Hi Everyone,
I just happened to stumble across this thread. I have been seeing a clinical psychologist who is trained in SE among her other specialties for over a year now. The progress I have made is mind-boggling, especially because the process is extremely gentle. It simply doesn't feel like work, but a creative, fun place to go to, as well as a very supportive environment.
Something that I find amazing about the approach of SE is how different individual therapists use depending on their background training. My therapist described the training process and all the people who take the classes. Each therapist adapts it to fit his/her individual profession and training. I guess that I theoretically had understood that, but as usual I have a disconnect between theory and application. Thank you very much!
My therapist uses it as part of her whole therapeutic approach. She practices CBT, play therapy, sand tray therapy, and the regular long list of current of therapy techniques. About a year and a half ago, I realized that I was ready for another therapy attempt. I had run out of referrals and no idea where to look. I ended up looking online and was intrigued by my therapist being willing to work with people of all ages, including sand play, play therapy, and expressive arts.
As I also have experienced complex trauma and grew up in many different languages, the various traumas as well as treatments have occurred in many different languages. Plus I am Deaf. Therefore I have significant communication difficulties and can't describe things very well. The more stressed I am the more likely I am to forget words to explain my memories to someone. A former therapist was so bothered by the fact that I usually sign even when I am around hearing people that she held down my hands on the chair's armrests until I was done explaining what I was describing. Even with my current therapist, I have times when I struggle to talk. Depending on the day, I will use whatever works (e.g. drawing/painting, playing, the sand, toys, and acting out what happened).
My therapist listens, talks, and gives suggestions (e.g. visual imaging which works beautifully for me). Somewhere during the session (which lasts 90 minutes to incorporate different approaches), my therapist incorporates SE. She asks me what my body feels like. Depending on what my body feels like we focus on the sensation (the felt sense) and its margins. At this point I am slowly learning to stay with the feeling, like waves in the ocean. There's a peak and if I manage to stay with it without dissociating then it comes back down. If I need help with other techniques she will help.
With this approach I have finally acquired an understanding of basic feeling words. Adjectives are the hardest individual types of words to learn in any language because unless you know what the feelings are you can't identify them. With another therapist I made smiley faces that were supposed to show emotions/feelings and words written beneath it. I was trying to wrap my head around the definitions I read in dictionaries, but kept not really having any idea what they meant. With SE with the current therapist she taught me to feel my body and she helped put the words to it later. Previously, I was completely disconnected from my body (a.k.a. dissociated). Different medical professionals (e.g. physical therapists, occupational therapists, doctors) would want me to connect with my body but that kept reactivating the traumas. They wanted me to feel the surfaces of tables and walls to help with balance and actually were able to turn on the sensations with lots of prodding, but they couldn't help with the sensations (e.g. hands around my waist) from the flashbacks. I am still a work in progress, but I have found some hope that there is a chance that I am not as big of a freak as I and other people thought I was.
Something funny that I just learned thanks to all of your postings is that I guess I have had craniosacral therapy, thus a somatic treatment, in the past. I saw a chiropractor for a while who specialized in that. Now it is clicking as to why I was able to benefit from that as well.
Take care!
