The Neurobiology of Somatic Therapy for Attachment Trauma, Part 1

The first and most important task of somatic psychotherapy, or any experiential method, is to develop an ability to metaphorically step back and notice your experience. With trauma, it’s common to feel like you are drowning in your experience, trapped in your body, or that your emotions are hijacking your experience. Further, with attachment trauma, people often hold negative core beliefs about themselves and the world that feel rigid, absolute, scary, or painful.

 When the tiger is in the room, being activated or afraid is adaptive. You don’t have time to be thinking sophisticated thoughts - you just need your body to act and get you to safety. But when your inner experience consistently mismatches what’s happening in your environment - or even if the inside matches the outside and you just wish for more choicefulness in your actions - this can be challenging.

Dual Awareness and the Witnessing Mind

This ability to notice your experience is generally referred to as a state of dual awareness. A teacher of mine says it’s the difference between drowning in the ocean, or standing on the shore and dipping your toes in. You can still feel the water, but you have more distance - and perhaps more control - in the situation. 

Another teacher of mine refers to this state as being in witnessing mind. From a neuroscience perspective, we activate the orbital, medial, and ventral medial prefrontal cortex of our brain when we witness what we are experiencing. Fancy words, but think of it like these are the parts of your brain that get a bird’s eye view of the situation.

Differentiating from Trauma

As we use our witnessing mind to stay in a state of dual awareness and track our experience, we are beginning the process of differentiating from our experience. This is the step of stepping back from what’s happening and seeing whatever is happening as just a part of who we are and what we are experiencing.

Tracking Your Present Moment Experience

There are generally five layers to your present moment experience:

• Thoughts - What you’re thinking about. Your beliefs. Questions.

• Emotions - You know: anger, sadness, joy, and so on.

• 5-sense information - Such as images or other things you can smell, taste, touch, or hear.

• Behaviors - Including subtle movements and impulses as well as more explicit behavioral patterns like running away or reaching for a snack. 

• Sensations - What you feel inside your body.

You might also notice your appetite for connection - do you want to connect with others or are you feeling more insular?

A common exercise I do with clients to track these layers of the present moment is to draw an outline of a body, just like a gingerbread cookie, and then use different colors, shapes, and words to capture what you are feeling inside your body.

An example of the gingerbread person I use with clients to map out feelings.

The Neurobiology of Compassionate Witnessing

With trauma, it’s easy to conflate our identity with the persistent shame or anger we feel. But with these somatic skills, we can begin to map out of more diverse, dynamic, and accurate picture of who we are. Once we differentiate and feel a little less overwhelmed by our experience, we can hopefully cultivate compassion for ourselves and our parts. When our brain goes into judgement, our brain assesses that something bad is happening and further activates us. But when we can hold compassion for ourselves, this also activates GABA in the subcortial parts of the brain. GABA is an inhibitory neurotransmitter. So it adds balance to the experience of excitatory processes that happen when we feel overwhelmed or triggered, rather than further activating us.

All of this fancy science stuff happening brings the brain into a state that promotes healing and integration. From there, we can rewrite outdated truths we’ve been holding about ourselves and the world and build a sense of self-trust in our ability to feel things and do things. Stay tuned for Part 2, where I’ll talk about that.

In the meantime, I'm here to help. Schedule a free 20-minute consultation and we can talk about starting your somatic therapy journey today.