Why talk therapy alone sometimes isn't enough for trauma — and what somatic therapy offers.

Perhaps this sounds familiar:
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You’ve talked through your story. Perhaps many times over. Perhaps with more than one therapist. You’ve uncovered and understand your childhood well. You know the patterns and can see them play out in your day-to-day. You even know why you react the way you do. 

And yet. 

Your body still braces when someone raises their voice. You’re still having trouble sleeping. The anxiety is still there, it’s just better explained. You’ve put in the work, so you’re wondering why you still feel the effects of your lived trauma. 

This can happen. And you’re not alone. This isn’t because therapy failed you or you do not show up enough. It may be because trauma lives in the body and impacts our autonomic responses, where talk therapy can’t always reach. We want to explain what this means and what somatic therapy for trauma can offer. 

What does trauma do to the body? 

Often, it can feel like trauma or an overwhelming experience, something that happens too fast, too soon, too long, is just a story or a memory. It goes deeper than that though. It’s actually a physiological event that gets stored in the nervous system. When something overwhelming or threatening happens, the body responds with heart rate spikes, muscle bracing, and changes in breathing. The nervous system mobilizes massive survival energy for fight, flight, or freeze. However, sometimes those responses don’t fully “complete”. They get stuck and can become familiar patterns in your body. 

And long after the event is over, the body keeps responding as if the threat is still present. That is what a constantly dysregulated nervous system looks and feels like. And this is why when talking about your trauma, you can sometimes feel worse, not better, because you’re activating the memory without “completing” the body’s response. Peter Levine, who developed Somatic Experiencing, writes in his book Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma that "body sensation, rather than intense emotion, is the key to healing trauma".

Levine observed that animals in the wild routinely “shake off” traumatic experiences. Humans, on the other hand, with our complex cognition, often override this natural discharge process. Oftentimes, that unfinished response doesn't disappear. It waits. And Somatic Experiencing is built on the idea that the body, given the right conditions, can finally complete it.

So perhaps, your body just needs more than words to heal.

Talk therapy is immensely valuable. It builds insight, names patterns, and creates a therapeutic relationship with your therapist. We believe in talk therapy and what it has to offer so many people. 

However, for trauma that is stored somatically, meaning in the body, insight alone often isn’t enough to create lasting change. 

You may understand something completely to its core yet still feel it in your chest. This gap between knowing and feeling is what somatic therapy is designed to address. And this isn’t a criticism of previous therapy that you’ve done. It’s an acknowledgment that different tools work for different things.

Somatic therapy is a tool for you when talk therapy alone hasn’t alleviated those physical unfinished responses. It helps you complete the response so your body can feel safe again.

What somatic therapy actually looks like:

Somatic therapy is a body-based approach developed by Dr. Peter Levine, which focuses on gently tracking and completing thwarted survival responses. 

So what does this actually look like in a somatic therapy session? Your session will have a conversation, but with added attention to what’s happening in your body—sensations, tension, breath, impulse. We're paying attention to where those unfinished responses are living in your body, and creating the conditions for them to come alive in the moment and find their way through your body.

Your therapist might ask you questions like, “What do you notice in your body as you say that?” or, “Where do you feel that in your chest?” In a session with your therapist you might notice sensation, ground together, or even incorporate gentle movement. This can be especially helpful when labeling emotions feels impossible and talking about the pain feels terrifying. It can also deepen your healing in the moment as we acknowledge your process from a bottom-up process.

The work is slow and fine-tuned and filled with lots of compassion and ease. We will not dive into the worst memories. Rather, we work at the edges of activation, building the nervous system's capacity gradually—a process called titration. Small, manageable steps that help your body learn that it's safe to feel again. 

Some sessions might include EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). This is another body-inclusive tool that works with the brain’s memory processing system to reduce the charge of traumatic memories. And neither EMDR nor Somatic Experiencing require you to retell your trauma story in detail. We know it can feel daunting and heavy to retell your experiences with a new therapist. These approaches don't require you to narrate your story in detail to start finding relief.

Is somatic therapy right for you?

Somatic therapy may be a good fit for you if you:

• Feel like you understand your patterns but can't seem to change them.
• Experience anxiety, hypervigilance, or numbness that persists despite insight.
• Notice your body reacting—bracing, freezing, heart racing, etc.—in situations that aren't objectively dangerous.
• Have a trauma history that hasn't fully resolved with talk therapy alone.
• Find yourself easily overwhelmed or, on the flip side, emotionally shut down.
• Struggle to feel safe or at ease, even in calm environments.
• Feel stuck in cycles of stress or reactivity that seem to happen faster than your thoughts can catch up.
• Feel disconnected from your body or like you're "just going through the motions."
• Experience physical symptoms—tension, chronic pain, fatigue—that don't have a clear medical explanation.
• Want an approach that works with the whole person—mind and body together.

Where to go from here…

Sometimes it takes more than talking to heal from trauma, and through somatic therapy, your nervous system can learn that it’s safe. If you’ve done talk therapy or cognitive work and still feel something is missing, somatic therapy might be the missing piece. At Radish Counseling, Abbi offers Somatic Therapy for adults navigating trauma. 

Radish offers a free 15 minute call to see if it’s the right fit for you. We’d love to walk alongside you in your healing journey.