Reshaping Patterns Through Somatic Practice in Counseling

11:42PM Jul 11, 2024

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somatic

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trauma

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somatic therapy

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experience

notice

dysregulation

practice

important

person

moment

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dysregulated

learn

technique

body

internal

Hello, and welcome to the thoughtful counselor, a podcast dedicated to bringing you innovative and evidence based counseling and mental health content designed to enhance your life. Whether you're a clinician, supervisor, educator, or a person wanting to learn more about the counseling process, we are here to demystify mental health through conversations with a wide range of counseling professional powerhouses. In each episode, you'll learn about current issues in the field, new science, and real life lessons learned from the therapy room. Thank you for joining us on our journey through the wide world of counseling. There's a lot to explore here. So sit back, take a deep breath. And let's get started.

Hello, and welcome to the thoughtful counselor. I'm Margaret Lamar. And today I'm here with Dr. Alicia Guthrie, to talk about somatic therapy, somatic work and counseling. And I'm so excited, because I feel like this is a thing we talk a lot about, and I don't know a lot about it. So I'm so excited to have you here today, Alicia. And I was wondering if you'd start by sharing about your journey into the field.

Oh, that's a really great place to start. Um, I think it actually started for me when I was in my master's program. And really noticing that a lot of the theories that I was learning in my counselor program, which is what you know, we all learned in our counseling programs, and didn't really resonate with me as a person, right, it didn't really feel like something that I could try on and feel authentic with. I think I could do them. But it wasn't necessarily something that I felt like in my bones was a part of who I am as a counselor. And then I started to be really curious about somatic work, because I started to see that my lens in terms of who I wanted to work with, and how I wanted to work really created this trauma focus. And somatic work, of course, during that time was really connected to trauma therapy. And so I started to look into sensory motor therapy and, and somatic experiencing and just being really curious about those things. And then in my program, I was introduced to Sharon Stanley's work, which is somatic transformation, because Sharon Stanley did a demonstration at my school. I'm very, very fortunate to have her in the area that I live. And I just fell in love with it. It felt like, you know, I had one of these experiences where I kind of weeped because I felt like I came home to something. And then I had to convince Sharon Stanley, let me study with her, which was kind of a thing. And then I did and I just feel like I haven't turned back and been studying with her ever since. And this is the kind of work that you don't stop studying. It's not something that you can read a book and no, it's really something that you have to really get into your Soma, your body and practice and, and it requires a lot of education and reflection to do that. And I just haven't like the back. Yeah, no,

I love that. Okay, so this is perfect segue. So how would you explain somatic therapy to someone like me? Who is unfamiliar with it?

Yeah, well, I think yeah, you know, when we initially wanted to do this, one of the my hesitations was being a spokesperson for somatic therapy, which I am not really recognizing that there to me, there are as many different types of somatic therapy as there are bodies and because we are each individuals. So the way that I practice would be very different than how another person practices but I'll, I'll do my best to define it. I think that, to me, somatic practice or somatic therapy. It it is really resting on our bodies experience in the moment to moment experience of being with a client. And that can take on many different forms. So it could be as a clinician, how I'm able to rest and be present and attune to my client. To me, that's great somatic work, even if I'm not doing somatic inquiry with my client, but just really working on my own somatic experiences in relationship to my client. To me, that's great somatic work. But somatic work can take on another flavor, when you're working with somebody to also create their own somatic awareness, right and inviting someone into that very delicate space of noticing their regulation and dysregulated patterns or noticing what might emerge as we're discussing these kinds of things, you know, whatever we're happening to happen to discuss in sessions. And then this, it can be this then dynamic between the two of us. And so if it gets to that level, then some things I work on as a somatic practitioners, I would start to notice the regulation and dysregulated states of my clients. So and we know, we know this kind of just as people, we know when people would get dysregulated. And, you know, their eyes might start to widen their, their skin might have a different flush to it, they might have different movements, depending on what they're talking about. And so I'm cueing into these kinds of things. And I'll just start to notice them. And then I invite my client to notice them in the process that when we did this, I noticed this, or when you talked about this, I noticed in myself that I was experiencing this in this particular way. And then we start to create some somatic awareness and how the somatic awareness becomes useful, is when we start to notice patterns of dysregulation in our lived experience. And then we can start to reshape them pattern, these patterns through this somatic awareness. To me, that is somatic therapy. It's not just getting into the soma, like some people use breathwork. And these kinds of things, all of that is somatic therapy. But that's not my somatic therapy. My somatic therapy is me in relationship to another client, recognizing the patterns that we might want to shift and change in, in our in our day to day living experience.

So when you talk and use the word somatic, I just want to make sure I'm following that, again, this is the person who knows nothing, or really very little about it. Are you literally you meaning the word body? Where do you distinguish, like somatic? Or Soma being the body? Or does it? Is it encompassing of more than that?

Oh, that's a great question.

a loaded question.

A great question. Let me see. I mean, in this moment, I'm talking about the body when I think of somatic I think about the body, but you're making me think of our body in relationship to everything around us, which is also relevant, right? Um, but I do really feel like when I'm talking about somatic therapy, in relationship to one person, or even in a group, I'm talking about how our bodies are relating to one another, and what is happening internally for each person.

Okay, Okay, interesting. All right. So I know there are lots of different types of somatic practices. Can you talk about how you incorporate somatic work, or how you approach your somatic practice? What did that look like, I guess, for you.

I mean, it really depends on my clients actually depends on, you know, I'm at a very nice place in my career, where people know me as a somatic therapist, and so they know what to expect a little bit. But in the beginning, when when people didn't know me, as a somatic therapist, it required some level of education for my clients to be able to understand the work that I do. But so I would say that there's like a scaffolding of experiences that I that I work with in my somatic work. The first always is me. And so even when I'm educating people in somatic work in somatic therapy, my advice is always to start with you as a therapist, because the magic of a tuned regulated therapist cannot be underestimated. And being able to notice yourself in session and in relationship to another person constantly, is really good practice. It's a great skill for a therapist to know, especially when you're faced with content that might be dysregulated for you, right. And so I think my somatic therapy always starts with me before I ever introduce it to a client. And this could be a few sessions. It could be one session, but it always starts with me and my understanding of how I'm relating to somebody in session. So I think that's the first thing. The second thing that I do that I think is really important in terms of like, how I work somatically is really being able to educate a client on what we'd be doing together and I spend a A lot of time on educating just on somatic therapy in general, like what it means to connect to the body, what we're actually doing, because we're not just connecting to the body, we're actually reshaping patterns of internal awareness. And this is where that trauma lens comes into play. And I'll give you an example to really drive that home. If somebody is coming to me for trauma work, I often think about it's not the event of the trauma that is the most important to me to focus on is actually the effect of the trauma that I work with. So let's say that there is a relational trauma that that somebody might have experienced, and we bring it into session, I'm really looking at how is this particular trauma affected your ability to relate to yourself? How has it affected your ability to relate to another person? And in order to really understand that we bring that into this space and slow it down? To how do we know internally that this is taking place? So for example, if somebody were to say, oh, every time I think about this, I have the kind of internal harsh criticism, I stay with that moment of internal harsh criticism, and we bring it down to the body of when you think about this harsh criticism, what do you notice within yourself, and we start to notice those internal patterns. And what I know in my somatic brain is what actually dysregulates somebody is the fear of that particular feeling of criticism or that particular experience. So what we're trying to do is be friend, that particular experience, so that it doesn't have as much of a hold on that person anymore. And that can take like, a lot of time, obviously, right? So it's not a couple's kind of thing. It's like this experience of, we're getting to know each other, we're getting comfortable in our bodies, we're having some education on why this would be really important. And then we're getting to know those patterns that have shown up in our lived experience that keeps us disconnected from ourselves and keep us disconnected from each other.

Oh, boy, it is like you have been looking into my life. Week, I don't know, just like that, as you're talking, I'm thinking about conversations I've had with colleagues or friends and, and my partner, and I'm like, Oh, my gosh, this sounds like work that we I mean, to your point we all need to be doing as counselors, but also just in our lives. It sounds like it adds so much depth and richness to the work in building relationships even.

Absolutely. Well, and then, you know, my my work specifically is on, you know, domestic violence and trauma. So this becomes so important for reshaping those patterns of relationship.

Yeah, okay. So I love this. I think, you know, when you're talking, I love that you start talking about how it starts with you, I think, you know, I teach students that, you know, when we're thinking about working with clients that bring things up for us, that it's so important to be aware of that when you're going into supervision. And then how how you then can think about moving moving forward. So I'm curious if you can talk about are there specific techniques in somatic practice or in your, in your specific somatic practice that you incorporate? That are sort of maybe, I don't know, I guess to counselor, either kind of like more of a technique as opposed to maybe something that we are trying to live in and be in our bodies? That question makes sense. And we love it, we love a good technique and counseling. So

it totally makes sense. And I'm giggling a bit because I say my supervisees always want this from me. And I'm like, I am not a technique person. I don't work with technique. I work with theory. But actually, that's not entirely true, because the technique is actually the therapist. And so you can't be in this is, of course, just my opinion. I always want to preference that. Again, there's lots of opinions that are welcome. But for me, you can't be authentic and somatic intervention, without many, many steps before that. So the technique, again, really starts with you as a clinician, how attuned you are to your client. That is the technique to me, because then you're watching this moment to moment experience of your client and able to track them and you get to see something that externally often that they don't get to See within themselves, the technique is to be able to pause, to slow down, to connect to that. So it is really a practice of noticing. That is the real technique to me in somatic therapy, and then also getting really comfortable at pausing your clients. Like I wonder in this moment, this is often when I say, I wonder, in this moment, if we can just pause, and notice. And I use the language of notice not feeling, not any of those things. Because when you say notice, then it opens up this incredible world of possibility, not just this feeling. And then we have a word to that feeling that we've learned through our culture to understand as Oh, anger, right? But what are you noticing, I noticed tingling on my arms, I noticed a tingling in my heart space, I noticed a tightening in my jaw. And I wonder if we can work with those things to relax, and to connect to those things, and reshape that and then we have a different experience in this moment. So the technique is really the skill of the therapist to notice and be attuned to the client in a very, very authentic and phenomenological way.

Okay, so that's, you know, I don't know, I guess I was going to ask a question about how does this differentiate from sort of traditional counseling approaches, but for you, it sounds like, this is an intrinsic part of who you are as a counselor. So there's not a different approach, really, for you in this sense

of the word. Yeah.

So can you talk about because it's so much about the counselor, can you talk about the training process, I'm thinking about counseling students or counselors who are ready to sort of develop further or this really strikes a chord for folks? How do people start work learning about this work and educating themselves around

it? Yeah, that's a really great question and one that I get often, and I do want to just reflect for a second. If you've ever had a training with somebody who's created this therapy modality, right, like if you've ever got to sit in with with Richard Swartz, and got him to listen to him talk about ifs are, if you've ever, you know, got to watch Marsha Linehan one of the things that you'll notice probably is you're never going to do it like that person. And what makes them so good at what they're doing. And what makes the modality so special, is often them. And, and it's really about the therapist being authentically them. And this is what I've observed, watching Sharon Stanley, seeing videos of pet Ogden, like it's them, actually, that is the beautiful work. And so I often think about, I don't want people to do somatic therapy like me, because that actually is against what I think somatic therapy is really rich in which is the authenticity of the person that's doing it. So if I were to invite someone into the work you can read a ton of books, which I think is incredibly important, because it that that will provide a nice foundation. And there's really exceptional work out there. Somatic work has merged into lots of different field anti oppression work and somatic work has such a rich, rich connection to trauma work as such a rich connection to and there's beautiful theorists out there. So grab a hold and, and be inspired by the work that's out there. And then do your work. of noticing what it's like to be in your body in the moment to moment experience of this life and live it. Notice what it's like when you have a conversation with your partner and you kind of just want to run out the door because you're having a disagreement, right? Notice what it's like to be in that experience. I remember one time I had this, and my partner's gonna hate that I said this but I remember when I was learning my own cues of dysregulation in relationship to another person. And it really around anger or you know, repatterning some of my own trauma. And I remember wanting to I was trying to be so intentional about having this relationship be different than others and not being dysregulated or over not like it's okay to be dysregulated but certainly not overreacting to something that is I'm experiencing as a dysregulation when I see I need to track that in this one interaction with my partner. I was like, Oh, I'm super overwhelmed in this moment. And I want to be careful to respond to you in a way that is about this moment, and not about my history. So I'm going to need to take some time with this. And they were like, oh, yeah, that sounds great. Thank you for telling me that. I mean, that wasn't their exact response. But Marco, it took me four days, took me four days to understand this internal experience. So I, I've been really shaped by this work, and in my personal life, and my professional life, too. And not that I'm regulated all the time. But I'm really connected to my internal experience in a way that I've gotten to know it as beautiful cues of something important for me to recognize. And this has served me as a parent, it served me as a partner. And again, not looking for perfection, because that's a white supremacist notion that I don't always want to hold it myself, but definitely want to recognize, in my self, what's happening, I've noticed this in my teaching, I've noticed this in my counseling, that the the ability to be present with myself in relationship to another person and honor that and notice that as important information. It's just it is where somatic work is for me.

Yeah, wow, that's so powerful. And I think about, you know, the, I mean, I have a lot of thoughts going through my head, and I don't know if you can hear there's dogs, maybe doing some somatic work outside of my office, I've gotten what's happening out there. But I, I think about then, you know, especially for a new counselor, and you know, I mean, some of what you're talking about sounds like all counseling students, right, like going through a diagnosis class and being like, Oh, I'm gonna start diagnosing everyone in my world. So how you balance like, yes, how I how do I use this work in my life without feeling like you're constantly in? Somatic practice role? You know? Yeah, like, when can you just yell at your kids or yell at your partner and be okay with it? Right? You know, I guess, yeah, just how do you find that balance around that, that seems like a lot to hold? Yeah,

I love that. I don't, I definitely don't want to present as being like, Oh, I get to stop and be regulated in every kind of moment. And because one of the important principles I think about somatic work that we that we play with is discernment. And because part of this the work of somatic work is to recognize what is unconscious, to bring the unconscious to the conscious. So this is where Freud is really gifted us with a lot of things, right. And so bring the unconscious to the conscious. And then what somatic work allows us to do through through this therapy is it allows us to discern, right, so if I'm noticing this internal cue, and I now recognize what that is, now I can make decisions to do something differently, right? So that that's an important thing. So it allows you to make decisions differently. This doesn't mean that you make a mistake, because Lord knows, we all make mistakes, and I make mistakes all the time. But that I'm able to really reflect on that, and to say, Oh, this is what happened to me. So then hopefully next time I have I make different decisions, or I make decisions that are more congruent with who I want to be actually. And the other thing that's coming to mind is kind of a hilarious thing that happened in one of my trainings with Sharon Stanley. And I don't know if she would remember this differently. But man, this really stuck in my head as being something hilarious where she wanted to show us I think, a video of the still face child. If you're familiar with that video, it's pretty heart wrenching. And I remember she, she made some sort of joke of like, yeah, if this bothers you, you can just dissociate because you know how to do that. And so it's this is part of that discernment, where you get to allow your body to do what it needs to do in the moments, right? But the difference is that we know what we're doing is that we brought it to an awareness of now I'm going to make a conscious decision to really peace out in this moment, because I don't want to handle what's in front of me. And that gets to be a choice instead of an unconscious response because of my lived experience or trauma or whatever.

Yeah, so are there some typical issues or populations or conditions you find somatic practice to be most effective in working with.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I really think it's so good for trauma. So as a clinician, I think it's amazing for trauma work, mostly because you know, trauma can be this very esoteric kind of thing that you're pinning down and trying to work with and somatic work creates this. It allows us to really slow the process down in a very important way for clients to be able to recognize how trauma has impacted them. So to me, I think that this is beautiful for trauma at work, and relational work just in general. So I do think that it's important for I mean, obviously, I use it in my in my practice with, with abusers, right and, and I think that it's really important to help people understand their emotional dysregulation, so that they're able, again, to bring it to the surface and make different decisions. So I love it for abuser work, I think it's amazing for abuser work. And just emotional regulation. In general, I think somatic work can be really useful for. And, you know, as a counseling educator, I also think that somatic work is really useful for anti oppression work, mostly because it is really resting on the counselor to understand their own internal experiences. So even like I mentioned before, being in in relationship with a client who might have trauma could bring a dysregulation to a client, but also who being in relationship to a client, who might have a different identity that creates different relationship in my own body, it's important to be able to learn how to work with that, to learn how to recognize that and allow it and and sort of befriend those internal experiences. So it doesn't microaggressions your client or so it doesn't, you know, inadvertently impact this dynamic that is quite relational. And so I think that there's multiple applications, not just in counseling, but also in counseling, education, how we're educating counselors in the field.

Yeah, I'm wondering if there are client populations for those which this might not be a good fit. I'm wondering, yes, you're nodding your head. I'll let you go. Yeah,

yeah, I have a really good friend who specializes in OCD. And we have these conversations all the time around like somatic work not being appropriate for folks that might have OCD are folks who might need like, very specific skills in order to regulate in in in their own bodies before very differently than somebody in trauma work. And OCD is just the top of my mind with that as an example. But I do feel like, um, I think one of the things about somatic work that is really important, is there needs to be some level of safety and stabilization, in order for it to be in order for it to work, right. So highly dysregulated clients, for whatever reason, somatic work might not work so well, in the beginning, that might take some time to do. I don't I don't want to rule it out as being impossible, but it wouldn't be right for an acute condition. Right. So and that really covers a lot of different diagnoses, right. So yeah, yeah. And

I'm, I'm wondering about, like children and adolescents. That seems like it could be really great. Oh,

yeah. Okay. Yeah, thank you for that. Yeah. I started my work with with kids and adolescents and kind of kids and adolescents really respond so well to this work. And one of the things about somatic work at least in in Sharon Stanley's work is we're not just working with the nervous system or or the the gift of polyvagal theory in our profession, but we're also working with Allen shores, awareness around attachment and the right brain processes. And so the sense is that we want to connect with in trauma man kids and youth, ooh, they can they get so they're so that's such a connecting space for kids and youth. So I think somatic work is so important for that population, especially around regulation and dysregulation. Yeah,

I think what a great opportunity for school counselors and to even train teachers to be able to do that in in classrooms, not even in therapeutic spaces, but you know, I No, my kiddos do get a lot of social emotional learning in their work. And it's so incredibly helpful. And I just think about how this could really enrich that even further, being able to notice things about that are going on for them. Right, right.

And like my, my youngest child, first of all, has taught me so much about somatic work, especially co regulation and in in the somatic space. But he is quite sensory and tactile. And so I've noticed in his moments of dysregulation, how important it is for him to engage his hands and his body, in order to regulate. And this was something that happened very early on in my parenting with him, where even in moments of dysregulation I remember, he would sort of move his body really quickly. And then he would come and sit on my lap and one leg would be on one side, and the other leg would be on the other side. And he would push it. So he weren't, we were rocking back and forth together. And there was this real somatic soothing, that would happen in those moments. And he's really taught me a lot about, I would I could watch him go from highly dysregulated to regulating in his body. And so he taught me a lot about the cues of regulation and dysregulation, and it was just such an intimate experience. I got to witness with him.

Yeah, that I, I am wondering what how I mean, that's a great example. But how do you think about progress or measuring movement? Or clients in in from a somatic lens? Like, how are you how do you see progress? I don't know if there's problems with thinking about it that way. But just Yeah, I guess I'm curious about how you see clients moving forward and making changes through somatic lens. Yeah,

I think this really rests on that, that language. And obviously, my population is, I work with trauma. And so how I measure progress in this is important to how I understand the progress in somatic theory. And, and that is, if somebody's coming to me because of traumatic experience, and we start to then recognize the effects of this trauma on them, then progress is going to be measured by how those effects are. Sort of, I don't want to say I don't want to say worked with or, or, you know, we're staying away from that pathologizing language, but really how a person is able to manage those effects differently. Ooh, here's it here it is, it is, if a person how a person is able to have a different relationship to those experiences, so that these experiences don't have as much of a hold on them as they did previously. And so how this sort of looks, I think, in real time, it's interesting, because I've gotten the privilege of really watching people go through many, many years of of working through somatic work, and in this space of like, not needing me, which is fantastic. I love that as a therapist when my clients don't need me. But what I noticed at this end, is they're able to live their life in a way that's congruent with who they are. That doesn't mean they're not dysregulated. Sometimes that doesn't mean that the trauma doesn't sometimes take hold. It is because they've created a different relationship to that experience, that they're able to manage it themselves in a way that maybe they didn't when we first got together when we first started working together. That is incredible progress, I think for for a client.

Yeah, that is that's incredible. Can you talk about any misconceptions you see around somatic therapy? This is your chance to clear the air.

Yeah, yeah.

I think some things and I think this also rests on, you know, that definition that there's so many different types, and so I don't want to I don't want to say that this isn't somatic therapy, or this isn't. But I but I do want to say somatic therapy isn't about breath work. Somatic therapy isn't about meditation. Somatic therapy isn't even just about creating body awareness. Like all of that can be part of somatic therapy and can be used within a somatic frame. But somatic therapy is learning your body and making different decisions based off of that internal learning. So it is therapy. It isn't just creating aware So I think that that's something that I'd really like to offer in terms of what is specific about this work, versus just a body based practice, for example. Mm

hmm. Yeah, I think that's so important. I think about, you know, all those new counselors that get into rooms and practice with their colleagues. And they, I feel like you can set a timer for when someone's going to say, Have you practiced breathing, breathing practices or techniques? So yeah, what What about? I'm curious what you see, where do you see somatic practice going in the next decade or so? Where would you Where would you, you know, Dr. Guthrie like to see this go? What's your wish list for the future of somatic work?

Oh, that's actually a big question. Um, what the I think my first answer is, I'd like to see somatic work becoming more normed as a practice that we learn in counseling, because I do think it has like very strong relevance in our work, not just as practitioners, but our work with clients, and certainly in trauma. And, and as we start to notice more trauma and trauma impact in the world, I think somatic work, it needs to be at the frontline of that healing practice. And so I think that's where I'd love to see it go. But there's also so many different applications, especially when we start to look at that trauma lens on how somatic work can be so useful to us in this profession, the thing that I, as I've worked individually for so long, and of course, I love group work, I'm starting to notice the need for more community based healing practice. And to me, this is where somatic work can really take hold and create connection. Because if I think of what's lost in in trauma, or what's lost in, you know, people's experiences right now currently in the world, it is a disconnection from self. And when we disconnect from ourselves, we disconnect from each other, we're not able to see each other, we're not able to see the wounds of each other, we're stuck in our own mind, somatic work is, is to me, one of the most promising tools of creating embodiment, and connection, which is healing, not just individually, but communally. And really, I think, on a larger scale, it can be so helpful in that. So that's where my hope would be. Yeah,

I love that. So I'm thinking about folks who are listened today, and I think, Oh, yes, I am already signed me up, I want to do this work with my clients. And you talked a little bit about this already about reading and kind of watching and I'm also thinking about people being able to connect with other somatic practitioners, you know, you mentioned you have supervisees. And I think what a great way for someone to learn is to, you know, have a supervisor who practices somatic work. So how would folks connect with other somatic practitioners?

I mean, there there are, there are so many resources for somatic work, somatic experiencing sensorimotor, psychotherapy, somatic transformation, I invite people to go on those sites specifically and do searches for folks. But there are also there's a place that I would recommend folks go to, um, called embody lab. embody lab is kind of a man they're doing such great work, I have to say they have many different somatic practitioners. They also have different master classes and resources. Peter Levine often gives masterclasses there, Steven Porges does Arlene Schwartz, just a lot of really gorgeous people in the fields. And so you can just start to learn that way. And and, you know, connect with people through through that modality I think would be really good. Studying somatic work can be very expensive and often kind of outside of folks ability and embody Lab is a I think don't want to be like this Post it in person for that. But it is a very accessible tool that isn't that expensive to really start to learn, and certainly as you as you start to decide who you want to be in this work and then follow that path. I also recommended Dana's work and is so amazing. Her education on polyvagal theory is really strong and provides a nice foundation for somatic work, I think. So any of those people that we often hear about their big names, there are great places to start to find out who you are in this work and then follow your own heart. From there.

Well, thank you so much, Dr. Guthrie. This has been absolutely incredible. I have learned so much and look forward to seeing the work you continue doing.

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