My SE Story
SE is often one of the last things people try in their quest for relief from anything—physical symptoms, emotional turmoil, existential pain. It was one of the “last stops” for me on my healing journey before profound and lasting shifts started to take place. My hope and intent with this work is to make SE available to more people, as its premises are a basic foundation to how humans live, love, heal and thrive. The more people experience work like this, the better we can relate to ourselves, each other, and our planet.
I’ve spent my life trying to cope with things like severe depression, anxiety, childhood trauma, relationship and boundary challenges, addiction, overwhelm, sexual blocks, and the like. Many of these symptoms began for me as a child and intensified as I grew up in a world with little conscious support of how our bodies take in and process life. These symptoms for me were also tied to existential dread and doubt—why were these things happening to me and why couldn’t I get these particularly painful aspects of my experience to shift? What was wrong with me?
I would eventually learn that nothing was wrong, but simply that my body was trying to communicate in any way it could.
I was lucky to be able to try on many tools and communities of support over the years. I dove in deeply to each of the following spaces over long periods of time with the hopes of finding relief. Since the age of 18, I immersed myself in the Orthodox Christianity tradition, then 12 step work, cognitive therapies, Vipassana meditation, yoga, and self-inquiry. Each tradition held balm and beautiful insights, yet there were shifts I could tell my body still desperately wanted to make. I was utterly exhausted with a 4-year-long heat rash, an autoimmune manifestation which are usually one of the last things to present when our bodies are overwhelmed for years, by the time I discovered Somatic Experiencing.
SE is not magic, though it often feels like it. It is science merged with human creativity, spirituality, and interconnectivity. It was the missing piece for me—the validation and praise of a body and mind that I had thought were utterly pitted against me. SE helped me understand why my body was functioning the way that it was. There was so much practicality to it, so much that I could immediately directly experience the relief my body had been thirsty for. I started to remember what it was like to trust my body, and following from that space made all the difference. Making the commitment to myself to receive SE on a regular basis with a knowledgeable, patient, and kind practitioner is one of the best gifts I’ve ever received.