Diverse Paths Wellness – Somatic Trauma Therapist & Trauma-Informed Support

‘Soma’ is a Greek word for ‘the living body known from within’, or known to the Self. This ‘knowing’ signifies wholeness. 

Somatic therapy is an experiential approach towards mindbody integration. The pain, overwhelm, and coping responses manifested by trauma take us away from feeling at home in our body, and as a result there is often a split within ourselves.

Somatic Therapy helps:

• Restore the body as a place of safety while helping to expand the capacity to process body (preverbal and nonverbal) memory
• Metabolize unprocessed emotions
• Complete thwarted (incomplete) stress responses
• Restore our optimal relationship to our self and the world around us

Somatic trauma therapy offers techniques for clients to sense and regulate their own physiology and states of being. This includes building more internal and external resources, building trusting and co-regulatory relationships, learning to turn inward with compassion, being invited deeper in the body, and given time and space to process the trauma. These somatic techniques unwind trauma and restore well being."

The pain, overwhelm, and coping responses manifested by attachment trauma take us away from feeling at home in our body, at home with other people, or at home within the world. Somatic therapy brings us back.

The manifestations of attachment trauma are primarily subconscious, so using words (i.e talk therapy) or psycho-education alone is an incomplete approach for transformation. Profound healing and re-patterning comes from making changes at the body (cellular) level. A somatic therapy approach acknowledges the narrative of our attachment journey and guides a client into the wisdom of their body to restore the innate capacity to bond, form healthy and adaptive boundaries, and flourish in all aspects of relationships.

Somatic Attachment Therapy helps:

• Restore the body as a place of safety and as a conduit for love
• Feel an embodied core sense of self
• Compassionately renew a felt sense of connection and security
• Release stored tensions in the body that contribute  to defensiveness, avoidance, or anxiety
• Expand the capacity to process body (preverbal and nonverbal) memory
• Metabolize unprocessed emotions
• Create deep and sustaining intimate relationships
• Break the cycle of reenacting protective attachments patterns in relationships
• Create the internal and external conditions for attachment re-patterning versus merely working with symptom reduction.
• Restore your optimal relationship to yourself and the world around you
• Enhances the capacity for joy, trust, managing disappointments and rejections

Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) is a condition caused by repeated or prolonged trauma—often rooted in childhood abuse, relational betrayal, or narcissistic abuse. While traditional talk therapy can provide important insights, many survivors find themselves stuck, overwhelmed, or disconnected even after years of cognitive work.

That’s because trauma lives not only in the mind—but in the body and nervous system (Van der Kolk, 2014). This is where somatic therapy comes in.

Somatic therapy is a body-based approach to trauma healing. Rather than focusing solely on talking through events, it helps clients safely reconnect with their felt sense, work through nervous system dysregulation, and complete unresolved trauma responses like freeze, fight, or fawn.

This method is rooted in cutting-edge neuroscience and includes approaches like:

• Somatic Experiencing® (Levine, 1997 
• Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (Ogden et al., 2006)
• Polyvagal-informed therapy (Porges, 2011)
• Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy
• Somatic Attachment Therapy
   

These therapies have shown particular promise for survivors of emotional abuse, neglect, and narcissistic relationships, where the trauma is relational and stored nonverbally.

C-PTSD often results in nervous system dysregulation—clients may feel constantly on edge (hypervigilance) or emotionally numb (shutdown). Somatic therapy helps restore balance by working directly with the autonomic nervous system (Porges, 2011; Levine, 1997).

Survivors of narcissistic abuse or early trauma may not have a clear narrative or language for what happened. Somatic therapy allows for healing without reliving every painful detail. Trauma can be processed through body awareness, movement, and breath (Ogden et al., 2006; Van der Kolk, 2014).

Early relational trauma often disrupts our sense of safety in connection. Somatic therapy uses attunement and co-regulation to repair relational ruptures in real time (Schore, 2012; Ogden & Fisher, 2015).

For those who have been gaslit or chronically invalidated, especially in narcissistic relationships, somatic therapy helps rebuild connection to intuition, gut instinct, and the inner “yes” and “no.” This leads to increased agency and healthier boundaries (Levine, 1997).

Modern neuroscience confirms what somatic practitioners have known intuitively for decades: talking alone doesn’t heal trauma. Somatic therapy helps reintegrate the fragmented parts of the self—body, mind, and emotions—into a coherent whole (Van der Kolk, 2014; Siegel, 1999).

Somatic therapy is particularly effective for people experiencing:

• Emotional flashbacks
• Dissociation and numbness
• Hyperarousal or shutdown
• Chronic tension, pain, or fatigue
• Trust and intimacy difficulties
• People-pleasing and fawning
• Boundaries and self-doubt after narcissistic abuse
   

If you’ve said, “I understand it all, but I still don’t feel safe,” somatic therapy may be the missing piece.

Somatic therapy is helpful for anyone with:

• C-PTSD or PTSD
• Survivors of childhood abuse or neglect
• Emotional or narcissistic abuse recovery
• Medical or institutional trauma
• Sexual trauma
• Chronic dysregulation or burnout
   

Somatic therapy doesn’t just help you understand your trauma—it helps you heal it from the inside out. By working directly with the body, breath, and nervous system, it allows you to finally feel safe, empowered, and connected—not just in your mind, but in your whole being.

If you’re a survivor of complex trauma, narcissistic abuse, or you’ve felt stuck despite years of traditional therapy—you are not broken. You may just need a different approach.

Somatic therapy may be the next step toward embodied healing and a reclaimed sense of self.

Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence—from domestic abuse to political terror. Basic Books.

Levine, P. A. (1997). Waking the tiger: Healing trauma. North Atlantic Books.

Ogden, P., Minton, K., & Pain, C. (2006). Trauma and the body: A sensorimotor approach to psychotherapy. W. W. Norton.

Ogden, P., & Fisher, J. (2015). Sensorimotor psychotherapy: Interventions for trauma and attachment. W. W. Norton.

Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton.

Porges, S. W. (2022). Our polyvagal world: How safety and trauma change us. W. W. Norton.

Schore, A. N. (2012). The science of the art of psychotherapy. W. W. Norton.

Siegel, D. J. (1999). The developing mind: How relationships and the brain interact to shape who we are. Guilford Press.

Van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.