Feel more at home in your body and connect to your own inner knowing.
Somatic Experiencing Therapy
In-Person in Prosper & Online Across Texas
You can probably explain why you feel the way you do, but no amount of insight has actually helped you feel better.
You can talk about the patterns you often find yourself in, know where they came from, and have probably even discussed them with a therapist before. But even when you logically know everything’s fine, your body still reacts like there’s a T-Rex chasing you anytime something unexpected or stressful happens. You wake up tense, your jaw aching from clenching all night, your stomach ready to give you hell, and your thoughts already going a hundred miles per hour. Then, you zone out throughout the day—struggling to find the motivation to get up from the couch even though you really want to—and end up more stressed when nothing gets checked off your to-do list.
Because you’re so good at appearing fine, no one really notices how overwhelmed you are until you snap over something small like your partner asking about your day or the TV being too loud. You’re not looking for more insight. You want to understand why this keeps happening and actually feel less like you’re constantly bracing for something to go wrong.
Somatic Experiencing can help you find relief from…
Chronic anxiety, overwhelm, and the feeling of being “on” all the time.
Panic, overthinking, and distrust of yourself and others.
Physical tension in the jaw, shoulders, chest, stomach, or hips.
Shutdown, numbness, or feeling disconnected from yourself and the world around you.
Irritability, snapping, and reactions that are out of proportion from what’s actually happening in front of you.
Being unable to ever fully relax or unwind.
You don’t need to erase your feelings and reactions—you need to listen to what they’re trying to tell you.
How It Works
In short, Somatic Experiencing helps us pay attention to what your nervous system is doing, then help it settle so it’s not on high-alert all the time.
I often describe the nervous system like a house alarm. Its job is to go off and let us know when something is wrong so we can protect ourselves, and it’s quiet when things are safe. The problem is that for people who grew up in unpredictable environments or who have been pushing through stress, shock, or trauma for years, that alarm has been going off for so long it becomes “normal.” Then, when things are actually calm, that feels unsettling, because it’s not what their body is used to.
Together, we’ll notice and name the moments when your “alarm” goes off, identify patterns from your past that could be influencing it, find ways to help your nervous system settle back into balance, and create more internal capacity for life’s challenges.
In sessions, we will…
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We’ll still talk about your life, your relationships, and what has been hard in sessions. The difference is that we also start paying attention to what your body is doing while you talk. That might look like taking a moment to notice when your shoulders tense up, your breathing changes, your stomach drops, or even when you feel especially calm or present. A lot of people have spent years overriding those signals, so part of this work is simply learning how to notice them again.
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Many people I work with are used to living in their heads and pushing past what their body is trying to say as quickly as possible. In somatic therapy, we slow down so you can start seeing the pattern in what happens right before you tip over the edge into spiraling, shutting down, or snapping. That gives us a chance to work with the reaction before it takes over completely. Once we know the stuck pattern, we can start to move through with awareness and gentle intervention, allowing the nervous system to process the stored emotions and develop new, healthier ways of responding to stress.
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We are not going to dive straight into the hardest parts of your story or force your body to go somewhere it is not ready to go. Instead, we work with small pieces of activation at a time and then help your system settle in between. This is part of how your body begins to learn that it can move through stress, emotion, or difficult memories without getting stuck in them.
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Over time, this work helps you create more internal space for the things that used to set your alarm off. You may start noticing that you can calm down faster, think before reacting, and are no longer bracing for some ambiguous threat all day long. The goal is that you feel more in touch with your body and can trust yourself to handle whatever comes your way.
Somatic Experiencing therapy can help you…
Understand your nervous system better, including how stress and past experiences show up in your body in everyday life.
Notice the signs of overwhelm earlier, before it spirals into a panic attack, shutting down, or snapping.
Stay more present with emotions instead of immediately going numb, zoning out, or getting flooded by what you feel.
Experience more calm, regulation, and ease in your body, and be able to actually relax at the end of the day.
Feel more connected to yourself, so your decisions come from a deeper sense of inner knowing instead of trying not to upset anyone.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
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Traditional talk therapy often focuses on thoughts, insight, and understanding what’s going on. Somatic therapy includes that, but it also pays attention to what your body is doing while you talk—things like tension, breath, activation, shutdown, or the feeling that you’re always bracing. For many people, that’s the missing piece, especially if they already understand their patterns logically but still feel stuck in them.
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Somatic therapy can be helpful for chronic anxiety, overwhelm, irritability, panic, shutdown, tension, overthinking, and that feeling of always being “on.” It can also help if you’ve done talk therapy before and learned a lot, but your body still reacts like it’s under pressure. Many people come to this work because they want something deeper than coping skills alone.
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We still talk about your life, your stress, and what’s been hard. The difference is that I may slow us down and help you notice what’s happening in your body as we go, like tight shoulders, shallow breathing, restlessness, or the moment your system settles a little. We go gradually, and the goal is never to overwhelm you, but to help your nervous system build more capacity and connection over time.
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I’m somatic therapy trained and continue to pursue further training in this area because this work is an important part of my practice. I also integrate that lens with a broader clinical foundation that includes DBT, CBT, ACT, ART, and years of counseling work with women dealing with anxiety, overwhelm, relationships, and nervous system patterns. What matters to me is using somatic work in a way that feels grounded, collaborative, and paced carefully to what your nervous system can handle.
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Somatic Experiencing may not be the best fit if you’re looking for a quick fix, a lot of worksheets, or a therapist who will simply tell you what to do. This approach asks us to slow down, notice what is happening in your body, and work with things gradually rather than rushing past them. It may also not be the right fit if you’re in an acute crisis and need a higher level of support first, or if you know you only want a more cognitive, problem-solving style of therapy.