Your Nervous System Is Keeping Score: A Beginner's Guide to Somatic Healing
You know that feeling when something reminds you of a stressful moment and your whole body tenses up? Your heart races. Your breath gets shallow. Your shoulders creep up to your ears. You haven't even consciously thought about the original event, but your body remembers it perfectly.
That's your nervous system keeping score.
Your nervous system is like a sophisticated security system. It's constantly scanning your environment for threats, comparing current experiences to past ones, and deciding whether you're safe or in danger. When it detects something that resembles a past threat—a tone of voice, a smell, a physical sensation—it activates your stress response, even if the current situation is actually safe.
This is brilliant for survival. It's terrible for living a full, peaceful life.
How Trauma Gets Stuck in Your Body
When you experience trauma, big T trauma like abuse or accidents, or little t trauma like chronic stress, rejection, or feeling unseen, your nervous system encodes it. Not just in your mind, but in your body. In your muscles. In your breath. In your reflexes.
Your brain might forget the details of a traumatic event, but your body doesn't. Your nervous system holds the memory as a physical pattern: tension, bracing, shallow breathing, hypervigilance.
This is why talk therapy alone sometimes isn't enough. You can understand your trauma intellectually—"I know my boss's criticism isn't a personal attack", but your body still floods with anxiety when they give you feedback. Your nervous system hasn't gotten the memo that you're safe.
What Is Somatic Healing?
Somatic therapy works with the body-based memory of trauma. "Somatic" means "of the body." Instead of just talking about what happened, somatic healing helps your nervous system process the experience and learn that you're safe now.
Here's the key insight: Your nervous system doesn't learn through words. It learns through experience.
When you work somatically, your therapist helps you:
Notice what's happening in your body – Where do you feel tension? Numbness? Heaviness? This awareness is the first step.
Track sensations without judgment – Instead of trying to "fix" the sensation, you simply observe it. This creates space between you and the sensation.
Allow your body to complete interrupted responses – Trauma often freezes us mid-response. Somatic work helps your body finish what it started. Maybe it needs to shake, cry, push, or move. Your therapist creates safety for this.
Build a new nervous system memory – As your body completes these responses and experiences safety in the process, your nervous system learns: "I survived. I'm safe now. My body can relax."
Somatic Approaches We Use
Somatic Experiencing (SE): Developed by Peter Levine, SE focuses on the physical sensations and impulses that arise during trauma processing. Your therapist helps you notice when your nervous system wants to move, shake, or release—and supports that process.
Brainspotting: As we discussed last week, brainspotting uses eye position and bilateral stimulation to access and process trauma held in the body.
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: This approach combines talk therapy with awareness of body position, movement, and physical sensation to help your nervous system process trauma.
Somatic Therapy with Movement: Sometimes healing happens through gentle movement, breathwork, or even dance. Your body knows what it needs.
What Somatic Healing Feels Like
You might experience:
Deep relaxation as your nervous system downregulates
Spontaneous movements or shaking as your body releases
Emotional release (crying, laughing)
Tingling or warmth as circulation returns to areas that were braced
A sense of groundedness and presence
Reduced physical symptoms (less tension, better sleep, easier breathing)
It's not always comfortable in the moment, but it's deeply healing.
The Science Behind It
Your nervous system has three main states:
Sympathetic (fight-or-flight): Your body is mobilized, ready to fight or run. Cortisol and adrenaline flood your system.
Parasympathetic (rest-and-digest): Your body is calm, your digestion works, your immune system is strong. This is where healing happens.
Dorsal vagal (shutdown): Your body goes numb, dissociated, frozen. This is the nervous system's last resort when fight-or-flight doesn't work.
Trauma often leaves your nervous system stuck in one of these states. Somatic healing helps it move fluidly between them, with the ability to return.
New Birth Family Counseling specializes in somatic and holistic healing. We are here to help: Book a consultation with us at: https://www.newbirthfamilycounseling.com/freeconsultation
