Successful treatment of anxiety and post-traumatic stress

Healing trauma through Somatic Experiencing

Somatic Experiencing has been developed by Peter Levine, Ph.D., the founder and director of the Ergos Institute for Somatic Education. Somatic Experiencing is a cutting- edge psychobiological approach the successful treatment of anxiety and post-traumatic stress (PTS).

In Somatic Experiencing, PTSD symptoms are not seen as a pathology to be “managed” but as normal responses to an overwhelming life event. Trauma is a fact of life, and most of us have been exposed to it. Trauma, however, does not have to be a life sentence.

Some of the frightening and often bizarre symptoms suffered by traumatized people include: flashbacks, anxiety, panic attacks, insomnia, depression, lack of openness and repetitive destructive behaviors. Few people question the seriousness of the problems created by trauma, yet we have difficulty comprehending how many people are affected by it.

As human beings, we are biologically designed to respond to and recover from threat. Situations such as automobile and other accidents, falls, serious illness, surgery, natural disasters and sexual assault produce a predictable physiological sequence of reaction. When this sequence is successfully completed, the trauma is able to be resolved – and then transform into a new strength. Reenactments of trauma may be acted out in intimate relationships, work situations, repetitive accidents or mishaps, and in other seemingly random events.