Hey, i have been going to somatic therapy (somatic experiencing and bodynamic) weekly for 2 years now, and what a difference. I am curious if anybody knows any good ressources, courses or apps to self-regulate?

If I watch a disturbing movie or show, I'm the type of person who can't let it go right away. It stays with me for hours because I can find some sort of relation to it in my dysfunctional family and crazy life. That felt like an excessive time to dwell on something like that when everyone else bounces back so fast. So I can turn it off. I can just switch that part of my brain off like "business as usual", go about my day, my heart rate and blood pressure immediately drop and are totally normal, but then I double over in stomach cramps or start puking. I feel calm, I'm just puking my guts out till my body feels it's done.

How do I process this stuff and actually calm down properly so my body doesn't jab me with a knife in the stomach over and over? I thought MY "calming down" was the right way. All the podcasts and meditations that try to get your mind off it do the same thing. It's like, if you run a marathon, you can't just stop. You have to keep running and jog down slowly after you cross the finish line because your body can't take the transition. That's what it feels like. Are there any exercises that approach anxiety in that way? Make it feel heard and satisfied? Just some things make me so mad and there's nothing I can do with that anger (there's no real change I can make) and that's what gets me doubled over.

(Sorry just watched a crime show where a woman killed her kids and I'm on the edge of puking.)

I keep hearing it lives in the body, okay BUT what helps it release from the body?

Talk therapy hasn't worked. What does? 5meodmt? magic mushrooms?

Anything?

So I was watching one of her videos and she talks about vagus nerve reset to heal trauma.. but I don’t understand… so I do the exercises and I feel some sighs and yawns..
When does the healing trauma part happen exactly?

Went for a 90-minute massage today at the float spa I work at. We get an employee discount, so I was able to take advantage of some deep self-care. The woman who did my massage I have known for a couple of months and I was excited to see her because of her great reviews.

She did a great massage on me. When she got to my back, she said, "oh Sarafionna, I can feel it all..." I thought she was commenting on the horrific layers of knots and frozen musculature in my back. I was able to use yogic breathing to get through the painful part of the massage of her breaking up the knots.

She finished up, left the room, I got up and got dressed. When I stepped out to go get some water in the spa's kitchen, I found her in there standing over the sink, sobbing.

She came and hugged me and thanked me for having her work on me.

Apparently, this has never happened to her as a massage therapist. She felt the deepness of my pain, past and present.

This was validating for me in the sense that someone besides my friends and family was hearing me / seeing me. But also very distressing because it showed me how much is there, still there, and that I am still living in an unsafe and uncertain situation despite my efforts to heal.

That's all. Just wanted to share this.

ETA: triggered an emotional flashback that has dysregulated me because I realized I feel like I hurt someone and was a burden.

Is anyone recovering or atleast found something helpful because i dont know if im experiencing freeze/shutdown

Or MECFS symptoms.

I’m still recovering but just living my life has gotten me to stop obsessing and I heard that is when the body truly heals when you stop worrying but is it enough

Last year I started experiencing anxiety around some career stress. Then I came across this TikTok where a Buddhist monk suggested to “stop resisting” & associate into your unwanted feelings & body sensations. Seemed like a counterintuitive & interesting idea so I tried. And it helped.

I continued experimenting with this & found that if I breathed into the feeling & exhaled and removed attention off that feeling (with don’t care attitude), it would shift into my body. Over the course of several weeks i felt the feelings shifted from my abdomen area to back where I started getting muscle knots. I also started getting body spasms as I would do the removing the attention technique. And then one day it culminated in a release with accompanied shaking and my back arching. And my anxiety around those thoughts disappeared.

Googling around AI suggested that I’m actually doing what’s called somatic experiencing. Great!

Fast forward to a few weeks ago. I was journaling & ran across a troubling thought that I’d experienced for a long time and accompanied with a knotted feeling in my body. So I decided to focus on it for several minutes. After a while it shifted and exploded into anxiousness. It’s a pretty disconcerting feeling. Comes and goes. And I’m also experiencing somatic tenitus that shifts in pitch & volume constantly.

I feel like I may have thawed an old wound that I’d very much like to resolve but I’m also very mindful to do it safely. Online research suggests I should tread with caution. I had a rough childhood & I do have patterning around high functioning fight or flight which looks like I’ve exposed. Anyway, it’s fairly disconcerting but manageable right now. Perhaps I’m in a so called “healing crises” where everything feels raw & amplified.

Any help & guidance regarding this is appreciated!

I’ve seen the pattern that when life stresses become too much, you know normal things everyone else deals with - money, relationships, work, etc, my system goes into complete dorsal vagal. I can’t move, I can’t be out in the sunlight, I sleep all day, my body won’t move. when some of those stressors ease, such as money - I move into functional freeze. I don’t feel as bad, but I’m still dissociated and frozen. but I can function, and my thoughts are less hopeless. but I never go into sympathetic or ventral vagal. I’m basically stuck in these 2 modes for years… no amount of safety or regulation helps me get into a place of presence. I still live in my head all day long, nothing but fragments of thoughts and music in my head. my ability to comprehend or make new memories is 0.

what else can I try? I’m utterly exhausted. Doing nothing hasn’t helped, and 4 years of therapy hasnt changed this cycle either. I feel like my nervous system sees literally everything as a threat, my own existence, my thoughts, money, living. you can’t escape the stress of being alive, unless you dissociate, so my mind has got itself completely stuck in this state.

I have problems with staying grounded when I experience strong emotions. They totally make me talk incoherently and become confused, "trip" socially/conversationally.

How could I use SE to overcome this?

Thank you

Like the title says, I'm curious for healers who do somatic/trauma work, what led you to become a somatic healer? Was it because of your own experiences? I have an interest in becoming a SEP and/or trauma therapist due to my own healing journey, but for now it's sort of a goal to pursue once I'm more stable and relatively well. This led me to wonder about how others fell into this work.

I’m looking for a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP) who has helped people achieve real, lasting change or even actual resolution in some way or another.

I’m especially interested in social anxiety and avoidance patterns, but ultimately looking for someone who can facilitate genuine, deep transformation in general.

If you’ve worked with someone who genuinely made a significant difference in your life, I’d really appreciate any recommendations.

Hey :) chronic dorsal vagal freeze here. I changed my lifestyle completely last year and stopped engaging with lots of behaviours that dysregulated me and although I was initially exhausted, I rebuilt to being able to work, socialise, exercise etc in March.

Got struck with what felt like a fairly mild virus, went back to work too early and since then I’ve been dealing with 10 weeks of post viral fatigue. Exacerbated by a wedding I had to go to and recently getting COVID and flu shots (afraid of getting another virus).

At the same time I learnt about somatic work and realised I needed to be engaging with it to thaw the freeze. I started seeing a somatic experiencing practitioner, doing TRE and seeing a craniosacral therapist. Actually the CST is the only thing I do that improves my energy for sure.

The freeze is definitely thawing… like I’m becoming more regulated, digestion and libido starting to improve, getting swings into sympathetic regulation that is messing with my sleep atm. So things are improving but energy is still IN THE BIN. Like I can manage a morning walk that’s it kinda. Tried to work last week and one shift set me back a fair way.

I’m at the point where the cost of thawing the nervous system is costing too much from an energy perspective to be sustainable. I know the energy gains will come later, but I need a baseline level of functional energy now to survive. I’m only doing TRE weekly, 1x3-5 minute session and only when my body craves and asks for it. I’m seeing my SE therapist once every 2 weeks currently and trying to modulate that too so it’s not too demanding.

I’m wondering if I should just drop TRE and SE completely for now until my energy improves to a tolerable baseline, or should I keep doing it as my body craves it and my regulation is improving? This feels quite complex and I don’t know how to manage it. Where I’m at is considering dropping TRE entirely and moving SE to every 3 weeks until my baseline energy improves, but unsure if I need to drop it completely?

TW brief mention of SA (no details):

For the last 3 years I have experienced pain during sex and pain from arousal - after seeing multiple specialists and doing many tests/scans/imaging that show I am completely healthy I believe it is due to nervous system dysregulation and my body associating sex with trauma.

10 years ago, I experienced SA and am still recovering, though in many ways I am doing incredibly well. However, 3 years ago I had a completely unrelated traumatic incident that set off a 6 month panic attack as well as sleep issues.

After that period of my life, I began having this pain. I am in a committed, safe, loving relationship with my partner, but I’m unable to partake in anything sexual or even sensual because this pain begins - like all my muscles tightening and feeling a deep ache. It also triggers fear and anxiety though I consciously know I am safe.

I am wondering if there are any practices or exercises that could help my system and body uncouple sex and pain/trauma?

It has been so long and is not getting better despite a year of pelvic floor pt, years of therapy, years of general somatic and vagus nerve stimulation exercises, and increasing closeness and trust with my partner.

Thank you so much for your insight!

I'm looking for advice from people who have successfully dealt with a severe freeze response using body-based or somatic approaches.

Here is my situation: I am not someone who naturally wants to be isolated. I actually crave excitement, want to be active, and desperately want to make friends and date. But the exact moment I enter an unstructured social space or try to talk to someone, my body goes into a massive physical shutdown.

When this happens, my mind goes completely blank. It’s not just that I run out of things to say; it feels like my brain literally empties out. I get stuck automatically overanalyzing everything (where to look, my tone of voice, trying to guess what they are thinking) until I am totally paralyzed and unable to speak.

This has completely ruined my life. I have zero friends and have never been in a relationship. If I find someone attractive or fun, the pressure makes it impossible to function. I end up just looking from afar, looping on the anxiety for months or even years, until the window permanently closes. Right now, I am working 40 hours a week across two jobs while finishing my degree. Pushing through this constant physical panic leaves me completely exhausted every single day.

I spent five years in traditional talk therapy, and it did absolutely nothing. My therapists kept trying to fix my negative thoughts or told me to just force myself to get out there and be more engaging. But you cannot talk your way out of a physical shutdown. Forcing myself into these situations didn't make me used to it; it just trained my body to freeze even faster to protect itself from the exhaustion of failing.

I am done trying to force normal conversations when my body is in panic mode. For those who have actually been stuck in this state, what physical or somatic practices actually helped you stop the freeze response in the moment? How do you keep your body calm enough to let your brain stay online when there is no structured task to focus on? Any sort of grounding techniques haven't worked for me so far.

my entire life is sleeping, dreaming, and being in physical pain yet emotionally numb. I’ve lost my sense of self completely, as well as access to all my memories and sensory input from the world. I’m losing my ability to cope, because I know coming out of this is going to be torture. I can’t go back to being agoraphobic and in fight or flight 24/7 again. I didn’t leave my house for a whole year because of it.

right now I’m in extremely bad neck & shoulder pain, and all I did today was sleep for 14+ hours. I can barely be outside in the sun, or anything. my mind just wants to be in the dark and shut off from the world. I’ve lived in pain and emotional disconnect for so long, I dont even remember what it’s like to feel. my dreams are these random, lucid sagas all night long about the DPDR, about my life and my past, but none of it feels like me. my therapist diagnosed me with DPDR disorder. I’m chronically disconnected from reality and myself, yet I still have to function to keep a roof over my head. I’m horrified of feeling again because I can’t go back to the state I was in. I’ll end up just completely unable to function.

the neck and shoulder pain are so awful and it’s been days of this. and 4 years of this total. I’m losing my ability to cope. nothing is getting better, it’s getting worse

I’m in dorsal vagal shutdown and DPDR, and have been for 4 years. the pain in my neck, traps and shoulders is very bad right now. usually always have soreness on the right side of my neck, but now it’s only both sides and it’s very severe. lifting my head up, or leaning back hurts very bad.

I haven’t done any major trauma processing but am in IFS/ somatic experiencing. we are just working on resourcing. I’m continuing to have horrible vivid weird dreams all night every night and am cut off from reality and myself during the day. I’m also experiencing profound dissociative amnesia where it feels like I have absolutely no past, no identity and no self. when I think about the past I only get tiny fragments of imagery and it feels like it was never me. it’s been years since I’ve felt anything. I haven’t even had a panic attack in about 3 years. don’t even feel anxious. I’m just completely shut down and in muscle pain. chronic fatigue as well. I sleep so much, and never feel rested.

would a muscle relaxer maybe help me? my friend felt / massaged my shoulders / neck and said there’s huge knots. I can feel them too

Trigger warning: SA.

(long-story short**: I get mortally triggered at news of SA especially when a group of teenage males assault a teenage girl and they are legally absolved. I discovered a part that is deeply ashamed of femaleness and female sexuality, and hating and fearful towards the masculine. I am unable to process**)

Full story:

I am a 31 year old female with a significant history of complex trauma and abuse (emotional abuse/physical abuse/very severe emotional neglect/several disabilities from abuse/severe avoidant attachment/intense limerence). I have been in trauma therapy since around 5 years back and I progressed ALOT. I am doing EMDR and somatic therapy mainly, and now I am stuck at an overwhelming part.

Due to severe avoidance I have never been in a relationship, i am a straight woman from a conservative culture and I consider myself a proud feminist and kind of a man hater. I recently discovered intense fear and hatred and anger towards the masculine in general, to the point that it often keeps me up at night.

Trigger warning: SA against minors- skip this paragraph if you are sensitive. SOMETHING THAT TRIGGERED ME TO THE POINT OF WANTING TO OFF MYSELF: News about sexual assault trigger the shit out of me. especially: gang rape, especially rape against a teenage girl. i recently came across several incidents (in movies and in news) where this happened; a teenage girl would be raped and humiliated and filmed by teen male “friends”, and the rapists were legally absolved because they were minors themselves and there was not enough evidence that it was non-consensual. To make it worse, The males’ lawyers (or the JUDGE) would defend them by saying that the victim “enjoyed” it but later pressed charges because she was shamed for being a “slut”. The news piece had graphic and deep details of the incident because it was filmed. The absolving of the rapists and the further slut-shaming of the female victims in the courts (these are several stories not one) DROVE MY INTO SUICIDAL RAGE AND I AM PERMANENTLY TRIGGERED.

When I later dug deeper into this using EMDR and somatic practices I noticed intense shame toward femaleness as a whole and particularly female sexuality. While i am a proud feminist, I was surprised that a Part of me sees femaleness as inherently inferior and weak and thus inviting of male punishment, and straight sex and female enjoyment as inherently humiliating against the female. I have deep hatred and fear towards the masculine to the point of wishing them complete annihilation. I know part of it is cultural, but another part of it is a deeply traumatized part.

Background info: while I was never directly sexually assaulted, my dad was severely physically and emotionally abusive and I had no other male role models.
I was severely beaten by my dad at age 6 —to the point I thought I was dying of fear and actually wished to die— because I said sexual things infront of my adult cousins (I wanted to make them laugh and did not understand what I was saying). After my dad severely beat and scared and shamed the shit out of me and my mother not intervening, she went in to “soothe” me by being loving but also defending my dad and further shaming me because I said things that were “shameful”.

In my teenage years I had selective mutism and severe social anxiety and my school environment was extremely slut-shaming while males enjoyed being sexually curious and callous and demeaning towards girls without being shamed. My parents never helped me with my mental health issues because they saw them as my fault.

I am trying to sit with my ashamed part and let it move through me; I cried so hard in several sessions and even had full body tension-releasing tremors because it was that tense. I now realize that this part is trying to protect me because it equates female sexuality to danger of social ostratization and even DEATH. But the feeling still won’t be integrated and my core female shame runs extremely deep.
This part feels extremely helpless and really believes the shameful story.

If you read that far thanks alot.

Again: MISOGYNISTIC OR ANY ANTI-WOMAN SENTIMENTS ARE NOT WELCOME AND WILL BE REPORTED