous system may continue responding long after the actual threat has passed. Somatic Experiencing is a body-oriented approach to healing trauma that works with the ongoing physical and nervous-system responses, not only the story of what happened.
Rather than asking you to relive the traumatic event from beginning to end, we’ll slow things down and pay attention to what’s happening in your body in the present moment. Sensations, movement impulses, changes in breathing, tension, activation, settling, and other physical responses become information that guides our work.
This gradual process can support your nervous system in moving through unresolved responses and developing greater capacity to be with both activation and settling.
For experiences like car accidents, medical emergencies, frightening events, or the sudden loss of a loved one, this approach offers a different way to work with trauma that can help your body experience a sense of safety.
Over time, what happened can begin to feel more firmly anchored in the past, allowing you to be more present in your body and in the life you’re living now.
Somatic Experiencing can help you…
Feel more settled instead of staying braced for what’s next.
Develop greater awareness of your body’s signals and responses.
Feel more present instead of constantly on edge.
Experience more ease, space, and relaxation in your body.
Know, and feel, that what happened is in the past.
Come back to your body, find peace in your mind.
Questions?
FAQs
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Somatic Experiencing is a body-oriented approach to healing trauma after an overwhelming or frightening experience. It supports your nervous system in developing greater capacity to respond to what’s happening now without your body reacting as though the past is happening all over again.
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Somatic Experiencing can help with a wide range of challenges. Some of the most common ones I help my clients with are:
Ongoing responses after a traumatic event such as a car accident, medical event, or the sudden loss of a loved one.
Difficulty staying connected to the present.
Feeling anxious, on edge, or easily startled.
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Not exactly. Somatic therapy is a broad term for approaches that include the body in the therapeutic process. Somatic Experiencing is one specific form of somatic therapy that works with how the body and nervous system respond to overwhelming or traumatic experiences.
If you’re looking for a broader body-oriented approach to working with patterns that developed over time, NARM may be a better fit. We can sort that out during a consultation.
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That’s really common. A specific traumatic experience doesn’t happen in isolation from everything that came before it. Because I’m trained in both Somatic Experiencing and NARM, we can work with both and determine together where it makes the most sense to begin.
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Rather than focusing only on the story of the traumatic event, we also pay attention to what happens in your body as you talk about it. Changes in your breathing, tension in your shoulders, an impulse to move, or a feeling of settling can give us information about how your nervous system is processing the experience.
By working with these responses in small, manageable pieces, we support your nervous system in having more capacity to be with what’s happening in the present without being overwhelmed by responses connected to the past.
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We’ll thoughtfully work with the content of a traumatic event. As you talk about what happened or bring an image of it to mind, we’ll slow things down and notice what’s happening in response—a sensation, image, emotion, thought, or impulse.
We give the activation time and space to increase without overwhelming your system, and then allow space for settling. We won’t force you through an experience or ask you to relive everything that happened. We work bit by bit, following what emerges and being mindful of your capacity in the moment.
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While Somatic Experiencing can be used in crisis and stabilization work, that isn’t the focus of my practice. You can search the Somatic Experiencing International practitioner directory to find an SE-trained provider whose practice is a better fit for that kind of support.
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My work with the body began long before I became a somatic therapist. I spent more than 20 years as a licensed massage therapist. During that time, I completed the three-year Somatic Experiencing® Professional Training and became a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner. I later became a licensed professional clinical counselor.
The combination of psychotherapy training and decades of hands-on experience working with the body informs how I understand the relationships between body responses, nervous system patterns, emotions, and thoughts. I’m also a NARM® Master Therapist and serve on the faculty of the Complex Trauma Training Center, where I train and mentor therapists in working with developmental and relational trauma. -
Yes. I see clients in person in the greater Columbus area and online across Ohio, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Florida. Somatic Experiencing can still be effective online. Together we pay attention to what’s happening in your body moment to moment.