Individual therapy, grounded in the body
You meet one-to-one with a therapist twice a week, for the whole of your stay.
What Somatic Experiencing is
Somatic Experiencing, or SE, is a body-oriented approach to stress, shock and trauma. It was developed by Dr. Peter A. Levine, who holds a PhD in medical biophysics from the University of California, Berkeley and a doctorate in psychology, and it has been used clinically for more than four decades. Somatic Experiencing International trains and certifies the practitioners who use it.
SE looks at trauma through the nervous system. When a threat is never fully resolved, the body can stay caught in fight, flight or freeze long after the danger has passed, and that shows up in daily life. Where much of talk therapy works mainly with thoughts and memories, SE also works with what is happening in the body: the breath, muscle tension, heart rate, and the pull to move or to go still.
How SE works
Somatic Experiencing International describes the method through a few ideas:
- Fight, flight and freeze: SE starts by noticing where a person’s nervous system is stuck in one of these survival responses.
- Titration: difficult sensations and feelings are approached a little at a time, never all at once.
- Building tolerance: you are guided, gently, to stay with difficult body sensations and emotions a little longer as your capacity grows.
- Completing protective responses: SE works to let the body finish the self-protective responses that were cut short at the time, so the nervous system can settle.
What a session can involve
A session usually involves talking, but with pauses to notice what is happening in your body as you talk: where there is tension or ease, and what shifts if you stay with it for a moment. The pace is set so that you stay within what you can manage.
Sessions run twice a week for the whole of your stay. Between them, the rest of the day happens in the same house, with support there at every hour.
What the letters mean
Cindy Brooks, LMFT, SEP, CATC IV, is the primary therapist at Mental Health Residential, and more than one Somatic Experiencing Practitioner works with clients here. Each credential is a specific, checkable qualification:
- SEP
- Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, a certificate from Somatic Experiencing International. It requires 216 hours of SE training across six to eight modules, plus 12 hours of personal SE sessions and 18 hours of case consultation with approved SE providers.
- LMFT
- Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, licensed in California by the Board of Behavioral Sciences after a qualifying master’s degree, 3,000 hours of supervised experience and two state exams.
- CATC IV
- Certified Addiction Treatment Counselor at level IV, issued by the Addiction Counselor Certification Board of California. Level IV requires a master’s degree.
What the research says, plainly
SE is younger than some therapies, and its evidence is still being built. A 2021 scoping review in the European Journal of Psychotraumatology found preliminary evidence of positive effects on trauma-related symptoms, and said just as clearly that study quality was mixed and that more rigorous trials are needed. That is the honest state of it.
From Somatic Experiencing International
SE 101
The organization that trains and certifies Somatic Experiencing Practitioners, explaining the method in its own words.
Research on SE
The studies and articles SEI collects on how SE is used and what it has been found to do.
Let's find out what your insurance may cover.