Somatic
Experiencing
developed by Dr Peter Levine
How is it that wild animals, constantly exposed to life-threatening danger, do not develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress?
That is the question Dr Peter Levine asked himself as early as the 1970s.
Peter Levine holds a doctorate in biophysics and a doctorate in psychology.
It was from this question, and the answers he found to it, that he created Somatic Experiencing, an approach to the resolution of shock trauma that is widely recognised today.
To answer it, he observed the behaviour of these wild animals in their natural environment, and how they respond to danger.
He realised that in the wild, animals have three defensive responses to adversity: fight, flight or freeze — the latter taking the form either of collapse, without muscle tone, or of tonic immobility, with muscle tone.
Fight, flight, freeze: natural responses of the autonomic nervous system to adversity
Fight is available when the danger can be overcome.
Flight, when the animal stands no chance against the predator.
Freeze, when neither fight nor flight is possible: the predator is stronger, and faster.
Freezing comes with a double advantage. On the one hand, the system is flooded with hormones that numb the pain of a fatal attack.
On the other, freezing can mislead the predator: believing its prey already dead, it may turn away, and offer the prey a life-saving window to escape.
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 environment in order to respond appropriately, keep it safe and ensure its survival.
Watch the video below, which illustrates this mechanism beautifully.
What happens when the animal comes out of freeze?
Did you notice what happens when the impala gets back up?
It trembles.
When a wild animal comes out of freeze, its autonomic nervous system discharges all the energy that was mobilised, in order to integrate it.
The wild animal does not simply go back to its business as if nothing had happened.
The freeze response mobilises an enormous 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 in order not to.
Once free, it cannot simply pick up where it left off.
To return to homeostasis — that is, a state of physiological balance — the animal’s autonomic nervous system will naturally discharge the energy it mobilised.
This is what allows it to integrate the event, and to actually pick up where it left off.
And in human beings?
Human beings, unlike animals, very rarely allow themselves the chance to discharge and integrate all the energy their system had to mobilise to defend itself against adversity.
Whether through shouting, crying, trembling or involuntary movements: as human beings, we tend to judge and suppress these responses, perfectly natural as they are, to an experience lived as threatening or life-endangering.
Have you ever nearly been run over crossing the road?
Nothing serious: the car stopped.
And yet, perhaps you froze?
What happened next?
Did you carry on with your day as if nothing had happened?
Or did you actually give yourself the time to physiologically process the fear you had just felt?
The last time you had an intense conflict with a loved one, a colleague or a 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. In fact, just thinking about it…
The natural capacity of our autonomic nervous system to self-regulate
This is what Peter Levine put his finger on.
Reconnecting with this natural capacity 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 that could not be completed in the past.
You see, all that energy mobilised to protect us does not disappear.
It remains in the system, and can manifest — by way of example, and far from exhaustively — as:
rumination;
chronic pain;
emotional reactions that feel disproportionate to the present situation;
negative thoughts about ourselves and others;
anxiety;
or, on the contrary, when the system no longer has the capacity to contain all that energy, chronic exhaustion;
apathy;
a lack of motivation;
difficulty getting going.
Concretely, how does Somatic Experiencing work?
It all depends on what you have been through, and that is precisely what sets Somatic Experiencing apart from many other approaches.
Somatic Experiencing is particularly gentle and respectful of the person and of their history.
It imposes no protocol, no dogma.
It adapts to your pace.
Not the other way round.
It is not about “getting out of freeze”.
It is about creating the conditions your autonomic nervous system needs to exercise its natural capacity to self-regulate.
When you feel safe, the fight or flight responses that were frozen emerge on their own.
Through techniques specific to Somatic Experiencing, and by naturally following the intelligence of your system, they can then be discharged and integrated.
What are the limits of Somatic Experiencing?
Somatic Experiencing supports the resolution of simple traumas, also known as shock traumas, wonderfully well.
A car accident, a fall, an assault: all of this can be renegotiated with ease when you are well supported and have, otherwise, had an optimal life path.
Nevertheless, in most situations, Somatic Experiencing is not enough.
Because trauma is not only that defensive energy that was mobilised and still circulates, in various ways, through our system.
Trauma, for many of us, is all the relational adaptations we had to put in place in order to develop as best we could in an environment whose circumstances were not conducive to our development.
And in adulthood, this will show up not necessarily in the wake of a shock trauma, but in the way we relate to ourselves, and to others.
When trauma is not the dysregulation of the autonomic nervous system, but the relational strategy that sustains the dysregulation
These adaptations, put in place in childhood, still live within us.
In fact, they have often become reflexes.
Automatic mechanisms.
Ways of functioning woven into our very 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 carry into adulthood the strategies and beliefs that protected us as children but that, today, keep us from fully living what we long for: deep and fulfilling relationships, a grounded confidence in the future, more gentleness and serenity in everyday life.
Unbeknown to us, what we had to put in place to adapt to our environment is precisely what, today, drives the dysregulation of our autonomic nervous system.
Focusing on regulating the nervous system without addressing the strategies that feed the dysregulation is a bit like constantly draining the water from a bath we find too hot, without ever turning off the hot tap.
Yes, we stabilise the temperature — but at what cost?
And is it really sustainable?