Somatic experiencing training
I spent a zillion dollars and several years becoming a Somatic Experiencing (SEP) practitioner. I believe in the concepts and practice with all my heart.
With that said, I was traumatized in the training, and I believe, shunned and blackballed by the practitioners who led the group I was in. I had wanted to become a volunteer at future trainings as many do so I could cement the concepts in my mind, but you have to get a faculty member to recommend you, and no one would (I asked three).
The last section of my training I finished in another cohort, because I felt such bad mojo coming from my original trainer. Before I moved on, I met with him individually to sort things out, which I paid him for, and then I knew I was being blocked. He was cold, cruel, and impossible in our meeting. So much for being a healer of souls. After two other faculty members I knew and had worked with said I had to get his approval to become a volunteer, I gave up, because I knew he would never sign off on it.
This is an organization dedicated to tenderness and healing. One that should be conducting themselves the opposite of cold, cruel, and rejecting. Did I do anything to deserve it? Not in my opinion, but I do have visual ADD and piddle on my iPad at workshops. I sit on the back row usually just to be able to do my thing and not disturb people with myself, but you can be sure I am there, listening, studying, learning, and growing, and I do take the training seriously.
We did a lot of demos during the training. Demos are when we - the ones in the training - do our own work in front of the group During one demo, a woman was working with the faculty member, and a volunteer came up from behind and said, “put that device down and pay attention to them.” I was completely embarrassed and felt like a child in second grade being called out. My nervous system activated because I didn’t see him coming from behind.
When the woman doing the demo heard I had been piddling on my iPad as she shared her story, she was brutal and unforgiving. We had been very warm with one another prior to that. There were at least 60 people in our training, maybe more, and I felt my crime, if it was a crime, was at most, a misdemeanor. All of a sudden, gossip spread not among the students but the trainers. I was shunned to the point that, as I said, I moved on from the group I started in and finished my training with a completely different group in another city and state.
This whole thing happened about five years ago. I got my certificate and SEP designation, but lost respect for the somatic experience training and organization.
I saw an email today from the Somatic Experiencing organization about a shuffling of leadership. Reading between the lines of the flowery love-fest baloney, there were co-managers of the organization, and one of them was leaving, because the co-leadership didn't work out. The organization went out of their way to make it sound like it was sympatico and all was good, everyone loves one another, it is not a scandal, but I smell a rat.
The reason I smell a rat is I have personally experienced it. I am the person squeezed out. For me, it is okay; I had other options. I am sure she does too. But boy would I love to hear the honest truth about her ousting. I’m sure it was ugly.