You’ve been in therapy for years…why isn’t it working and how can somatic therapy help?

As a somatic therapist, I work with a lot of clients who have been in talk therapy for years but are still stuck. They often tell me that, actually, talk therapy just made them feel worse; like they were going in circles without getting anywhere. Some even say therapists in the past have said, I can’t help you, or, You already know everything, so you should be feeling better.

Admittedly, it is not uncommon for someone to feel like therapy is stirring things up, and change doesn’t happen overnight - therapy can definitely take a while depending on what you are bringing in - but you also should feel like you have a clear path forward, and that you aren’t just showing up to therapy to vent, only to feel more distressed in the end.

Here are four reasons why therapy might not be working for you, and how somatic therapy can help.

Parts Work cards used to help explore visually

1. Talk therapy is only addressing the surface level of things. Somatic therapy gets to deeper areas of the brain.

This article isn’t intended to dump on talk therapy - sometimes it can be helpful! But if you aren’t finding that things are shifting, it might be because the talk therapy is only addressing the surface level of things. Thoughts and cognition are only one aspect of our experience. Often, the things we come to therapy to work on - especially when trauma is involved - are embedded in deeper areas of our brain. The parts of our brain that hold early memories, core beliefs, or more visceral experiences don’t speak in thought - they often speak in image, emotion, and sensation. Affirmations or new perspectives won’t work unless the whole brain is involved and on board. 

Somatic therapy works to help you speak the language of these deeper, subcortical, areas of your brain. By exploring through your senses, sensations, and impulses, we will be able to get a more clear picture of what’s going on. Then, as we are making insights or building new skills, we really go slow to pay attention to new insights. The lower parts of your brain where the stress you bring to therapy is stored move slower than the cortical/cognitive parts of your brain. Rather than just checking a new insight off a list and moving on, we have to help your brain know what to pay attention to, so that it can really soak up this new learning or skill. 

2. You’re focused on fixing yourself instead of understanding yourself. Somatic therapy can help you understand yourself with compassion.

It’s very normal to come to therapy with hopes of feeling better. But the ways that you are stuck are actually very strategic adaptations employed by your body to help you feel safe. Sure, you might cognitively know that lashing out at someone or feeling ashamed or reaching for a bottle of alcohol is something you’d like to change, but first we have to seek to understand the function these behaviors are playing in your life, which are often rooted in avoiding or managing the felt sense of things. What are these patterns protecting you from feeling or experiencing?

These are neural networks that are wired to work without you having to think much about them. And they are often resistant to change because, to your body, that could mean danger. With a somatic and experiential approach, we explore these neural networks as different “parts” of yourself. As we come into relationship with these patterns, we start to develop a working relationship with them, rather than piling on shame, which has a debilitating effect.

Exploring in this way helps to develop your capacity to witness your experience, rather than be flooded by it. This witnessing capacity automatically starts to help your brain and body to feel safer and less at the whim of whatever you are feeling. With the witnessing mind on board, we can explore how to help your body to feel even more safe enough to feel those things, or a sense of okayness when those feelings show up. 

3. You’re avoiding going deeper. Somatic therapy can help you feel safer to go deeper.

There are a few ways not going deep enough happens in psychotherapy. For one, certain kinds of therapies work to swiftly stabilize your mental health, but these kind of therapies don’t often go deep enough to affect real change as described in the above sections. 

Therapy works best when you are really open and ready for it. It’s possible that your body isn’t feeling safe enough to go deeper. Some of this could simply be timing - maybe life is overwhelming and you only have capacity to focus on the crisis of the week, rather than zooming out to the larger patterns in your life. 

Some of it could be not feeling safe enough with your current provider. The kind of therapy I practice is inherently relational. We will explore what feels scary about being vulnerable with others, and respect that as important data in your healing journey. Our relationship is a practice space for the rest of your relationships outside of therapy. 

4. You went too deep too fast. Somatic therapy respects the pace and limits of your body.

On the other hand, some therapies dive right into your trauma wounds, without respecting the protective nature of the patterns you are trying to change. Certain kinds of exposure therapies, for instance, can work for some people, but for others it can be too vulnerable too quickly. When our body feels overwhelmed and unsafe, the protective patterns you are trying to change often come back with a vengeance.

From a neuroscience perspective, sustainable change happens with the right balance of stress and regulation. Yes, we do have to open up a bit to get into the sticky places, but you also need to feel safe enough. This comes with building rapport in our relationship, working on coping skills for when you get overwhelmed, and being able to access an embodied sense of safety as you dip your toes into stressful feelings or memories. We have to work at a pace that is sustainable for your body. In my approach, we trust that if your body isn’t ready for something, theres a good reason, and we continue to seek understanding.

You CAN have a different experience

If you’ve been in therapy for years but still feel stuck, I want you to know you aren’t doomed! Sometimes it just takes exploring with different modalities. I’m trained in MANY different experiential modalities - from Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Somatic Parts Work, NeuroAffective Touch, and more. Schedule a consultation today and we can talk through what approach might work best for you.

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