FAQs

How does it work?

Chronic stress and trauma are held in our physiology.

Through Somatic Experiencing’s body-oriented approach, we gently release the intensity of trauma and chronic stress that is stored in the body.

This is done primarily using sensation— the language of the primitive brain responsible for survival energies (fight, flight, freeze and dissociation). Through accessing the sensations in the body (aka the “felt sense”), SE deactivates the unprocessed survival energies. As we slow down, images, emotions, and thoughts will arise, often with subtle body movements and gestures. With these subtle body movements and gestures, we give time and space to allow for the completion of self-protective motor responses and, again, the release of unprocessed survival energy.

The outcome of this is the nervous system is able to settle back into its natural state of well-being.

What is DARe?

“Even if our childhood was less than ideal, our secure attachment system is biologically programmed in us––and our job is to simply find out what’s interfering with it and learn what we can do to make those secure tendencies more dominant.”
- Dr. Diane Poole Heller, Founder of DARe

DARe is a groundbreaking somatic approach to healing attachment injuries and restoring our innate secure attachment.

The DARe approach rests on the understanding that we are hardwired to heal the patterns that deeply affect our relationships and our behaviors in adult life, shared by stored memories of early experiences.

Do you ever wonder why you interact with others the way that you do? Or what causes patterns in relationship within you or the people you tend to attract?

Attachment theory offers us a lot of insight.

What is Attachment?

Our attachment system, located in the limbic system in our brain, is related to how we feel connected to others and impacts adult relationships. It’s shaped by early childhood relationships, particularly with caregivers, as well as the environment we grew up in, traumatic events throughout our lives, and culture.

What are Attachment Styles?

Attachment Styles are patterns of behaviors and experiences that show up in relationship that are linked to the way we bonded with caregivers, amongst other factors.

From the moment we are conceived and through our childhood, children look to parents for

- Consistent, loving presence

- Support and validation in our emotional needs and expressions

- A strong sense of safety and protection.

In an ideal situation where all of these are attachment needs are sufficiently met, the nervous system learns and remembers how to regulate emotional pain in the context of healthy relationship. This creates what is called a secure attachment style.

A secure attachment style is characterized by ease in relationship during times of both connection and separation. There tends to be a higher sense of resiliency in conflict and an ease in repair afterwards.

When all of those needs as children are not fully met, we can develop insecure attachment styles, which are all on a spectrum of intensity.

They can show up as a more anxious style, with a tendency for distrust, uneasiness, or a chronic fear of abandonment in relationship. When threatened, they can tend to have stronger emotional expressions and look towards connection to be soothed.

They can also lean towards a more avoidant style, where there tends to be discomfort with intimacy, and chronic feelings of being “suffocated” or an impingement of freedom in relationship. In difficulty, they tend to withdraw from the situation.

Lastly, the can also develop a disorganized attachment style, which often is created when we have caregivers that were emotionally abusive or unstable. In this style there can be a “come close, go away” dynamic with varying degrees of extremeness that shows up in relationships.

These are very oversimplified descriptions of the styles, but beginning to understand our own style is crucial in recovering our inherent secure attachment and reclaiming the ease and joy of relationships.

Somatic Experiencing is just as helpful for individual who do not have trauma as it is for those.

Why is that?

Trauma and stress are a continuum. When we look closely at what happens physiologically, they are not different things.

The main difference between stress and trauma is the severity of stress activation that is in our bodies. Trauma is characterized by extremely high amounts of stress activation, often coupled with feelings of helplessness or powerlessness.

Like trauma, stress also involves stress activation in the body, producing stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. However, it is at a lower level of intensity.

Because SE™ works with stress activation, it doesn’t matter if we’re talking about trauma or chronic stress (relationships, job, difficulty relaxing, ruminating thoughts, taking care of a sick loved one, etc.). Both are governed by stress activation, and SE™ works with that activation directly not matter the level of intensity.

No, it is not.

As a somatic coach, I work with what is occurring in the present moment and focus on your life today. Unlike medical professions and psychotherapists/psychoanalysts, I do not diagnose illnesses or prescribe medication. Nor do I view clients through a lens of pathology or unresolved psychological issues.

Rather, my lens is one of inner wholeness and basic goodness-- that we are endowed with blueprints for a regulated nervous system and a secure attachment system that together we can uncover.

This work is not always the right fit for everyone at all times. Some clients may choose to work with private psychotherapists and find the coaching work we do together to be complimentary. I make referrals if it seems that psychotherapy or other forms of support may be an important additional support or better fit for your needs and goals.

In addition to trauma, modern lifestyles can be very stressful to the human nervous system.

The build up can lead to a pattern of chronic stress which the body and nervous system register as trauma, meaning the nervous system learns to stay in a fixed state of arousal.

In other words, from the point of view of the body, stress and trauma are on a spectrum— they are not independent experiences.