Somatic Experiencing, created by Peter Levine
How is it that wild animals, constantly exposed to life-threatening danger, do not develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress?
This is the question Peter Levine asked himself. Peter Levine holds a doctorate in biophysics from the University of California, Berkeley, and a doctorate in psychology, and he is the creator of Somatic Experiencing.
To answer this question, he observed the behaviour of these wild animals in their natural environment, and the way they react to danger.
He thus realised that, in the wild, animals have three defensive responses to adversity at their disposal: fight, flight, or freeze — which can show up either as collapse, without tone, or as tonic immobility, with tone.
Fight is available when the danger can be overcome. Flight, when the animal has no chance of winning against the predator. Freeze, when neither fight nor flight is possible: the predator is stronger, and faster.
Freeze comes with a twofold advantage: on the one hand, the system is saturated with hormones that numb the pain of a fatal attack. On the other, freeze can mislead the predator: believing its prey is already dead, it may turn away from it and offer it a life-saving window in which to flee.
These responses are not conscious choices. They are natural, biological responses, triggered by the animal's autonomic nervous system. Its autonomic nervous system constantly scans its surroundings in order to respond to them appropriately, to keep the animal safe and to ensure its survival.
Watch the video below, which illustrates this mechanism wonderfully.
What happens when the animal comes out of freeze?
Did you notice what happens when the impala gets up?
It trembles.
When the wild animal comes out of freeze, its autonomic nervous system discharges all the energy that was mobilised, so as to integrate it.
The wild animal does not go back to its business as if nothing had happened.
The freeze response mobilises a huge amount of energy. Think of the mouse caught in the cat's claws. Imagine the terror. The urge to flee. And all the energy its autonomic nervous system has to mobilise so as not to.
Once free, it cannot simply carry on with its life. To return to homeostasis — that is, a state of physiological balance — the animal's autonomic nervous system will naturally discharge the energy that was mobilised. This is what will allow it to integrate the event and to actually carry on with its life.
Human beings, unlike animals, only very rarely give themselves the chance to discharge and integrate all the energy their system had to mobilise to defend itself against adversity.
Whether it takes the form of shouting, crying, trembling or involuntary movements: as human beings, we tend to judge and suppress these responses, perfectly natural though they are, to an experience felt as threatening or as a matter of life and death.
Have you ever nearly been run over while crossing the road? Nothing serious: the car stopped. And yet, did you perhaps freeze? What happened next? Did you go on your way, and on with your day, as if nothing had happened? Or did you really give yourself the time to physiologically process the fright you had just had?
The last time you were in intense conflict with a loved one, a colleague or a line manager, what did you do afterwards? Did you give yourself a space in which to complete your fight response, or did you carry on with your day as if nothing had happened? — Perhaps by throwing yourself at a packet of biscuits when you got home that evening, or by ruminating for ten days after the event. Actually, just thinking about it… 🤯
The natural capacity of our autonomic nervous system to regulate itself: this is what Peter Levine put his finger on.
Reconnecting with this natural capacity that we have lost: this is what Somatic Experiencing facilitates.
Somatic Experiencing offers the possibility, in the here and now, of completing the psychophysiological responses triggered by adversity which could not be completed in the past, for whatever reason.
You see, all this survival energy that was mobilised to protect us does not disappear. It remains bound in the system, and can show up — by way of example, and by no means exhaustively — as:
rumination;
chronic pain;
emotional reactions that seem to us out of proportion to the situation at hand;
negative thoughts towards ourselves and others;
anxiety;
or, on the contrary, when the system no longer has the capacity to contain all this energy, chronic exhaustion;
apathy;
a lack of motivation;
difficulty getting yourself going.
How exactly does Somatic Experiencing work?
It all depends on what you have been through, and this is precisely what sets Somatic Experiencing apart from many other approaches.
Somatic Experiencing is particularly gentle and respectful of the person being supported and of their history.
It imposes no protocol, no dogma.
It adapts to your pace. Not the other way round.
As Somatic Experiencing Practitioners, we are not there to "get you out of freeze". We are there to help you feel safe, at last. Through presence, listening and sincere, caring curiosity, we support you, at your own pace, in experiencing safety in the here and now.
And depending on your history, this may take more or less time. That is normal.
We force nothing. Because we trust the intelligence of your autonomic nervous system.
We know that whatever it does, it does it to protect you. Even if, today, you suffer from its protective mechanisms, which have settled in a little too well and persist over time even though the threat has passed.
We force nothing. Together with you, we create the conditions your sense of safety needs. Because once you feel fully safe, the fight and flight responses that were frozen will emerge of their own accord. Not because we want them to. Not to keep to our agenda. Because your autonomic nervous system has the natural capacity to regulate itself when the necessary conditions are in place.
This is what we do together: put in place the conditions that your autonomic nervous system's natural capacity to regulate itself needs.
As Somatic Experiencing Practitioners, we are not there to provoke anything at all. We are there to support the natural intelligence of your autonomic nervous system.
Once these fight and flight responses that were frozen emerge of their own accord, we support you, through techniques specific to Somatic Experiencing, in discharging and integrating them.
So that you can, at last, get your life back — free of what today hinders your innate capacity for joy, freedom and peacefulness.
Why isn't shouting into a cushion or hitting a punchbag enough?
For many reasons.
The first is that these cathartic practices do not support the integration of the energy being discharged. They may seem to do you good in the moment, because they let you externalise the activation held in the system, but resolving trauma is more complex than simply discharging that activation.
It is not only about discharging the energy mobilised by fight or flight responses that were frozen. It is about integrating them. That is, supporting your autonomic nervous system in containing the psychophysiological intensity of these responses and of their completion, as well as the intensity of what happens next: the deep sense of release and of opening up to life — yes, I know, it sounds a little esoteric put like that, and yet… it is the truth.
For trauma to be renegotiated — the term Peter Levine uses — several conditions have to be in place. And one of them is fundamental: connection.
Peter Levine tells us that "trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness". Think about it. Whatever you went through, you were left alone with everything that was going on inside you. Perhaps there were people around you. But in your experience, you felt alone with all of it. Didn't you?
This is why resolving trauma takes far more than nervous system regulation as we see it spread everywhere today.
Renegotiating trauma, whatever it may be, requires the support of someone with genuine expertise in the field. But that is not all. It is not only about being an expert.
It is about cultivating presence, listening and sincere, caring curiosity — the conditions without which you cannot experience safety. And, in turn, without which the traumatic responses that today keep you from living fully cannot finally emerge and be integrated. Without retraumatisation. At your own pace.
And this quality of presence, of listening, of sincere, caring curiosity is not something you learn in a training course. It is cultivated through our personal experience and our ongoing commitment to resolving our own traumas.
And yet, sometimes, even when all the conditions are in place, you will not experience this safety in connection. This is where Somatic Experiencing reaches its limits. And where NARM comes into play.
What are the limits of Somatic Experiencing?
Somatic Experiencing is a wonderful practice, and one that does not only allow trauma to be renegotiated. Somatic Experiencing allows us to get back in touch with our humanity.
Practised regularly, for long enough, it completely transforms our relationship with ourselves and with others, in that it reconciles us with everything we have rejected since childhood in order to adapt to our environment.
The tears we swallowed for fear of being told we were too sensitive or too fragile. The anger we held back so as not to disturb anyone. The flight we had no access to, because our material security depended on the people we lived with — whether our parents, a partner or anyone else.
Nevertheless, in some situations, Somatic Experiencing is not enough. Because trauma is not only this survival energy that was mobilised and that still circulates, in various ways, through our system.
Trauma, for many of us, is all those relational adaptations we had to put in place in order to develop as best we could in an environment whose circumstances were not, however, favourable to our development.
In adulthood, these adaptations still live in us. Indeed, they have often become reflexes. Automatic mechanisms. Ways of functioning so integrated that they feel like our identities. Beliefs we hold to be absolutely true about ourselves, about others and about the rest of the world.
Without being aware of it, without doing it on purpose, we keep up, in adulthood, the strategies and beliefs that protected us when we were children but that today keep us from fully living what we long for: deep, fulfilling relationships, a grounded trust in the future, more gentleness and peacefulness in everyday life.