Somatic Psychotherapy

Somatic psychotherapy helps individuals develop greater awareness of the nervous system, emotions, body sensations, and protective patterns while building increased grounding, regulation, flexibility, and connection within themselves. Therapy may involve learning to listen inward with greater curiosity, safety, and compassion rather than judgment or fear.

Understanding the nervous system

Chronic stress, trauma, anxiety, and emotional overwhelm can affect the nervous system in ways that shape how individuals respond emotionally, physically, and relationally. Many individuals notice patterns such as hypervigilance, chronic anxiety, emotional shutdown, tension, overthinking, dissociation, numbness, or difficulty feeling present and connected within themselves.

These responses are often adaptive protective patterns developed over time rather than signs that something is “wrong.” Somatic psychotherapy helps individuals begin to understand these responses with greater awareness, curiosity, and compassion.

Somatic therapy and nervous system regulation

Somatic therapy focuses on increasing awareness of the relationship between emotions, body sensations, nervous system responses, and protective patterns. Therapy may involve learning to notice signs of activation, overwhelm, constriction, or shutdown while building increased capacity for grounding, regulation, emotional flexibility, and present-moment awareness.

Rather than pushing individuals into emotional overwhelm, therapy is approached collaboratively and with attention to pacing, nervous system capacity, and emotional safety.

Sensorimotor psychotherapy

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy is a body-centered and trauma-informed approach that integrates nervous system awareness with emotional and relational processing. This approach recognizes that trauma and chronic stress may continue to affect posture, tension patterns, emotions, movement, body sensations, and automatic protective responses long after difficult experiences have passed.

Therapy may involve gently exploring these patterns while increasing awareness, regulation, grounding, and connection within the nervous system and body over time.

somatic psychotherapy may help with

• chronic anxiety

• nervous system dysregulation

• emotional overwhelm

• shutdown or emotional numbing

• panic

• trauma and chronic stress

• hypervigilance

• people-pleasing patterns

• feeling disconnected from self

• difficulty identifying emotions

• freeze or collapse response

I provide somatic psychotherapy and nervous-system-informed therapy for adults in Mobile, Alabama and Ocean Springs, Mississippi, as well virtual therapy throughout Alabama and Mississippi.  

Somatic approaches may be integrated with EMDR therapy, attachment-focused therapy and trauma informed psychotherapy depending on each individual's needs, goals, and nervous system capacity.