Somatic Experiencing
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Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a body-oriented approach to resolving traumatic stress. SE is used to overcome shock trauma and to treat early attachment and developmental trauma. The aim of Somatic Experiencing is to (re) establish the natural self-regulation in the nervous system and thereby to change the symptoms that have arisen in the body as a result of shock and trauma.
For trauma is an event when there are individual psychological coping skills exceeds and causes a feeling of being overwhelmed and helplessness. Traumatic experiences can arise in many different life situations: operations, serious illnesses, injuries, the loss of a close person, neglect in childhood or prenatal threat in the womb, war, natural disasters or experience of violence such as B. Rape. Apparently ordinary events such as medical treatment, a dog bite or witnessing violence on television can also traumatize the users of the method.
Somatic Experiencing does not primarily define trauma in terms of the event, but rather in terms of the physical reaction to the event. In a threatening situation, an emergency program runs automatically: fight, flight , freeze or collapse. Only when the energy mobilized in the process is discharged, the danger for the body is over. Otherwise he will remain on the alert. The "survival energy" is bound in the nervous system and trauma occurs. SE is described as non-verbal communication with body memory. The nervous system is instructed to discharge the energies blocked during the trauma.
The method was developed by Peter A. Levine , b. 1942, biophysicist and psychologist. In 2010 he was recognized for his life's work by the American Association for Body Psychotherapy.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Somatic-Experiencing Deutschland eV Accessed on February 9, 2020 (German).
- ↑ Peter A. Levine, Ann Frederick et al .: Trauma Healing: The Awakening of the Tiger; our ability to transform traumatic experiences . Synthesis, Essen 1998, ISBN 3-922026-91-5 .