Somatic Bridge and Processing
- Jon Weingarden
- Jun 7
- 6 min read
Updated: Jun 11
Introduction
See the prior article on Cognitive Styles that opened the discussion to utilizing the Somatic Bridge intervention. Processing memories that are traumatic or of otherwise highly emotional experiences was beyond the scope of that article. Processing such memories is likely to come up in therapy whether or not you identify as a trauma-focused therapist, so it is best practice to at least be trauma-informed.
The goal of this article isn't to encourage therapists to read this and start seeking out trauma to process, but rather to elucidate some approaches to that process and open the door to further learning in order to gain competence, or to broaden the scope for some therapists who have competence through supervised experience. If you are interested in alternative approaches to somatic work that don't involve processing genetic (early formative) memories, see the upcoming article on Somatic and Submodality work.

Picking back up with the Somatic Bridge
Somatic Bridge: "Where do you feel that in your body? Anything deeper, below the surface? Can you focus on it, let it grow stronger. When do you first remember feeling that? Or can you remember earlier times in life you felt that same feeling?"
If the somatic bridge resonates, we can process the experience brought up from the recollection. There are various approaches to processing traumatic events, more than can be covered here, but the goal is gaining new perspective and shifting the memory into appropriate long-term memory storage - from emotional, implicit memory to factual, explicit memory. We have to be very attuned to the client and switch to supportive interventions (see below) if the intensity goes beyond a therapeutic range, as well as ensuring there is enough time in the session to "close" up these raw wounds and process the experience. See my blog posts covering the Yerkes-Dodson curve, and think of this in terms of exposure - it is only effective if paired with appropriate physiological calming (and given enough time to do so).
ABC's: walking linearly or chronologically through the story covering the affect, behavior and consequences of each step.
Dissociated: teaching healthy dissociation as coping by reviewing the experience from the birds eye view "as if you are watching from above," or "can you tell me from a 3rd person perspective, as if watching it from a distance or on TV."
Backwards: starting at the end and working backwards through the story gives new perspectives, often helping people see how they took on responsibility for things that were out of their control (such as survivor's guilt, that they were to blame for the way they were treated, or that they could have avoided it had they simply done something differently).
Comparing how it was experienced then with how they would perceive it now: "you were only 12 then, but how might you see it differently now, as an outside observer, if a 12-year-old was going through that?"
Activating self-protective factors: explore what you might say or do to if you were a bystander. Can the client embody this? Consider how this might relate to psycho-drama or Gestalt work. For example, I've asked the client to leave and walk back into the therapy office, imagining they witness this type of mistreatment when they open the door, and address it in a firm, confident tone.
Parts work:
Identification with the aggressor (Stockholm Syndrome): "having heard that story, it sounds like you sometimes treat yourself the way you were treated, the way [perpetrator] treated you." This question makes the self-behavior, the internalization, ego-alien or ego-dystonic rather than ego-syntonic (this refers to the way we treat ourselves or harsh self-talk and self-harm or self-neglect).
"What do you think the function of that part is - why do you think you internalized it?" "From a behavioral perspective, if we repeat a behavior, it is reinforced in some way - what is reinforcing about this?" This could be:
Beating others to the punch: "see, I'm already knocking myself down, you don't have to."
Humbling oneself or making self small to avoid threats, like playing possum or a submissive dog crouching before a more aggressive one.
An act of love: "see, I'm doing what you taught me, treating myself the way you treat me - won't you love me now?" In other words, efforts to get closer to this parental figure.
Intrapsychic closeness: treating ourselves the way we were treated makes of feel closer to our internal representation of this person - even if they hurt us, we might still need a parent figure, and we have a built in reflexive mechanism to build that bond.
Stockholm syndrome / identification with the aggressor: the perpetrator is experienced as a strong and powerful and we are made to feel weak as the victim, so there is a draw to their strength - if we can be like or close to them, we can share in some of their strength that we believe we need.
When the client is ready for it, it can help to explore why the actual perpetrator might have acted the way they did - it softens the perpetrator to explore how "hurt people hurt people," without condoning their behavior. This type of empathizing can feel invalidating or victim blaming if done too early in the process.
Gestalt work: a two chair technique can help explore a conversation between the healthy adult parts of the client and the internalization of the aggressor. An empty chair can give the client the chance to talk to those past parts they are carrying a long with them.
"If this harsh, internalization was sitting here, frozen in that chair, and you could say anything - even if you decided to erase it from their mind at the end - what would you want to say?"
"If that hurt, scared, childhood version of you were sitting there I that chair, what would you say to them?" "How would they look - their posture, facial expression - and what are their needs?"
Self-compassion - activating the core-self to attend to the exile: "if you were a bystander, what would you say to or do for that younger version of yourself?"
Supportive Therapy - what to do when it gets too intense?
I linked an article that covers some aspects of supportive therapy, but think about where the client is on the Yerkes-Dodson curve. A seasoned therapist finds a way to stay in the proximal arousal zone: 4-6 on a scale of 1-10. If it gets too high, there is a risk of the experience being countertherapeutic, a panic attack or dissociation occurring, or the client dropping out of therapy. If this happens, we process it as a shared goal to recognize and communicate emotional intensity to collaboratively stay in the safe zone.

Supportive therapy could be coping skills like deep breathing ("hey, lets take some deep breaths and slow down. In, two, three, four, out, two three, four, now slow it down and breathe lower, in your tummy."), grounding ("hey, let me bring you back - your here, safe in my office, in the big, warm chair. Take a look around and tell me what you see) or mentalization which involves reflecting the person's mental state - the mirror brings insight and builds affect regulation, as well as shifting mindfulness from the emotional memory to the here-and-now.
What is trauma, or stress-response disorders?
Western understanding of trauma started with wartime sequelae in which young men were returning "shell shocked," and we also saw the offspring of people who survived Nazi concentration camps having greater predisposition to PTSD. This lead to new understandings - respectively, exploring ways to treat shell-shocked soldiers and opening the door to studying epigenetics: how the predisposition for PTSD was passed from concentration-survivor parent to child. However, the vast majority of trauma we see in the clinical setting is not from a single, discrete traumatic event during adulthood, but rather complex trauma incurred over the course of childhood. While some of these events are quite explicit, others are subtly invalidating and neglectful but chronic. The DSM conceptualization of trauma fits that of a discrete trauma, but the symptoms and presentations of the more common C-PTSD differ.
During a traumatic experience, memory consolidation or encoding is often disrupted. The memory does not successfully transition into a long-term declarative/explicit memory, but rather remains stored as an implicit in which recollection involves emotionally reliving the event as if it is recurring in the here-and-now. The most florid example is a flashback.
Along with, and influencing, memory consolidation is the physiological stress response. During an immediate stressor, our SAM (Sympatho-Adreno-Medullary) axis is activated and if the stressor persists in the reality of our external world or psychologically, our HPA (Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal) axis is activated. These systems affect our state of arousal (causing anxiety and depressive symptoms), memory issues, inflammatory response with broad and systemic health implications (PTSD is comorbid with autoimmune disorders), and becomes increasingly dysregulated (unable to self-down regulate, consequently we are more vulnerable to future stressors). Additionally, the cortisol exposure affects our epigenetics: a dimmer-switch-like mechanism on genes that can be passed onto future generations.

Comments