Somatic Experiencing Session: Inside Trauma Resolution Therapy

[00:00:00]welcome everybody to the Sunday School dropouts podcast it's so exciting to be here with you today on a special episode I I'm thrilled that you guys are going to be able to experience this so as you know we typically have two episodes every month um and this month we are doing uh q&as for the holidays but we wanted to kind of give you a different type of episode something that we're going to make into kind of a regular reoccurring thing um and so today is the first of those and we're actually going to be meeting with two of my friends and colleagues and also they are practitioners at the center for trauma resolution and Recovery Jeremy Layman and Jessica Hine and um we are actually going to be doing a somatic experiencing session uh so you guys will get to see it in real time what would happen if you are working with a practitioner doing body B B trauma resolution therapy now fair warning we're not going to be talking about any sort of content that would be um graphic or um even probably stress inducing in some in any fashion you will hear uh Jessica who is the um doing the role of the client uh using an example from her own life where she has to be on stage talking with people and that really is the extent of it that's all you're going to hear in terms of the content of what we're working through in the session but I'm really excited because so many times you know people are accustomed to um thinking that trauma therapy you come in and you give all the Gory details of what it is that has happened to you and you know there it's people think that for good reason that is you know kind of what we see on movies and TVs and to an extent that's how a lot of people uh used to do therapy is they would you know the therapist would encourage them to do that we just talk about what's happening and then you know it makes it better but as trauma research has evolved and as we understand more about how trauma lives inside of us how our nervous systems work what we know is that we actually don't have to necessarily speak the story though that can be important because that story being witnessed and heard is oftentimes very important but in terms of actually resolving the trauma we don't actually need to however that sounds really weird to a lot of people they don't really know what to do with that because it's so different than what they've ever experienced and so we thought it could be a good idea to show you what a session might be like so we're going to do that and we will have you know several episodes um they'll come out you know every couple months every few months something like that so um this is an episode where if you have access to uh watching it on YouTube I would encourage that because you'll just pick up on some other things but even if you're just listening to it I think you're going to get a lot out of it um you will there's probably a little bit more talking than what would normally happen in a sematic experiencing session simply because um Jeremy and Jessica both knew that there was going to be people listening and so instead of just um noticing say like body movements they actually had to say oh I know Noti that this is happening or I notied that this is happening so uh you're still going to get a lot out of it even if you're listening but this is one where I would encourage you that if you have the possibility to watch this on YouTube please go ahead and do so you're also going to hear us debrief the episode or sorry debrief the session afterwards and there's a a little bit of an intro at the beginning where we talk through a little bit about what we're going to do um so I don't want to um necessar neily go through all of that again but I did just want to kind of introduce what we're doing and and even why we're doing it so like I said sematic experiencing doesn't necessarily focus on the content meaning the story it focuses on our body it is a different way of doing therapy um it's actually not technically a therapeutic modality it would be considered a trauma resolution modality and you don't have to be a therapist in order to get trained and certified in it I really love it because and you'll hear me say this in the episode it's kind of an act of rebellion to high control religion so you think about how many times so many of us were told in high control religion to suppress our bodies and to silence our natural urges to um vilify and you know think of our bodies as evil and one of the things that I love about somatic experiencing is that I feel like it's a return home to ourselves our body is is the main tool of healing and it's getting back in touch with these um parts of ourselves that have been cut off and fragmented in order to fit into this High control system and so in a way I think that doing somatic experiencing is is kind of flying in the face of high control religion and going against some of the fundamentalist teachings because the body which was thought of to be so as as the place of evil is is the thing that that heals plus so I'm I'm excited for that there's a lot of different things that you might notice in the session uh just kind of some different language that's used you're going to notice that we're talking about emotions images movements or behaviors uh Sensations and then of course meaning or thoughts right um but what we're trying to do is kind of talk about all of that or navigate all of that rather than just moving up into our heads and making meaning of what it is that was happening because that's that's what we normally do so I'm excited for you all to witness this and I would love to hear your thoughts so please make sure to comment um on social media you can send us DMS you're always welcome to send us an email from our website and let us know what you thought of this show again I want to be really clear that we're not getting into any content so there's going to be no graphic stories there's going to be no narratives that are shared about what it is that Jessica is actually processing through the only thing that you as the listener or the viewer will know is that she is about to have an experience where she has to be on stage and other people will be looking at her so so there I don't need to put necessarily A trigger warning on this however we know that we always might feel you know we always are prone to a variety of different triggers and what is triggering for one person may or may not be for the next person and vice versa so like every episode make sure that you are taking care of yourself and if you need to pause the episode or skip it Al together we certainly will not be offended and you can just come back to the next one so with that we're going to go ahead and just get into it and I hope you enjoy our conversation about somatic experiencing the session of somatic experiencing and then debriefing it afterwards welcome Jessica and Jeremy I'm so glad you guys are here today I'm excited for today because we are going to do a practice session for somatic experiencing which all three of us are trained in Jeremy I think we talked about this on our episode that we did a while ago you and I went through basically the whole training eight nths of the training together yes and then and then Jessica quick hurried up and and is getting hers done too so um this is exciting but um I know we're going to spend the bulk of our time doing an actual session but I thought it would be good to just kind of help set people up for what they're about to experience and kind of the flow of a somatic experiencing session uh that they might go through with a practitioner so yeah I I kind of have some notes and I wonder if you guys want to speak to that a little bit um the first part of any SE session really is settling and yeah if you want to explain that or talk about why that's important go for it well I'll kind of start us off which is you know settling I think of it as feeling into safety which is like how how calm can I get like how settled and in my body can I get and so many times we use things like um looking around whatever space you're in and you know you've probably maybe heard in the past 54321 which is essentially picking out five things you can see four things that you can touch three things you can hear and maybe two things you can smell and getting your senses online right Right Where You Are and obviously settling is this ability for you to feel right in the moment if it's safe but again it's so important that we allow this settling when we actually feel safe right if we're in a room or a space that actually is actually safe to us um and to me being able to feel even deeper into this like how far can this go inside of me that it's not just sort of like oh I know where I am I'm in my bedroom and there's five things it goes a lot deeper than that I sense that one way to do that is to kind of move from exterior reception which is kind of like the outside of you into the interoception that's like the felt sense of your body itself and what's going on in there yeah and being able to do both of those things at the same time which is I know where I am exteriorly but I also can sense inside my body and it feels calm it feels settled it feels regulated um that that to to me is kind of what settling really looks like what about you Jeremy yeah I um one of the things that I think lot about with trauma like it dislocates us like from where and when we are and those are the two things that I'm when I'm having people like settle into where we are some of that is for the experience of the person settling into the space but some of that is for me to get a sense of like how much access do you have to this felt sense of safety when safety is available one also often there is this conceptual idea of of course they safe I'm safe because reasons but there isn't this like uh palpable sense this felt sense of oh this is what safety actually um feels like this is how this entire organism responds when safety feels present and so that's one of the things that I notice is often missing for a lot of folks is they don't they don't have any way of really being able to describe what safety feels like and how they actually know that safety is present and so we we have really um like we have super highways to our trauma responses and our Pathways to grounding and safety and presence those paths often aren't very clear sometimes it's just this little opening in the brush and so sometimes I have to do a little bit of convincing on this part of the work that this isn't something other than trauma work this isn't something to distract from the trauma work this isn't something to um just help you feel better like what we're doing here is helping your nervous system um know that oh I can return to safety and these are some of the reliable ways that I can that I my own organism knows get me there um more effectively than you know other ways yeah and I know you kind of briefly mentioned it there and then I've had the luxury of knowing this about you because we've done so many practice sessions together is that I know I'm like we just every time we're together we're practicing with Margaritas it's fine margarita in your body very calming very safe yes um but I know that um the co-regulation piece with the practitioner and the the person who's uh coming in for a session is really important part of that settling and arriving process where we're not only checking out to see like where's your nervous system at but we're checking in with ourselves as the practitioner where's my nervous system at can I use then my nervous system to be able to help you regulate yours um yeah and I yeah you can there's next topic speak to that if you [Laughter] want yeah I think I try and do it with they talk about ins sematic experiencing kind of receiving eyes and what that looks like when somebody is being seen but they're being received they're not not you know being glared at or um Too Close um even but what kind of distance for me as the practitioner feels comfortable for this client and I feel like you know I have practices before sessions that are about getting me in a space where I can access that part of me that's super super grounded so when they arrive to my session no matter if they're really elevated Maybe they're shut down um that they can sense whether it's the speed with which I talk or the way I look at them using my eyes that this is a very embodied practice I think because our bodies are so sensitive if we are disregulated it can throw off the entire session um and so to me I do some things like and I'm sure Jeremy does it too because he's told me about some of it but feeling in my feet like how settled are they can can I feel the rootedness of the ground rising up to meet me in this moment with a client um but yeah what about what about you Jeremy yeah I um like that co-regulation piece I'll usually do a little bit of nervous system education on that and um the thing that I that I let people know is that when we come into the world we have an underdeveloped nervous system that needs needs an external nervous system that's regulated grounded has capacity so that we can learn how to navigate our own that's how co-regulation is how we learn first how to navigate our own nervous systems often we don't get that and so we have you know the variety of ways that our nervous system is just tuned um and when I'm doing this work with folks especially that come from these higher control um and more fundamentalist backgrounds I will often check in with like how does it feel for how does the space between you and me feel um and really be curious about that and it's often some version of like oh it feels fine I'm like what lets you know that it feels fine um well I know that you're you know you know the letters after my name and I'm like nope this isn't this is absolutely not a reason to trust me yeah like I said set this up in a way that like you have lots of permission here to um slow down and make decisions about how much you even trust here or not and I want your trust to be based on how this space feels rather than because of my job title and so paying attention to that and does this do you feel safe here because this feels like a co-regulating presence or are you overriding some things that show up in spaces like this um yeah yeah so I know before we get into the session I mean because I'm sure people will see this in and experience this in the session and then we'll probably debrief about it afterwards but um you know when we talk about okay if let's just briefly touch on like the lack of content meaning like um a lot of people come into a a a session and they're going I've got to tell you all the nitty-gritty details like that's the expectation of of a therapy session of a coaching session of you know that sort of thing and you know to their credit that is how it is like stereotypically colloquially like that's what we see on TV all the things um but we all know with sematic experiencing and our clients have experienced as well like minimal content is almost the expectation or the invitation I should say and then um we also have what there's an acronym that in somatic experiencing we call it sibam one that three of us talk about a lot from Kimberly and Johnson's book um Call of the Wild is um times and these are like different channels of meaning so I before we get into the session I wonder if you could just if you want to just talk a little bit about why we don't need content and kind of how those different meaning channels you know play into that yeah well you know it's so fascinating um I feel like in order to really do trauma work it has to be just these little bites little bitty nuggets I guess you could say and I find with a lot of people sometimes it's too much too soon too fast which is trauma and they're just ret traumatizing themselves when you tell the story it's just too much even just the story your body is reliving it and so just getting the beginning the very beginning of something you know like oh I had a fight at work that's enough to bring up the felt sense of what that experience was without it being too much because we haven't gone too far into it yet and I know that's a hard cell but I think if people were willing to experiment with themselves like hey I'll just try one session and see what happens I think they might be stunned at how much can be done with almost no content at all um and I really do recommend for people to try it themselves because to me I want the felt sense that you feel like oh this is right for me um and I understand resistant parts and why they might be there totally understandable to want to be heard totally understandable to want somebody to validate what has happened to you and to believe you totally valid but also sometimes it's too much to go into a lot of that and sometimes with clients I find to that we kind of do half sessions you know like hey we'll do this for part of the session and then the part of you that wants to be heard let's let's let's hear from it and see how that goes for you and get the felt sense of what that's like um so that's kind of how I take it yeah Jeremy thoughts on that with just kind of the minimal content Andor times channel sabam that sort of thing yeah when I started um doing before I learned sematic experiencing I felt like I was doing a lot of work to make sure that I got the order of the events correct and all of the who said what parts correct and like it felt like a lot of details that I was juggling and it felt like in all of these details that I was juggling somehow something important was still being missed and I didn't know how to make sense of that really until like we start till I started paying attention to the experience itself like trauma doesn't exist in the details of what happened it's how those how what happened gets lodged in our nervous system and in our felt sense and that's where that that understanding and that shift for me was what helped me be able to see oh this is this might be what's going on here um in a way that all of the plot points um sometimes are really distracting from yeah well I think that's really helpful and you know it's kind of like one of these things where it's like we can only talk about riding a bike for so long and then we just got to get on to the bike and try it so maybe that's a good place where we can transition into like the actual session and and you guys being a client and a practitioner of somatic experiencing and everybody else will get to experience it alongside all right well then here we go well Jessica how are you doing I'm doing okay today doing okay today um so we're going to be doing a demo session and whatever for Laura and the this um I think it's super exciting um so can we take a few moments just to kind of arrive here together in this space in this uh Zoom space together yeah maybe also just taking in the your physical space on your side of this conversation the room that you're in sure I'm just going to kind of take a minute to look around and my dog is sleeping over in the corner and have the light on and I love my lamp that's up there the fixture and I've got some windows and I can kind of see see the sky from the windows what does that Sky do for you when you notice it when I let put it in um kind of focus on it just a deep breath and I can feel my breath kind of going a little bit deeper a little bit further down having my eyes up I feel like I can feel my shoulders kind of relaxing shoulders [Music] relaxing more awareness of my feet oh what are you noticing in your feet yeah uh I can feel the carpet Bel beneath my feet and I I don't have any shoes on and yeah there's just a general like more relaxed sensation kind of through the whole body at first it was kind of towards the top and now it's like settling through my gut and down through my legs they're sort of like they're not moving which is a settled feeling for me yeah was interesting as you're describing um noticing outdoors and that impact that that was having on your body and nervous system I have a window over here too and could see it out of the corner of my eye and as you're noticing that I noticed like a few moments of settling on my side as well kind of just this opening in my own chest it kind of felt like it was in sync with what was happening on your side yeah yeah that feels nice to kind of come back to looking more at the screen now and at you and just feeling here but also like a little bit lower yeah I feel like I went from maybe like a three out of 10 to kind of like a one or a zero out of 10 going to three out of 10 to a one or zero out of 10 in terms of sort of energy activation or anxiety is there anywhere in particular where you noticed that settling happening what let you know that that dropped from a three to a a one or a zero I think for me it felt like I became a lot more aware that I have a body and a lot more connected to things below kind of the the neckline um and I think another way is when my breath feels deeper and longer and further down into into my belly and I can almost like feel my belly moving in addition to kind of upper chest area sure and kind of my speech slowing down so slower speech you feel like your breath is feeling kind of filling your trunk going all the way down into the lower abdomen softer just slower and you notice that you have a body yeah yeah would it be okay to just hang out with this feeling of noticing that you have a body and hanging out with this presence for just a few more moments yeah yeah that feels okay and I'll kind of tell you what I what I notice as we give it a little bit of time um in this moment I feel like I'm aware of my hands and kind of like their resting posture um and a little movement through the feet but like awareness let they're there like moving them a little to feel more into them yeah and then uh I guess I sense my body being here but no movement or no energy at all just sort of like a steadiness no energy and no movement but steadiness does that feel like a pleasant unpleasant or neutral feeling definitely Pleasant yeah it feels like groundedness kind of rootedness grounded and rooted kind of like almost like I have an awareness from like the top of my head all the way to the souls of my feet but it feels grounding got it yeah so before we um hopped on before we started recording you were talking about um some activation that had been that had shown up and I was curious if it felt okay to um work with that a little bit or if there's something else that feels more um feels like you would prefer instead yeah no I think that's a good a good place to start okay which is I have an event where there's going to be a lot of people and I'll be speaking and even just saying that I can feel can we pause right there and just notice what starts to show up when you when you think about this as you're kind of starting to head into this story yeah yeah I can just there's a tightness in my gut feels almost like woundedness like um and I kind of picture it in there like like it's hard and black um hard black woundedness um like kind of through my central core kind of through my mid chest all the way down towards this area is just some energy that I feel like a little bit shallower breath but also movement got it how would you describe that movement what did you say sorry how would you describe that movement yeah almost like swirling motion yeah motion yeah and as we talk about it more I can kind of feel the edges of it and it starts to settle a little bit got it so just paying attention to it and noticing it also noticing that it's settling yeah you know that it's settling it like when I try to feel into that kind of centrally located area that had this swirling motion now it feels more like like a settledness but my gut still feels like that tight w [Music] kind of and it feels very internal got it is do you notice any emotion attached to that sense of woundedness or um yeah um you know it feels a bit like fear I think is probably the word I would use uh and does it feel okay to pay attention to that right now or does it feel like too much at all no it doesn't feel like too much um but it definitely I think it definitely does feel like fear and kind of the image that I have is kind of like a like almost like braided in there like in its Wellness like it's tight tight like a bra and so kind of this braided black object is kind of what it feels like interesting so I'm curious we could either continue to like pay attention to this and maybe even give that area some support or would it feel better to kind of move back to that sense of grounded presence that we were noticing earlier yeah I think I might want to explore a little bit of support maybe maybe like touch self-touch to the area sure what kind of touch I feel like let me explore a little bit as I like as seems like just uh gentle resting over the area gentle resting over that area yeah feels supportive and almost like the the tightness is loosening a little bit it's not as you give it support and I'm kind of going back to the image of kind of being on stage like that as we do this just to see what happens when I do that and it seems like when I draw up that kind of image of being on stage that way it will kind of tighten a bit but not as much as when we first started talking about it when we first brought it up and the more time that I allow my hand to kind of rest over this area the more loose it seems to come where it's a lot smaller than it was before like it kind of felt like like six to 8 Ines and now it feels a lot smaller almost like maybe the size of a tangerine oh that's quite a bit smaller and does it still have that quality of fear attached to it or has that changed at all in any way yeah yeah and it's kind of saying like fear fear of being seen like is where a lot of people will see me MH yeah and that feels right it I'm curious um and if this doesn't land at all you can just let me know um but I'm curious as you're kind of imagining being seen in that spot um are there any eyes in the crowd that feel like they might be supportive yeah yeah definitely um there'll be two friends there that I feel like will that know me well that I feel like um that will feel like support for sure that what happens in your body as you re as you bring those friends to mind yeah I noticed the smile yes one is a very funny person so yeah and so I can imagine she's gonna be making hilarious faces [Laughter] and um and then the other is just really really caring and so imagining her I can feel her warmth yeah yeah also just notice some softening in your shoulders and I felt like I could breathe more into this area like my breath could go down there um that feels really nice yeah curious like as you're um bringing to mind those two friends um and imagining that support does that spot in your abdomen change at all in response to that in any way yeah it's like a p sizee at this point yeah it's really small the tension or the tightness um yeah when I imagine being seen by them if I kind of hold their faces in my mental image um yeah there's a lot of loosening in that area overall okay and what are you noticing kind of in the rest of your body as we're talking right now yeah I think as we were exploring kind of deeper into the tightness I think I kind of lost a little bit of the bottom half of my body but now I did a little movement with my feet and I can feel the bottom half of my body more got it yeah and a little bit more movement through my upper upper body feels nice like there's a a feeling more closely aligned with where we were before like when we were looking up in the sky got it and out our Windows well we're about at a um about at a landing spot does this feel like your nervous system is at a good spot or does there feel like anything that's still needing some attention right now no this feels like a good spot to land got it well from here how about if we just both take some time to look out our windows again okay don't know something just fell over behind me yeah yeah it feels really nice well let you know that it feels nice yeah yeah I think um yeah I think I sense kind of that openness that you're speaking of a little bit like through the chest area and I feel like I can take deeper and bigger breaths um I just kind of noticed the overall awareness of my body and it feels pretty rooted and grounded again rooted and grounded again yeah well thank you so much Jessica well thank you and whenever Laura wants to come back we would be happy to welcome her into the room I'm back it's so fun to observe this okay so how are both of you feeling I'm feeling really good like I noticed my own nervous system really tracking with Jessica's which I mean we all do this kind of work so that's not that's unsurprising to us but um that's kind of become one of my cues when when I'm kind of synced up with the person that I'm working with and that and kind of where we are in our session and what's been happening and all of that yeah I noticed at the very beginning because I was tracking with y'all as well like there was kind of a like a excitement kind of whatever but then like quickly like shifted into it and it was almost like a collective you know just like relief and it was like all three of us were looking out our respective windows and it was like coming in into the room um just like being in sync and really tracking um tracking with with everything um and I felt like it just kind of set everything up and I I personally which I know will probably you know like what we've talked about of like this idea of not having to work with much content and so I thought it was really awesome that it was like like your content in total was about two sentences you know but yet there was so much um body awareness as well as being able to track you know kind of that rise and activation and then letting it come back to a place as settling and checking back in which I thought was really cool because so many times you know we can be really aware of like oh I'm getting really really activated but we don't take the time to like support it all the way back down and so I thought that was like a really like Jeremy you did a really good job of like leading through and back back down into that more settled space and then let really letting it integrate I mean I think the session length was like perfect for that like really like letting it integrate checking back in um like resettling but then also landing at a place of like goodness of going yeah I am like you know like noticing what is it like to feel good in your body whereas the expansion right I read a quote somewhere like if you're if you're practitioner doesn't spend like as much time developing like those empowerment like like letting you lean into feelings of goodness and empowerment this same amount that you're like leaning into safety and coping skills like we're not doing something right so I L that that was there as well so yeah those are a couple of my observations what how are you feeling Jess it was so fascinating because he I loved the fact that I could feel both the settling in the beginning and kind of coming into looking out the window and feeling the goodness of that but also the kind of activation that did show up you know was probably like four five six out of 10ish and even had some disassociation pieces I think I kind of lost the bottom half of my body a little bit and going so far in there but his ability I wanted to help myself but he touched on a developmental piece of having support from exterior to me yes and that like we call it titration but the support or the like easing into resources that are available even in the midst of like activation was huge and it was so interesting because as I was there I I it did not occur to me how there could be an external resource that way and so um that was really helpful in the settling um and I think you're right like that's spending at least as much if not more time either in the support pieces and finding those resources that titr trate it or that you're into only resource and you're just feeling deeper into safety I find that safety piece and working only from that to be the most effective in doing this work so yeah I just really felt like that was a perfect encapsulation of how that's executed yeah that's awesome Jeremy how do you feel I feel um there were some spots where I um I caught myself intervening in this story kind of sooner than I sometimes think to I noticed that as she was thinking about this thing that was coming up I had this impulse to O Let's slow it down here before this gets to be too big of uh or too much activation to work with and it seemed like from Jessica's response it seemed like that was that impulse to kind of pause there and um just work with that little piece of activation which turned out to be not just a little piece of activation like there was even in just that little bit of story there was um a a pretty significant piece of activation to work with um and so as she was talking about she gave some really great imagery cues like this woundedness this braid um and we have sabam that we use in this in this world sensation image Behavior affect and meaning um and so there was this image and I was curious about what else is feels connected with this and there was some emotion that was connected with that um there was some um meaning meaning popped right out yep yep yeah yeah um and so for me most of the time people come into our offices super well-versed in this meaning channel the story The Plot the what it's about and I have this way of thinking about those um components like I have this little five channel mixing board and the meaning channel is usually pretty pretty high for most people that show up in our office and um when I'm curious what I'm I'm trying to like see can we create a more integrated mix here um with all of these components rather than have one kind of dominating um so that's what I was kind of thinking about here like what else might need might want to come in as resource and there was also like some Mo some action like that be part of uh sibam where you actually gave yourself Jessica some some physical support to your to your abdomen I'm curious to know if you could for those people who are listening and just and not watching for you as the person in the therapist role what did you notice in Jessica with like the activation piece where you're like oh this is there's a little activation here let's move into it but not shoot way up you know and kind of get her to this really activated Place well so we had one we had talked a little bit before we started recording about this um event that's coming up and I I knew kind of from that that this quite a bit of Activation so that was already my cue that this might need a little bit of slowing down but also as she was talking there was you know a little bit of like speeding up in her in her speech pattern her eyes were moving a little bit more um just little cues like that that let me know oh there's some there's some activation that's starting to show up now and rather than like waiting until this gets really amped up and we're having to work with and try and negotiate a lot of nervous system activation um because in a 50 minute session that can sort of be a frustrating amount to work work with on both sides like there's almost too much to for the nervous system to metabolize digest move through so giving the nervous system some chance to just we just take off a little bite here based on the things that I'm seeing seems like a good spot to interrupt not because I'm wanting to shut down what's going on but because there's if this keeps going there's going to be more than is going to be digestible but but yeah those were some of the cues that I noticed that like the speeding up a little bit of speeding up and talking and um eyes were a little bit were moving a little bit more and yeah and I'm kind of putting you on the spot Jessica but I'm curious to know because you know when we talked about like okay let's not do like a level 10 activation or something for you as the person who's experiencing this knowing the activation beforehand just even thinking about it you know just with that little piece that we worked with today how does that feel in terms of like the upcoming experience like is it like oh I'm good now or are you feeling you know 15% better or I'm just curious to know from your experience because I think on the client side of it we often think we have to have this really big cathartic expression that in order for it to be done or fixed or healed or whatever it is and yet there's something that happened there that feels really meaningful so yeah I'm curious if you could speak to that oh yeah definitely so piece of it that feel really helpful is even just knowing that these things will show up there you you know that oh like I'm probably going to feel something through my midsection and through my gut like that is a natural response to what's happening and I know that's already going to happen and on some level that feels nice to know um but also it feels helpful to talk about okay what can I do on stage to kind of like mitigate the fact that some of this will probably be there um whether it is self-touch to the area and supporting myself or whether it is finding the the eyes that feel um calming for me or the ones that feel supportive for me um and to know like I have experience now to know that those will support me right it's not just like oh I think no I like know those things will support this experience and then also I think on some level whenever you know something's going to be a certain way for whatever reason in my experience it's less like it just is I haven't gone through this experience yet so I don't actually know if that's going to be true about this experience but it feels like I'm prepped for something that might have felt like too much to allow myself to now experience it at least a little bit less so instead of maybe a four or a five maybe it's only like a two or a three yeah I love that yeah yeah so as we're wrapping up this conversation or this part of the convers I'm curious to know from both of you like as sematic experiencing practitioners is there anything else you want people to know about sematic experiencing this particular experience what you wish you could tell clients what you wish you know they could understand yeah anything comes to mind I think for me is how little content really is necessary to work with but also I understand most people have a part of them that wants to be heard you know your story wants to be witnessed and I can totally identify with that um but also how little it takes to bring about the activation that you can work with and that actually opening up these other channels can actually make your witnessing of yourself better because I think the part is we think we want to be witnessed by another person but I think on some level we want to witness ourselves like we want to hear ourselves and so to me this opens up the idea that maybe I don't have to tell the whole story for somebody to be able to witness me and for me to witness myself and then also this piece around with somatic experiencing I find that it is unique in religious trauma because it can't be manipulated Laura could not or Jeremy doing this practice could not know what's going on in my body I am the only person in the universe that knows the sensations in body they cannot be manipulated that way they are self-safety in a way and I feel like this do such a good job of creating a space where there's no manipulation here which is the opposite of what so many people have experienced and it's just about witnessing what shows up and being okay with whatever that is emotion sensation image um and also the narrative or the meaning that comes from those things um so I feel like this gives people a really good picture that actually those things are just as valuable as being heard in the traditional sense I love that yeah yeah Jeremy putting you on the spot anything to add to that I feel like some of what I'm going to say will just duplicate that but in different language I think um like coming from an attachment lens my background is marriage and family therapy but this really feels like we're facilitating an attuned relationship between the client and themsel and especially for those of us that grow up in environments that were negating of the self and that created a lot of distance and disconnection from self this um creates a a variety of inroads for us to be able to hear ourselves better um that's different from some of the ways that when like when that meaning channel is turned all of the way up sometimes at least and I will just speak for myself here sometimes I'm actually just talking over myself and not act this isn't actually emerging from a space that's connected with me sometimes this is me actually getting stuck in meaning trying to find my way back to regulated and so this gives me um some other points of of entry into the experience that aren't as dependent on language itself so there's that piece also the thing that I've trained it in other trauma modalities and the thing that I love about SE is that there's nothing in that we do in session that clients can't use and I think that that's the the wonderful thing about it is that everything that we're doing is usable by our clients outside of session and so we're handing them tools to navigate their own experience that doesn't need um a you know an elevated professional yeah to to facilitate this in the ways that like yeah some other things that can only work in like EMDR for example you have to have a therapist doing that like I can't just like wave my fingers at my own eyes and make this happen but I can learn how to listen to my own nervous system pay attention to my own internal cues of Regulation and disregulation and learn myself in that way so that I can um also in this process I'm learning ways to find my way back to ground when I don't have somebody else to help me get there yeah like all way that we're titrating and like negotiating these little pieces of nervous system activation this this is helping the nervous system learn that oh I can find my way back to ground oh I can find my way back to ground oh I can find my way back to ground yeah it's funny it feels almost like a rebellious therapy modality like trauma resolution modality as it compares to like fundamentalism and high control religion that spent so much time divorcing us from our bodies and we're like you know the proverbial f you like watch me be in my body and Thrive essentially like because I I mean we have had this conversation multiple times of like how empowering somatic experiencing can be because you are the tool like you are the like you don't have to go purchase anything or whatever like you're walking home with it you know I I absolutely love that and then to that that point of like the different meaning channels so whether we use that acronym sabam or time channels like I was with a friend who is aware of like somatic experiencing and has done some of that work in their own life and uh trauma resolution and I um had an experience with this person where like there was some extreme activation and we came back to it the next day because um there was there's permission in the in the relationship to do that and I asked a question and they were able to tap into the image channel to say here's here's the image that's happening right now but it what it was was like like basically closing the door trying to shut everything down like in conversation and and not even being able to speak and yet I was aware enough to know that this person was wanting to actually find resolve and we have an agreement in our relationship that I can I can employ a sematic experiencing questions and techniques and and I did ask for permission I said would it be okay if I you know kind of Led You through something and so with zero content whatsoever we we kind of did something and got this person to a settled place and there was no content whatsoever which I just love because I think so many times and even we learned in therapy school like you just talk about it but there's a lot of people that can't talk about some of the scariest moments of their lives that may not even have the cognitive memory to do do so and so to have this modality where it was like in this case with with this friend to go there was a whole lot of story happening that couldn't be verbalized but this person felt it in various places of their body and I was like honored enough to be able to say okay let's go there I just just put your focus there and and notice what happens and they really did they came down to this like very settled Place were able to like go through the rest of their day kind of you know take a walk to kind of help it integrate and then then that was it they didn't have like a trauma hangover the next day you know like where they normally would have so anyways I just say that because I think that's something really beautiful about SE that there's all these we don't have to work with the content we don't have to we don't have to know what's going on you know the listeners of this podcast will have no idea what it is that you're actually doing Jessica and that's okay anyways but I'm really excuse me I'm really grateful for the two of you doing this and I know we've talked about maybe doing some additional podcast episodes as we continue to uh invite people into the Observer role of somatic experiencing and what sessions look like and how to navigate trauma resolution um so I'm excited to have you all back and um yeah any any final words this was super fun I love it super fun it was super fun it's like when three therapists walk into a bar this is what you get this is you observing their weird Hobbies exactly and if only we were lying but we're not no we're not