Guides
Guides to body-based therapy.
Plain writing about what somatic work is, what a session actually involves, and what it is not. Free to read, no account, nothing sold.
Tools
What the body does
- Reading your own signalsInteroception, and why some people have almost none.
- Crying in therapyNot the goal, and its absence is not a problem.
- DissociationGoing away without leaving the room.
- The freeze responseWhy you could not move, and why it was not a choice.
- Titration and pendulationWhy the work goes so slowly, and why that is the point.
- ResourcingThe part that looks like nothing, and holds everything up.
- OrientingWhy looking around the room actually works.
- The window of toleranceWhy you swing between flooded and flat.
- Fight, flight, freeze, fawnThe four responses, and why yours is yours.
Start here
- Coach or therapist?The difference that decides it, and how to tell.
- Trauma without a storyWhen nothing bad enough ever happened.
- The body keeps the scoreWhat the book gets right, and what got lost.
- When it is not the answerWhen something else should come first.
- Choosing a therapistCredentials, questions, and what should end the call.
- What is somatic therapy?A plain explanation, and what it is not.
- Somatic or talk therapy?Where the difference is real, and where it is marketing.
- Does it actually work?The evidence, including the unflattering parts.
- Inside a sessionMinute by minute, without the mystique.
- Your first sessionWhat gets asked, and what to say early.
- What it costsReal numbers, and the routes to paying less.
Living with it
- Panic attacksWhat is happening, and why fighting it makes it worse.
- Somatic therapy for anxietyWhat it adds to CBT, and where CBT is better.
- SleepWhy you are exhausted and wide awake.
- Somatic therapy for PTSDWhere it fits next to the standard protocols.
- Somatic work and chronic painWhat helps, and the claim to refuse.
The modalities
- BrainspottingWhat it is, and how much is actually known.
- Somatic ExperiencingLevine's method, and the one with the most research.
- HakomiMindfulness, small experiments, and what defends.
- Sensorimotor psychotherapyThe one closest to mainstream clinical practice.
- Polyvagal theoryWhat it claims, and the criticism it has attracted.