How Somatic Coaching Builds Mindfulness Around Social Anxiety
Eye Contact
Growing research reveals what many somatic practitioners have known for a long time: eye contact can be incredibly triggering for people with trauma. More and more, practitioners are encouraged to check in with clients about what level of eye contact they are comfortable with. There’s any number of reasons why someone may show discomfort with sustained eye contact; understandably, the simple act of being seen can be challenging for people who struggle with shame about who they are. Regardless of the reasons, what we know about this sort of situation is that the client is having a physiological response to the request for sustained eye contact. This response produces for the client some version of the narrative: “this level of eye contact creates a discomfort beyond what I can tolerate.”
Seating Positions
The same can be true of countless other behaviors, such as how close together the client and practitioner sit apart from one another, and whether or not they sit facing each other directly or with one of the chairs turned askew. More and more, therapists are cuing into how these somatic markers affect the ability of clients to stay regulated in their nervous systems and thus receive the benefits of the therapy.
Somatic Coaching and Social Unease
The power of somatic coaching is that it can use these opportunities to go deeper into the exploration of what’s happening in the client’s body during these times of unease and social anxiety. This means that rather than limiting the inquiry to the psychological level (e.g. asking the client what they think might happen if they were to bring their gaze into the room), we can use this moment to support the client in building their internal somatic awareness. This may mean we ask something to the effect of “what’s happening in your body right now that tells you that you don’t want to make eye contact?” It’s not about getting the client to make eye contact, but rather about supporting them in increasing their awareness of their body. I’m using eye contact as an example, but really any display of social discomfort or social anxiety is a place where somatic coaching invites the client to explore what in their body as a sensation is creating the narrative of “I’m not comfortable”. The premise for the work is that something is happening in their body that creates or supports the story they have about themselves and the social environment they are in.
Similarly, when a client moves to lift their gaze into the room or shifts somatically towards openness, softness, aliveness, or connection, they have an opportunity to feel what’s happening in their body and thus increase their somatic understanding of themselves. The role of a somatic practitioner is to notice these opportunities. To say it again: something is happening in their body that is allowing for that shift in energy, aliveness, or relaxation; as a somatic practitioner my goal is to keep inquiring with the client about what specifically they are noticing in their body. Any time a client says “I feel good” or “I feel better,” this is a place to ask, “what’s happening in your body that tells you this information?”
As practitioners we can and should be curious about what is happening psychologically. The offering of somatic coaching is that it goes one step further by capitalizing on the moment to deepen the client’s somatic development. Remember that fundamentally the primary goal of somatic coaching is to guide the client to learn to live in their body. As the client becomes aware of how they are holding tension in their body and how they are organizing themselves in their self-narratives, they increase their somatic awareness. This is critical because, as we know, choice follows awareness: not until we know what we are doing in our body do we have the ability to step into more choice around how we live in our body.
If you’re interested in learning more about somatic coaching for social anxiety, please reach out.