Types of Counseling: Sensorimotor Psychotherapy
Orlando Counselor Providing Trauma and Anxiety Counseling
Hi, I am Lauran. I am an anxiety and trauma counselor in Orlando. Welcome to my blog page! Here you will find articles and resources for counseling in Orlando, as well as post related to anxiety, trauma, and relationships. Join me on this blog page as I share my professional insight as well as offer hope from my personal experience. It is possible to overcome adversity and choose Mindful Living as a way of life! Looking for something specific? Just type in a keyword and let the search bar find it for you.
You’re frustrated, tired, and feeling out of sorts. You’re tired of beating yourself up for reacting like you do. You make resolutions to stop the emotional overreaction, but without fail, you continue to let yourself down. You’ve been in therapy before and you connected the dots. You understand the cause and effect, but you just can’t seem to the overreaction under control.
As Einstein said, “We cannot fix a problem with the same thinking that created it.” As a trauma and anxiety therapist providing counseling in Orlando, I focus my practice on providing clients with alternative therapies that provide healing at the root level. In session, we go beyond traditional talk therapy, where the focus is insight, and work to heal the wounds where the problem originated.
In my last several posts, I explored the alternative therapies I use that go beyond talk therapy. In this post, I explain how I use Sensorimotor Psychotherapy to help clients heal from anxiety and trauma.
Body-Oriented Therapy
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (SP), is a body-oriented talk therapy, also called somatic therapy, and uses a bottom-up approach . While traditional talk therapy focuses on the story of the client, SP brings into account the emotional and physical state by asking, “How does the story show up in the body?” This is especially effective in working with anxiety and trauma because of the intense bodily reactions that occur such as, racing heart, shallow breathing, tense muscles, feeling light-headed, impulsivity, and hypersensitivity. The body is rich with information about how past events are being carried into present day through habituated posture, tension, facial expressions, anxiety, and shutdown. Through mindful attention, the body also holds the key to healing. Body-oriented therapies such as Sensorimotor Psychotherapy trust that the body is constantly striving for wholeness and when attended and attuned to, will realize health and healing.
Wholeness
The body is always seeking homeostasis. This is evident in how the body regulates temperature, digests food, heals cuts and scrapes, and fights off infections. The same is true for the system of the mind, body, and emotions, which are constantly working toward health and wholeness. SP views the anxiety that is born out of a traumatic event as energy that is continually trying to resolve itself through a defensive action that didn’t get to happen at the time of the event. As an SP therapist, I help my clients complete this action in their therapy session, which would in turn discharge the energy, and decreases the anxiety related to the event.
Mindfulness
In order to utilize the healing wisdom of the body, I invite clients to investigate their experience from a mindful place. Clients are encouraged to step out of the habitual way of thinking, feeling, and being, and start to notice, explore, and study all of their experiences. I invite my clients to be curious about how the constellation of their body, beliefs, and emotions are influencing their experience in the moment.
Mindfully exploring how the system of your body, emotions, and beliefs are working together to create your experience is preferred over simply talking about your experience. Mindful awareness leads to self-awareness, self-control and healing.
If you struggle with an undesirable patterned response, mindfulness slows all it all down so that you know why you are doing what you are doing and it can offer a road to healing.
Implicit Memory
Implicit memory is the way your specific history is stored within your mental, emotional, and physical state. If you struggle with emotional overreaction, panic, rage, emotional numbing, or unwanted relational patterns, exploring these patterns through a bottom-up approach will not only shed some light on why you do the things you do, but will also offer healing.
Implicit memories are triggered by an external situation (example, boss yelling at you) or a familiar internal landscape (example, feeling shame and hopeless and a collapse in the body) that reminds your brain and body of a similar difficulty from the past. If you feel out of control by one of your patterns, then your implicit memory has been triggered. Know that your automatic reaction to these things was born out of something challenging from the past. You don’t have to be a slave to your automatic response, you just need to do some deep diving work at the root level.
In my next post, I cover the specifics of using Sensorimotor Psychotherapy to help with trauma, anxiety, and troubling relationship patterns.
More on Types of Counseling
For more on alternative therapies, check out these posts.
Types of Counseling: Trauma Counseling
Types of Counseling: What is EMDR?
Types of Counseling: Mind, Body, and Emotion
Types of Counseling: A Bottom Up Approach
Types of Counseling: What The Brain Says About Therapy
More on Sensorimotor Psychotherapy in Orlando
If you’re interested in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy in Orlando, check out my page on Anxiety and Trauma.
Have you had success using a somatic therapy? If so, leave an inspiring story in the comments section below!
Mindful Living Counseling Orlando is a trauma healing center. Our Orlando Therapy Services include anxiety therapy, trauma counseling, eating disorder recovery, teen counseling, and healing from toxic relationships. At Mindful Living Counseling Orlando, we use a down-to-earth approach infused with cutting-edge therapies that go beyond traditional talk therapy so clients can heal at the root level and experience lasting change. Feel free to access one of our Guided Meditations to help you feel settled and calm now.