Why Talk Therapy Often Isn’t Enough

Most therapy centers on cognitive work between the client and practitioner. Very often this about helping the client to reframe unhelpful, negative, or ungrounded self-assessments and have a new understanding of themselves.

There are all sorts of modalities for working with people in this way - cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) being one of the most widely discussed - however methodologies of all sorts abound. And it makes good sense that this would still be the most prevalent way to do transformational work with people. Most of us live in our heads; our entire society is very focused on cerebral and intellectual understanding. And certainly many modalities are now evidence-based and clearly often helpful for people. Understanding why we are the way we are and why we behave the way we do is important, as is reframing self-narratives to become more self-accepting and self-forgiving. 

We Want To Feel Seen

No doubt too a major reason many people spend years in therapy is that we feel seen by our therapist. There is huge therapeutic value to the practitioner-client relationship and through the emerging trust and security of that bond, people feel validated and a sense of belonging. This is absolutely important and not to be minimized. Both coaches and therapists have an opportunity to create this for their clients, however this alone does not teach people how to be in their bodies during stressful situations that inevitably occur (often many times a day) outside the therapy office or practitioner’s office.

The Body Under Stress

Unfortunately people often spend a long time in talk therapy building their understanding of themselves but still have challenges taking new actions when under pressure. What somatics reveals is that when we are under stress, an intellectual understanding of what is happening often pales in comparison to the body’s conditioned responses. We get triggered and we become immediately enraged, withdraw, or find a distraction to avoid dealing with what’s in front of us. We revert to old patterns of abandoning our needs in an attempt to feel seen and secure, or we make another wrong in order to defend and justify our own actions that we don’t want to see about ourselves. We all do it - you, me, everyone. 

Core Contractions and Conditioned Tendencies

What we can say about what’s happening in these moments is that we become flooded with a sensation or sensations that are uncomfortable or painful. Something is happening in our bodies in the moments we are under stress, and the way we respond to this sensation is learned and patterned deeply in our nervous system. We may numb ourselves to it, we may act out inappropriately to discharge the pain, we may do everything in our power to avoid it, we may focus on it because we feel we deserve it. Whatever we do, it happens fast and often before our rational mind can make sense of things and go about its business of reminding us to be mature adults. 

Notice that our core contraction - the primary place or places of contraction in our body when we are triggered - will force us to act in conditioned ways. However, if we can shift our contractions and take on a new way of being in our body when under stress, all sorts of new possibilities emerge. And this is the gift of somatic coaching and somatic bodywork, because it teaches us how we contract and how we can let go of those contractions such that we can shift our nervous system and shift how we are in our body. Shifting how we are in our body (where and how we hold tension) is what allows us to come back to a grounded, centered way of being. We will still feel the initial contraction that occurs when we get triggered, but now we are equipped with something new to do in our body in order to free ourselves from our historically conditioned responses. We feel the initial contraction but we can shift out of it much more quickly.

Somatics and Taking New Action

Unless we are living in our body and able to shift how we are in our body, all the cognitive awareness in the world probably isn’t enough to support us in taking new actions when we are under immediate stress. Somatics reveals - often on a very practical and elemental level - what we can do in our body in order to become more open, clear-eyed, and adaptable, especially when we are under pressure.

If you’re curious about how somatic coaching can support you, send me a message.