Introduction

Somatic Experiencing® (SE) is a body-oriented approach to healing trauma and restoring resilience. It is based on the understanding that overwhelming experiences can disrupt the nervous system’s natural capacity to regulate stress, leaving unresolved survival responses “stuck” in the body.

When an experience exceeds a person’s ability to cope — when resources for processing are unavailable and the integrative capacity becomes overwhelmed — the situation can be perceived as life-threatening. Such events are often accompanied by feelings of helplessness, powerlessness, despair, or even a sense of imminent death.

If the stressful situation is too intense, lasts too long, or happens too suddenly — for example after a traumatic shock, natural disaster, demanding surgery, or painful separation — the nervous system’s innate ability to recover and return to balance may shut down.

The Impact of Unresolved Stress

Under extreme threat, the body instinctively activates survival responses — fight, flight, fawn, or freeze/collaps. Ideally, these responses are completed, allowing the body to naturally discharge the energy of the event and return to equilibrium.

However, when these instinctive responses are interrupted or suppressed, the unprocessed survival energy remains “trapped” in the nervous system. This creates a state of incomplete activation, which can manifest as chronic tension, hyper-vigilance, numbness, or collapse.

While this frozen state may appear calm on the surface, it is often accompanied by an underlying physiological over-activation. Holding this unresolved survival energy over time can lead to long-term physical, emotional, and cognitive challenges.

How Trauma Can Fragment Experience

When the nervous system is overwhelmed, the brain often struggles to integrate sensory, emotional, and cognitive information. This can lead to dissociation — a protective mechanism where parts of the experience are split off from conscious awareness.

Fragmented memory: Images, sounds, thoughts, and sensations from the traumatic event may be stored separately, making the memory feel incomplete or confusing.

Disorientation: A person may lose their sense of time, place, or self. Maintaining this dissociated state often consumes significant energy, resulting in fatigue.

Reduced vitality: Body sensations and emotions can become muted or inaccessible, leading to a diminished sense of aliveness.

The Stress Repetition Loop

Unresolved activation can trap individuals in a “stress repetition loop.” Because the body still carries the imprint of threat, the nervous system remains on high alert, oscillating between chronic hyper-arousal (defensive readiness, anxiety, tension) and hypo-arousal (numbness, exhaustion, withdrawal).

When a person later encounters situations resembling the original trauma, the nervous system may react automatically — triggering sensations, emotions, and behaviors linked to the past, even when there is no actual danger in the present.

As a result:

The connection to current reality becomes blocked.

Positive experiences in the present moment may go unnoticed.

The mind becomes flooded by unresolved past material, leaving little room for curiosity, creativity, or growth.

Over time, this chronic dysregulation can limit personal potential and lead to dissatisfaction, burnout, or struggles in work, relationships, and overall wellbeing.

How Somatic Experiencing® Supports Healing

Somatic Experiencing® provides a gentle and effective pathway to help the nervous system complete unfinished survival responses and restore balance. Rather than revisiting traumatic memories directly, SE focuses on tracking bodily sensations, behaviors, feelings and resolving stuck activation step by step.

Key benefits of SE include:

Restoring self-regulation: Helping the nervous system return to a natural rhythm of activation and relaxation.

Increasing stress tolerance: Expanding the capacity to meet challenges without becoming overwhelmed.

Supporting integration: Assisting the brain and body in reorganizing and creating new, adaptive patterns.

Building resilience: Strengthening the ability to navigate life’s ups and downs with greater flexibility.

A central aspect of SE is co-regulation — the safe, attuned interaction between client and practitioner that helps the nervous system relearn a felt sense of safety. Over time, this lays the foundation for a self-regulated nervous system, healthier immune and hormonal balance, and deeper emotional stability.

Summary

Somatic Experiencing® recognizes trauma not as an event itself, but as the nervous system’s unresolved response to that event. By carefully working with the body’s natural rhythms, SE helps release stored survival energy, restore a sense of safety, and rebuild resilience, vitality, and connection — both to oneself and to life.