I signed up for Somatic Experiencing training because I knew it was a bottom-up approach, rooted in neurobiology. It sounded different from traditional talk therapy, and I was curious.
I’ll be honest about what else I expected. EMDR is also neurobiological, so I figured this would feel like a cousin of something I already knew well.
I was wrong, and it took about three years to understand how.
Here’s the short version of what Somatic Experiencing (SE) is. Trauma isn’t only what happened to you. It’s also what your nervous system did to survive it, and what it’s still holding on to. So instead of starting with the story, we start with the body: a tightness in your chest, a pull to leave the room, a heaviness in your legs. We move in small pieces, so your system can settle instead of flooding.
Learning to do that was another matter.
The learning curve
It felt clumsy. Truly.
SE asks you to slow way down, track sensation instead of story, and sit in silence longer than feels comfortable. I’d spent years as a therapist trained to talk, reflect, and solve problems. Suddenly I was being asked to do less.
If you’re someone who’s used to being the one with the answers, you may know how that feels.
The hardest skill to learn was waiting. Letting a moment be quiet without rushing to fill it. It felt wrong for a long time, and then it started to feel like the work.
The moment I heard my own body
In year one, we were practicing how to track the felt sense of bracing. Partnered up, moving slowly, noticing sensation as it came and went.
I noticed a pattern in myself, one I’d lived with for years without ever seeing it. It moved through me in a few seconds, faster than I’d ever caught it.
Slowed down enough to notice it, I finally heard what my body had been trying to tell me.
No amount of talking had gotten me there. My body had to show me.
Year two was the hard part
Nobody warned me about the middle.
If you’re in the middle of a long training, or a long stretch of healing, and you’re not sure it’s landing: that middle stretch is real. It doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. It usually means something is still integrating.
By year two I understood the concepts, but I couldn’t yet see how they fit into my sessions. The understanding was building. I just couldn’t see it.
What helped was the people around me. We shared what we each understood, and between us we built a fuller picture of the work than any one of us had alone. We supported each other’s growth, and that made the waiting easier.
Touch work was part of that stretch, too. I met my own edges there, and I’m still deciding whether it will become part of my practice. I’m comfortable leaving that open. Knowing where you stop is part of doing this work well.
Then you get to the other side, and it starts to make sense.
What three years actually cost
I want to name this plainly. It cost time, money, weekends, and energy. Three years is a real commitment, and there were stretches where I wondered if it was worth it.
It was. But I don’t want to pretend it was easy or quick.
If I could talk to myself on day one, I’d say: you’re going to need all three years to digest and integrate this.
There’s an old saying, go slow to go fast. It’s true of people first. Trust can’t be rushed, and neither can safety. When we go slow with each other, the real connection happens faster.
I learned that again in the training. I had to give my peers, and my own body, time before expecting anything to shift.
And I see it in the therapy room. A relationship builds at the pace a client’s nervous system can handle. The moment you try to skip ahead, you lose the very thing that makes change possible.
Slowing down is what makes the deeper work possible.
Not fixing anyone, but being the person who stays.
The person who stays
Peter Levine, who developed Somatic Experiencing, has described trauma as less about what happened to us and more about what we end up carrying alone, in the absence of an “empathetic witness.”
I think about that phrase constantly, because it explains something I saw in the training and see in my office.
In training, it looked like this: a partner would sit across from me while I fumbled through a practice session, not sure what I was noticing or whether I was doing it right. They didn’t correct me or rush to fill the quiet. They stayed steady and curious, and let me find my footing. Nothing got fixed. But I stopped feeling like I had to figure it out alone, and that’s when things started to move.
In therapy, it looks like this: a client says something out loud for the first time, something they’ve carried for years. I don’t hurry to reassure them or explain it away. I stay with them, breathe with them, and let the moment be as big as it is. Often, that’s when their shoulders drop, or their breath deepens. Their body recognizes it’s no longer holding this by itself.
That’s the work. Not fixing anyone, but being the person who stays.
What’s different in the room now
My clients work with someone who moves at their pace and doesn’t push. Nothing gets rushed or forced.
I still use EMDR, and the two fit together well. EMDR helps process specific memories. SE helps me work with the body that carries them. Between the two, I can meet someone where they are and go as deep as they’re ready to go.
And I know what integration feels like in my own body. That matters more than I expected. It’s hard to guide someone toward settling if you’ve never felt your own system do it.
I thought I was learning a technique. What I actually learned was how to stay: with a client’s hardest moment, with my own body, and with the slow middle of something that matters.
This is the kind of work I do, and this is what it’s built from.
What to expect in a session with an SE practitioner
If you’ve never done somatic work, here’s what it tends to look like:
We go slowly. You won’t be asked to retell your whole story. We may barely touch it.
We notice your body. Sensations, impulses, shifts in breath or posture. Small things count.
You stay in charge. If something feels like too much, we pause. Always.
There may be silence. It’s not awkward. It’s often where the work happens.
You leave settled, not wrung out. The goal isn’t to relive the hard stuff. It’s to help your system finally complete what it couldn’t before.
If you’re curious whether this might be a fit, I’d love to talk. I offer sessions in person across the Fort Worth area and by telehealth throughout Texas.
