Somatics & Trauma Therapy

At its core, trauma involves a loss of power and safety that can deeply disrupt one’s relationship to self and others. Experiencing abuse, assault, or violence often leaves lasting imprints on the mind and body. Common psychological outcomes include PTSD, depression, anxiety, and compulsive thoughts, while the emotional landscape can become dominated by shame, guilt, fear, and a protective but isolating numbness. These responses are not signs of weakness, but of a nervous system and psyche adapting to survive the unbearable.

How Trauma Lives in the Body

When we experience an overwhelming threat, our brain’s alarm system (the amygdala) takes over, bypassing the rational, thinking prefrontal cortex. This triggers a survival response: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. If the threat is inescapable or the response cannot be completed (we can’t fight or escape), the intense energy and stress hormones generated by the event do not get discharged. Instead, they remain trapped in the body.

This is why trauma is often stored somatically (in the body). It resides not as a coherent narrative, but is experienced as:

• Sensations: Chronic tension, pain, or numbness without medical cause.
• Visceral Responses: A pounding heart, a gut feeling of dread, or shallow breath triggered by non-threatening reminders.
• Implicit Memories: Flashbacks that feel like re-living the event, often without clear images or words.
• Protective Postures: A hunched shoulder, a perpetually guarded stance, or a flinch response.

The body holds onto the experience long after the danger has passed, operating as if the threat is still present.

Manifestations Across the Lifespan

In Children:
A child’s developing brain and lack of verbal capacity mean trauma often manifests through behavior and physiology.

• Dysregulation: Extreme emotional swings, tantrums, or “shutdowns.”
• Somatic Complaints: Frequent stomachaches or headaches.
• Developmental Shifts: Regression (bedwetting, baby talk), hyper-vigilance, or difficulty with attention and learning.
• Play & Expression: Play may become rigid, repetitive, or themed around the traumatic event. Drawings might reveal symbols of fear or fragmentation.

In Adults:
Trauma can shape an adult’s entire way of being in the world.

• Hyperarousal: Anxiety, irritability, insomnia, and being easily startled.
• Avoidance & Numbing: Isolating from others, emotional detachment, or using substances to avoid feeling.
• Intrusions: Nightmares, distressing memories, or emotional floods.
• Negative Self-Concept: Deep-seated shame, guilt, or a pervasive sense of being “broken” or unsafe.
• Relational Challenges: Difficulty with trust, intimacy, or maintaining healthy boundaries.

Trauma Within the Family System

Trauma rarely exists in isolation. It reverberates through relationships, creating a trauma-informed family system.

• Intergenerational Transmission: Unresolved trauma can be passed down through parenting styles, attachment patterns, and family narratives (“We don’t talk about that”).
• Adaptive Roles: Family members may unconsciously adopt roles to manage the unspoken stress—e.g., the “perfect child,” the “problem child,” the “caretaker,” or the “distractor.”
• Mirrored Nervous Systems: A parent’s dysregulated nervous system (through hypervigilance or dissociation) can directly impact a child’s developing ability to self-regulate.
• Secondary Trauma & Enmeshment: Partners or children can absorb the emotional pain and symptoms of the traumatized member, leading to blurred boundaries and a family identity organized around the trauma.

How does Trauma Therapy Work?

Healing from trauma is not about erasing the past, but about integrating the experience so it is no longer a disruptive, governing force. There are three stages in trauma recovery treatment which can be addressed through many different therapy modalities. Trauma Therapy involves:

1. Establishing Safety: Creating internal and external environments of trust and stability.
2. Processing the Memory: Gently working with the body’s stored trauma to complete the thwarted survival response and transform implicit memories into a narrative that can be held without being re-lived.
3. Re-regulation: Learning to recognize and soothe the body’s alarm system, expanding the “window of tolerance” for difficult emotions.
4. Re-connection: Restoring a sense of agency, rebuilding trust in safe relationships, and reclaiming a life not defined by the past.

What does Anti-Oppressive Practice have to do with Trauma Therapy?

Anti-oppressive practice is the essential framework that makes trauma therapy safe, relevant, and effective for racialized and neurodivergent individuals and families. It is an approach that recognizes the impact of systemic oppression and power imbalances – such as racism, sexism, heterosexism, ableism, ageism, genderism and classism, etc. – on clients’ mental health. AOP strives to create a more equitable therapeutic environment, challenging practices that may inadvertently reinforce these power imbalances.

Trauma is not only individual. For those facing racism, ableism, and systemic exclusion, trauma is often ongoing, intergenerational, and rooted in systemic injustice. Without this lens, therapy can unintentionally pathologize adaptive survival strategies and overlook the real sources of harm.

The goal is therapy that does no harm—and actively supports your liberation.

AOP strives to create a more equitable therapeutic environment, challenging practices that may inadvertently reinforce these power imbalances. This involves ongoing therapist self-reflection and reflexivity, a client-centered approach that is contextual, addressing power dynamics in the therapeutic relationship, practising cultural humility and advocating for systemic change and social justice.

Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it. – Paolo Freire

How does Somatic Therapy work?

The somatic approaches that I use in my work include expressive arts and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (SP) is a specialized somatic approach that addresses trauma where it is stored: in the nervous system, physical sensations, and survival responses. By working mindfully with the body’s wisdom, SP helps complete the protective impulses that were overwhelmed during traumatic events, restoring regulation, safety, and agency.

How It Works:

• Bottom-Up Processing: We begin with bodily sensations and impulses—not just thoughts or emotions—to safely access and transform trauma.
• Completing Survival Responses: The body’s frozen or thwarted defensive movements (fight, flight, freeze) are gently and respectfully completed, releasing trapped energy.
• Building Somatic Resources: You’ll learn to anchor in physical experiences of safety and strength, widening your capacity to process difficult material without becoming overwhelmed.
• Separating Past from Present: Through mindful awareness, traumatic memories are revisited while staying grounded in current safety, helping your nervous system recognize that the threat is over.

Who It Helps:
SP is particularly effective for those who feel “stuck” in talk therapy, experience trauma as physical symptoms, or struggle with anxiety, dissociation, or emotional numbness. It is also a powerful approach for addressing developmental and relational trauma.

In Our Sessions:
You will be gently guided to notice and explore your body’s signals in a supportive, non-judgmental space. There is no need to relive traumatic events in detail. Instead, we work with what the body holds now—helping it move from survival patterns back toward balance, resilience, and wholeness.