February Feature Writer!

This month's feature writing is by Michelle Cleary.

A Felt Sense Of Safety

When I started out as a traditional talk therapist in the mid 2000’s, I often asked my clients what the difference was between seeing a picture of the Grand Canyon and visiting it in real life, or IRL, as we might say these days. This exercise was meant to trigger the distinction between knowing something and experiencing something.

Depth, scale, magnitude, sounds, temperature, tears, speechlessness, trembling, fear, joy, overwhelm, even magic. Everyone could agree that walking up to the South Rim and watching the expansive striated layers descend deeper and deeper into the earth with each step is not the same as seeing even the most beautiful photos of it. Whether they had visited or not, they instinctively knew that experiencing the Grand Canyon’s beauty was physiologically different than seeing it in pictures. Exposure to the sensory stimuli and intense emotional reactions changes you on a much deeper level than knowledge alone can.

Prophetically, I started asking this question before I myself had even experienced the profound difference between insight based therapeutic treatment and experiential based therapeutic treatment.

After about 10 years of talking with my clients and using models such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Psychodynamic Therapy, the limits of these modalities and my knowledge were becoming apparent and frustrating. I had not yet realized that I was trying to reason with open wounds.

And so the journey began. I was in search of finding more effective ways to help my clients. First, there was Attachment Focused Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (AF-EMDR) and then Somatic Experiencing (SE). During this time I learned that traumatic events and conditions impact the entirety of the body, not just the mind. I also came to understand that trauma was unfortunately, very common. It turns out many people experience some form of traumatic event(s) and/or live within an environment or situation that would be considered traumatic. I know, it was news to me, too.

Just like visiting the Grand Canyon is a present moment, full-body experience, healing from trauma is most effective when we engage with present moment, full-body experiences. The cliche therapist-y questions and comments like, “Why do you think that is?” “How does that make you feel?” And “Tell me more.” Are surpassed by questions like, “What are you noticing?”, “What is coming up for you now?”, “Can you slow down and notice what’s happening in your legs?” Memories, stories, and meanings are significant to the somatic-based therapist. However, we prioritize information such as flushness, depth, and coherence of breath, unconscious gestures, constriction patterns, prosody, posture, as well as the quality, absence, or presence, and the level of awareness, of these sensations. I have learned that the felt sense of safety is far more powerful than just thinking or knowing you are safe. Tapping present, embodied experiences in order to prompt the body’s innate capacity to heal can liberate deeply held energy and life force. It is truly magical to witness a person feel alive for the first time.

It has been almost 10 years since that journey began and I am not the same. How I work with my clients is not the same. How I understand the world and its inhabitants is certainly not the same. However, when I went back to the Grand Canyon this year, its magic and majesty were in fact, exactly the same.

Michelle Cleary (she/her) is a licensed psychotherapist who is trained in EMDR, holds a certificate in Somatic Experiencing™ (SE), assists at SE trainings throughout the year, and, is a former adjunct professor for SUNY Stony Brook, School of Social Welfare. Michelle maintains a full time private practice that focuses on treating trauma and eating disorders.

She is dedicated to discovering, understanding, and teaching others the way our nervous system and brain-body development contributes to our moods, behaviors, relationships, mental health, and productivity.