Sensorimotor Psychotherapy

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy is a body-oriented talk therapy that integrates theory and technique from neuroscience, psychodynamic therapy, cognitive approaches, and somatic therapies.

Unresolved trauma can be conceptualized as deriving from overwhelming experiences that cannot be integrated. When a person experiences a traumatic event, they are sometimes unable to express their responses to suffering completely. As a result, their nervous system can become dysregulated causing their body to remain in a constant state of distress, and they may experience emotional and physical symptoms that interfere with their daily functioning. They may develop automatic physical habits, which can interfere with their ability to create new meaning and respond to their daily life in a flexible way. Instead, they often interact with their present environment, as if it is a version of the past. In sensorimotor psychotherapy, the nonverbal, including body sensation, posture and movements, facial expressions, and physiological arousal, that tell their own stories of an individual’s life, are explored mindfully in therapy, along with associated emotions. The focus is on helping the individual to become aware of their bodies, track sensations in their bodies, learn new skills, and experiment with new physical actions that help them to bring their autonomic nervous system back into alignment, promote self-regulation, and heal from emotional and physical distress, and increase their sense of empowerment and competency.

Traumatic experiences and attachment difficulties can interfere with people’s abilities to recognize and appreciate their strengths. Sensorimotor psychotherapy helps individuals to identify and acknowledge their strengths and resources, to identify and appreciate their survival resources, both those that continue to be serve them and those that have become self-destructive or unhealthy, and to begin to consider replacing them with healthier resources.

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy also helps people to reorganize traumatic memory, and can include intentionally discovering positive elements or resources that were used before, during and after a painful event, which can make remembering the traumatic event less painful.

To learn more about Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, please visit their website at https://www.sensorimotorpsychotherapy.org/index.html.