Beyond ‘Where Do You Feel That in Your Body?’: Somatic Therapy for Neurodivergent Humans
Overview
Being a somatic therapist who primarily works with neurodivergent humans, has started to feel like somewhat of an oxymoron. This blog post will explore common misconceptions about what somatic therapy looks like, challenges for neurodivergent humans and also how it can be helpful for neurodivergent folks as well!
What is somatic therapy?
Somatic therapy can look like a lot of different things. There are various specific somatic-focused modalities and trainings such as Somatic Experiencing® or SomEx, and providers may or may not acquire letters at the end of their titles upon completion of certain standards (for example, SEP = Somatic Experiencing Practitioner). Some therapists might integrate somatic practices into their work more formally whereas others may include language around somatics to reflect incorporation of practices such as nervous system and window of tolerance mapping that are more body-based, as opposed to more strictly behavioral approaches such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. You might also hear of somatic therapy as being juxtaposed to traditional talk therapy; in recent years, I have observed a huge increase in people reaching out for support around their tendency to intellectualize and the desire to be more connected to their bodies (which I’ll explore more below).
“Where do you feel that in your body?”: Helpful or confusing?
I often hear this experience described around people’s previous experiences with somatic therapy where the therapist will ask, “where do you feel that in your body?”, then the client, after having been asked this question multiple times might start to give random answers like “my toes?” or repeat the same sensation “my stomach”, but not really be tuned into what is happening because the question is confusing or they’re not really sure what they’re “supposed” to be feeling. And then that pretty much shapes their idea of what somatic therapy looks like, sometimes leading to the conclusion that somatic therapy is not effective. This is really important because there is a lot of information to be gained from these experiences but a lot of this is lost when there isn’t an understanding of what is going on.
Why can it be challenging to understand what the body is saying?
Something I have recently been reflecting on is that not many of us were taught the language of our somas (bodies) and how to interpret that information, so if we are being asked to describe this to another person without the foundation of even understanding what we are feeling ourselves, then of course, it would be confusing to try to jump into. It’s like expecting a toddler to be able to describe complex emotions when they are just beginning to learn language in the first place. How many of us were taught to link the feelings in our bodies to emotions and underlying needs? And if so, were you given permission to vocalize these needs? Did you receive feedback that taught you your feelings were welcomed and wanted? Or, like many who are showing up to therapy in the first place, did your caregivers / people in your environments’ actions teach you that your body’s signals weren’t important or going to be tended to? In which case, it makes so much sense that your body would, over time, begin to shut down those cues in order to survive. Neurodivergent sensory experiences can also make it challenging to know what the body is saying right away- more on that later in this post!
Everything is information: There is no right or wrong
You might be wondering, then why do therapists ask this question (where do you feel that in your body?)? From my perspective and experience, when asked with intention and when collaboration is prioritized in explaining processes to clients, this can become a really valuable exploration. For one, not noticing is also information. I like to encourage clients that a perfectly good response is “I don’t know”, again and again and again. It can feel frustrating in the short-term if you tend to feel the same sensations (or lack thereof) and are not sure of any direction around this somatic noticing. However, with time, this can become really meaningful. Trust can take a long time to build when there have been multiple ruptures of it in previous relationships. As a relational attachment-informed trauma therapist, I tend to do more long-term therapy work, and one of the really cool things about this is that I get to notice shifts and changes over a longer period of time. I get to pay attention to and hold space for subtler shifts, reflecting those back. Perhaps the answer is “I don’t know” for several months or even years, but how incredible when after all that time, the body finally feels safe enough to notice something different?
As well, I really believe that everything is information. Even if the answer is consistently, “I feel that in the exact same place and the intensity is always the same”, this allows me to reflect back that there is something really big that lives there, that maybe, from a parts work perspective, this part did a lot of protecting for a very long time, and thus, needs a lot of care and attunement to feel safe enough to share more or put down some of its armor. I also notice that we (as a society) often are trained to focus on what is wrong, and this very much seeps into therapy at times. When we are solely focused on eliciting information about distress or “negative” sensations, we often miss the information of ease, joy, relief – no matter how micro or small. Something I love about somatic work is the practice of tracking sensations. In my Somatic Attachment training, I learned how to facilitate somatic experiments – intentional practices such as playing around with how close we sit in the room or space (there is a lot of room for creativity in virtual somatic therapy!), increasing support for our bodies such as through adding a pillow or shifting positions, and exploring resonance and dissonance, which offer our bodies room to explore and shape our sense of yes and no, to learn our bodies needs, and to practice engaging with the language of the soma.
Somatic Therapy for Neurodivergent Folks:
Something that always makes me a little concerned is the limitation of social media in communicating nuance around really important concepts. I notice this a lot in content around attachment styles specifically, but also with the idea of intellectualizing I noted earlier. There seems to be this binary idea that intellectualizing is bad and doing somatic work to be in our bodies is an immediate and necessary good. This frustrates me because often there is a minimization around the protective role that intellectualizing often serves in navigating systems of oppression and lack of collective care, and how somatic work is not the same level of accessible to everyone.
One concept I really value from somatic therapy is called titration; this is, in a nutshell, the process of going really slowly when addressing trauma. Viewing intellectualizing as inherently bad or maladaptive often leads to a rush to “stop doing it” without honoring how it is actually a strategy our bodies employ to survive. Intellectualizing is when we try to process something cognitively, in contrast to feeling it in our bodies. An idea that I see so prevalent across social media is this belief that ‘you can’t talk your way through emotions’, you have to feel them.
In some ways, I agree with this – trauma is stored in our bodies AND healing can also look like..
● increasing our bodymind awareness and connectedness
● learning how to identify our emotions so we can feel through them and tend to the information they are giving us
● engaging in practices that help us to complete our stress cycles
● experiencing embodied senses of safety that allow our brains to build relational trust again and provide a foundation for changing how we move through the world
At the same time, many of us lack the ongoing supportive resources to make this shift that in many ways, relies on community and larger level changes – if we are able to be more connected to our bodies, but the world at large remains an unsafe place, then we lose a valuable coping mechanism for navigating environments where there isn’t always space for us to feel through our emotions and be so present in our bodies.
One of the functions of intellectualizing is that it allows us to engage with experiences such as painful memories in a way that isn’t as overwhelming as feeling in our bodies. This is especially true when we either don’t have a lot of experience feeling safe enough in our bodies to sit with distressing emotions or the information our bodies hold is too big to be aware of in all of its magnitude. It might feel really new and activating to intentionally encounter the sensations we associate with trauma, and because a big part of trauma can be difficulty distinguishing what has happened in the past from what is happening in the present, it can be really overwhelming to be present in our bodies at all. As well, experiences like gender dysphoria, medical trauma, and chronic illness can create additional barriers to being present in the body.
Alexithymia and Delayed Interoceptive Experiences
Some neurodivergent experiences that can make somatic therapy challenging include alexithymia and delayed interoceptive experiences (this refers to the delayed experience of being able to recognize body cues and signals. An example is not realizing you are past the point of overstimulation until hours after an event has ended.) Further, the process of feeling our feelings can feel like a very confusing abstract concept.
Despite some of the unique challenges, somatic work can also be really helpful for neurodivergent humans. Touch (consensual, of course!) can be a really regulating force for autistics who like deep pressure and as complex trauma is unfortunately a common experience for many neurodivergent humans, it can also aid in facilitating embodied senses of safety, which is critical in trauma healing. Increasing awareness of what is happening in our bodies and learning how to communicate our emotions and needs is really important for nurturing both our relationship with ourselves and with others, interpersonally.
Somatic therapy can also be really helpful in figuring out ways to better meet your body’s needs as you learn the unique ways your soma operates and communicates with you, whether that be adjusting how you approach meal planning and food based on patterns around hunger cues or creating intentional practices to gather more information about needs for rest, social engagement capacity, and more.
A few practical adjustments you can make when approaching somatic work with neurodivergent humans:
Clarify expectations and goals on the front end. It can be helpful to name and normalize that especially in early days, you might not have a strong awareness of somatic cues in the moment. Somatic work takes practice just like mindfulness or other therapeutic practices.
Offer increased guidance in noticing. As I mentioned, somatic work can feel really vague and hard to grasp. One way to support clients is to offer more specificity, such as providing options for reference. For example, instead of "where do you feel that in your body"?, you might ask, "do you notice any sensations in your body as you share this experience?" I also like to offer Peter Levine's SIBAM model here as a supportive tool that allows people to narrow down what we are focusing on.
more specific prompts might include:
"Do you notice any sensations in your hands?" "How about your chest?" "What about your legs?" Doing a body scan can be a practice of helping clients tune into sensations we might otherwise not be thinking to check into.
"Is there anything that your body is wanting?" Here again is an opportunity to go through each of the senses and explore what we notice when we pay closer attention to specific parts of the body. We might not be used to realizing that our pain or discomfort are allowed to be named and tended to, and this practice of curious exploration around where there might be a need, even if we cannot take the feelings away fully, is a gentle way of practicing somatic work.
"Do any of these sensations feel familiar?"
"Are there any colors or motions you can show me or temperatures that help illustrate parts of how you are feeling?"
I hope these prompts help give you an idea of how Somatic Therapy can be adapted for neurodivergent folks. Of course, neurodivergent humans are not a monolith- what works for some may not work for others. That is okay! In the therapy room together, we can get curious, creative and experiment to find out what adaptions are best for you.
Final Thoughts
Somatic therapy can also be about creating an environment where we feel safe enough to actually express sensory sensitivities, creating space for us to recognize that we can have preferences. If you grew up in an environment where it wasn't safe to stim, for example, or where expressing needs was discouraged (whether explicitly or more subtly), your body might be so used to pushing down and masking its needs that we lack awareness of what is actually overstimulating, what feels regulating, and overall disconnected from your somatic experience. Somatic work is about nurturing reconnection of the bodymind, re-learning how to communicate with and listen to our bodies cues, to learn the language of our somas and how to pay attention to and respond to them.
Even the practice of learning about our sensory needs and attuning to our preferences can be somatic work in and of itself. Therapy can offer a safe container to grieve the disconnection from our bodies, to learn and practice re-connection, and relationally, to support us in this work that is so antithetical to capitalism, that thrives on our disconnection.
More practically, somatic therapy can look like stimming with less shame, exploring permission to honor what your body wants instead of being led by social "norms" such as sitting on the floor or standing up during therapy. It can look like making space for feelings of frustration when you don't understand why you feel something or cannot describe what you feel. Somatic work can look like playing around with the lighting in the room or the volume of different sounds, trying out different flavors and textures as you learn that you are allowed to seek pleasure and take up space. Somatic work is expansive, playful and curious at its core; what an invitation for all of us.
Meet the Author:
Reece Thomas, CMHC, is available for new therapy clients in Washington State and Utah. Reece also provides recovery coaching worldwide! If this approach sounds like something you’d like to explore in therapy or coaching, please reach out. I’d love to offer a free 15 minute consultation call to see if we would be a good fit.
