What Trauma Does to Your Body and Mind and Why Somatic Therapy Creates Real Healing

Traumatic and overwhelming experiences change not only the neurobiology of the brain but also the nervous system’s ability to flex. Trauma can become so deeply ingrained inside the nervous system, the muscles, the joints, and even on a cellular level that traditional talk therapy cannot reach or heal. This is why somatic therapy can create real and lasting healing by not only bringing nervous system regulation into the body but also by releasing and integrating past traumatic events held in the body. Somatic therapy, also known as, bottom-up therapies, can be highly effective in helping you achieve trauma recovery.

The Body Remembers What Mind Has Tried to Forget

The body's cognitive defense mechanisms are very adaptive and very well designed to suppress and compartmentalize traumatic experiences. Sometimes these are pushed so far away in the mind that these experiences don’t even register on a conscious level. Just because the mind doesn’t always remember doesn’t mean that the body doesn’t hold that traumatic tension, internal restlessness, or hypervigilance on a daily basis. With somatic trauma therapy, you work to not only heal the body, but also help to shift the cognitive changes that the trauma created.

What Trauma Actually Is and Why the Definition Is Wider Than Most Think

Trauma is an overarching category that can include many different stressful or overwhelming experiences. An event that causes large amounts of discomfort can fall under the trauma umbrella. So, for example, chronic bullying in high school, not having enough food growing up as a child, having invalidating caregivers as a child, or barely surviving a severe car accident can all be forms of trauma. Depending on the severity of bullying, the lack of food, and car accident scenarios all have the potential to create Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) due to threats to self and relational trauma aspects. Trauma can encompass a lot of different experiences. What’s important to know is that somatic trauma therapy in Milwaukee, Wisconsin can help you heal.

How Trauma Impacts the Body – The Physiological Reality Most People Never Get Explained

When a person experiences an overwhelming or traumatic event, the body has innate survival mechanisms to rely on, such as fight, flight, collapse, or even appease. If these trauma threat responses are not fully completed or are ineffective, they become stored in the body. Many people after traumatic events experience muscle tension, migraines, other chronic medical issues, anxiety, depression, and various forms of addiction. Even though the mind understands that the threat has passed, the body continues to cling to those memories, sensations, and emotions.

Why Talk Therapy Alone Has a Ceiling and What the Body Needs Instead

Due to trauma being stored within the body, it’s important to allow the body time and space to heal. This is exactly why traditional talk therapy does not permeate deep enough to create the healing one needs when looking to heal from trauma. By allowing room for bottom-up somatic therapy, the body and nervous system can begin healing, which will in turn allow for cognitive changes. Sometimes changing your thoughts, as in talk therapy, does not help the body and nervous system heal. 

What Somatic Practices Are and How They Work to Heal Trauma

Somatic therapy works by helping to stabilize the body that often becomes imbalanced during a traumatic event or time. It does this by working to re-regulate the nervous system that often becomes dysregulated due to trauma, and by fostering your own ability to self-regulate despite distress. As your ability to self-regulate increases, somatic therapy works by bringing awareness back to your mind and body connection that often becomes severed during a traumatic experience. As this mind-body connection broadens and increases, your own capacity to experience emotion, memories, and sensations in life also increases. With this increase, you are starting to move towards integrating past traumatic experiences and symptoms.

Finding Somatic Trauma Therapy in Milwaukee, WI

Finding somatic trauma therapy in Milwaukee, Wisconsin is great for people who have tried traditional talk therapy in the past, and it hasn’t been successful. You can search for somatic trauma therapy by either searching on Google or going to Psychology Today or other therapy directories. I’d encourage you to reach out to a few different trauma therapists that you think would be a good fit. Not every therapist has room on their caseload or meets your appointment availability needs. What’s important to gain here is the knowledge around the benefits of somatic trauma therapy, and the reminder that even if talk therapy didn’t work for you in the past, bottom-up-oriented therapies can still be beneficial. If you are exhausted from having your trauma symptoms run your life, find and start somatic trauma therapy in Milwaukee, Wisconsin today.

This blog was written by Daniel Gospodarek, who operates Revitalize Mental Health PLLC based in Kenosha, WI. He helps strong, high-achieving men find the source of their reoccurring relationship issues, who struggle with emotions, break the cycle of not living up to their potential, begin living fulfilled lives.

He provides both online and in-person therapy for those who live near Kenosha, WI. Daniel is certified in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy and is an Intermediate Level Somatic Experiencing Therapist. He is currently licensed both in Wisconsin and Colorado.