She was wildly dysregulated when she came into our session. She had some significant conflict happening in her life and was feeling very unsafe. She started to tell me about the situation and how there was no good resolution, how every outcome was going to be bad. Her voice was shaking, and she spoke with her hands.
We had been working together for long enough that I knew that she had the ability to challenge her own thought patterns, even though she wasn’t doing it by herself right then.
“This sounds incredibly painful, and I am so sorry that you are experiencing this. Can you tell me a different story about how this is going to work out?” I asked which is a cue that I use with many of my clients to help them realize they are stuck in a story and offer them the opportunity to challenge their story.
She threw her head back and let out a huge sigh. I left a moment of silence while she stared at the ceiling.
“No, there is no other story,” she said after a couple of minutes thinking. “Help me tell a different story,” she asked.
“Sure, I can do that, but right now your nervous system doesn’t understand that you are safe,” I said, and before I could finish my sentence, she cut me off.
“I am not safe,” she said while running her hands through her hair and scratching her head.
“I know that it feels like that, and I completely understand that, but could we do a somatic exercise and see if you could find safety inside of your nervous system and see how that may shift things?” I asked.
She nodded at me and let out another sigh. She began looking around the room, knowing that I was going to ask her to orient before the somatic exercise. Then she closed her eyes and I began to guide her through a somatic session. I knew that when she felt that unsafe, she wasn’t going to be able to see anything other than danger and would continue to loop in fear-based thought patterns. I also knew that if she could access some safety, she would also be able to see the dynamic in a very different way.
By the end of the somatic session, her body was calm and her voice was steady. When she opened her eyes they were relaxed and there was a gentleness to her face.
“This is happening for me, not to me, Erin,” she said. Then she went on to tell me that there were many actions that she could take that would help her reach a positive outcome, and how this was painful, but that it was ultimately for her highest good, and she could see that so clearly after the somatic session. What she previously was fighting, she was now embracing and had found a pathway that felt good to her.
“What a huge shift in just 10 minutes. I am so impressed with you. Isn’t it amazing how simply finding safety in our nervous system changes everything?” I responded back to her.