In somatic experiencing,  clients know that touch is part of the treatment protocol and often wonder why??

Well,  touch is essential to not only development but to survival. A  lack of healthy, appropriate and nurturing touch is often one of the contributing elements of developmental trauma. “Touch when applied appropriately, safely, and ethically, can be used to repair attachment ruptures, promoting healthier and more accurate interoception, creating a sense of safety and connectedness, supporting better access to co-regulation and self-regulation, and repairing chronic somatic shame”. (Nurturing Resilience, pg.203) 

Touch can help clients to identify and more fully develop appropriate boundaries and to experience a sense of agency when determining how, when, and what kind of touch occurs. Touch can, in part, provide what was not received during the early developmental phases, and provide a helpful option for those clients who are open to the use of touch and somatic forms of therapy.

Why are the kidneys/adrenals always part of the treatment?? The answer is that they are a direct way into the nervous and endocrine system, giving us the opportunity to reset health and regulation. The kidneys are topped by the adrenal glands, which act to produce cortisol and norepinephrine (adrenaline); key chemicals in the body’s threat response. This part of the body frequently experiences a great deal of constriction when the nervous system is dysregulated. 

The presence of the therapist’s hand (which doesn’t move in SE touch) encourages the muscles in this area to relax and allows blood flow to increase. As this happens, the kidney often descends a   bit and begins to reflect the pulse. Once this regulation is achieved, the therapist moves to the other side of the table to support the other kidney.

When working with a population who have experienced developmental trauma, these systems are chronically set on high alert and need to be “reset”.  When the kidneys are held safely, the body starts to relax, reducing the flow of Cortisol (stress hormone), telling the brain that it is possible to rest. In doing this, we are imprinting new pathways and telling your system that you are safe, not alone and support is readily available. There is no need to cling to your survival strategies. This needs to be repeated many times, and slowly, regulation comes in.

The way your body interprets stress is more than just mental and psychological stress we’ve come to know. Other things that can trigger a stress response in your body, or influence your biophysiological health include things like physical trauma, surgery, immunological stress, ongoing systemic inflammation, intense or excessive exercise, inadequate sleep, starvation or malnutrition, relationship/financial/work/family/societal stress, and environmental toxic burden to name a few.

So, what areas make up and control these powerful systems? Simply put, it is called the HPA axis. It is comprised of the Hypothalamus which activates the fear response of fight, flight or freeze. The Amygdala which decodes and sorts emotions while at the same time, determining the possible threat and stores fear memories. And the Pituitary Gland, which controls the function of most other endocrine glands by producing and releasing a number of different hormones. Each hormone affects a specific part of the body and can influence things like obesity and metabolism, blood sugar regulation, thyroid function, milk production during breastfeeding, appropriate growth and development in children, blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, male sex characteristics, libido, menstrual cycle, fertility, and mental health. Overall, this tiny gland plays a vital part in regulating the body’s functioning and overall wellbeing.

While cortisol sometimes gets a bad rep, it is important to underline that it is still vital for good health and survival. This is why it is important to understand the difference between good stress and bad stress. Along the stress curve, we are able to assess different levels of cortisol, and how it influences the body.

The difference between good stress and bad stress is how we perceive the stressor. Our body is able to read these signals and responds appropriately. Good stress is the stress we use to keep us going; one that motivates us to hit deadlines and accomplish things that are important to us. It can be that exhilarating and energizing feeling after a good work out,  or the adrenaline rush that comes after you jump out of a  plane. Optimal stress levels are ones that keep you feeling relaxed,  laid back,  motivated and moving forwards. Too little stress or too much stress is where we hit some problems.

When there is too little stress,  we are inactive.  We lack motivation,  we feel numb,  and nothing really seems important;  there is nothing driving us forward. On the other end of the curve, we see the build-up to “adrenal fatigue/insufficiency,” which can start with symptoms of fatigue, building into exhaustion. When our body is putting out high levels of cortisol, we can feel uncharacteristically wired,  angry,  anxious, or panicked. This can be sustained on and off for only so long, before our body eventually hits burnout. Again we’ll feel exhausted, numb, lack motivation and that is because there’s nothing left to drive us forwards.

 Levels of cortisol change throughout the day. The changes from morning to evening are referred to as the diurnal cortisol slopes. Typically, cortisol should surge within the first 30-40 minutes after waking (the cortisol awakening response), making you feel alert and ready to tackle your day. It drops rapidly a few hours after this surge and then continues to drop slowly throughout the day, until bedtime where cortisol trades off with melatonin for a good night’s sleep. When there are abnormalities in this pattern, we can see a variety of symptoms such as difficulty falling/staying asleep, waking feeling exhausted, feeling wired and not tired, or feeling persistently drained.

Flatter diurnal cortisol slopes have been studied and associated with poorer mental and physical health outcomes. This may be a result of the associated changes in inflammation and immune function.

From a Naturopathic perspective, we consider how all of your symptoms are working in relation to your perceived and physiological stress, to get to  the  root  cause  of  your  concerns. We are able to run functional  tests that assess your salivary cortisol throughout  the day to see how levels vary, and are able to apply similar testing to assess your cortisol  awakening response. We consider nutritional deficiencies that may be at play, which may be reducing your  resiliency  to every  day stressors, or  may  be  contributing  to  the  severity  of  the stress. We  take  all  of  this  into consideration and are able to support you with dietary recommendations, lifestyle modifications, acupuncture, homeopathy and botanical herbs like adaptogens. Adaptogens like eleutherococcus, rhodiola rosea, withania somnifera, panax ginseng, ganoderma, schisandra chinensis and more, have been extensively studied for their benefit in reducing the body’s perception and reaction to stress, help to calm anxiety and nervous tension to better support your overall wellbeing and stress tolerance.

So how   do   Somatic   Experiencing   and   Naturopathic   Medicine   work  together?  Naturopathic Medicine addresses the underlying factors and obstacles you may be facing in health, giving you the  support  you  need  to  dive  deeper  into  your  Somatic  Experiencing sessions  to  retrain  the body’s nervous pathways and response. Together, we can help to reset your nervous system, give you tools to manage your ongoing stress, and teach your body how to feel safe.

Sources:

•  Nurturing Resilience. Helping Clients Move Forward from Developmental Trauma. An Integrative Soma9c Approach. Kathy Kain and Stephen Terrell. 2018, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California.

•  PMID: 29021708, 28578301

•  hJps://dutchtest.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/CAR-Only-Female-Sample-Report- Ref032620.pdf

Photo by Bekir Dönmez on Unsplash

“I believe we feel safest when we go inside ourselves and find home.” -Maya Angelou

Hi everyone. I know life has been a bit strange and unpredictable lately, and as a result, we are experiencing a lot of different feelings (frustrated, anxious, sadness, loss, peaceful, relaxed, etc.) and sensations (tingling, fluttering, tension, spacious, still, numb or energized, etc.) Furthermore, we are also getting bombarded by “helpful” suggestions on the internet of what we SHOULD be doing with our “free” time.

First, I want to state that the only thing you SHOULD be doing is taking care of yourself. Whatever that means to you. We all have different feelings and needs and as a result, how we tend to them differ. What is nurturing to one nervous system is not to another, or example some people are thriving with a schedule for them to follow and others this is overwhelming to their systems.

Nurture the nervous system

You will already be doing things throughout your day that nurture your system, whether or not you are aware of it. But in those times when you feel overwhelmed, look at your environment and see what is “too much”. Is it too loud? too bright? Not enough movement? Can you figure out what is missing?

Can you get up and move to a new space that allows for you to sing without bothering others in the house, can you move to a space with natural lighting, or just get up and go for a walk? 

For me, nature is always what nurtures my system. So even in those cold days when we were experiencing yet ANOTHER snowstorm, being able to look outside and even watch the snow fall was soothing.  Just sitting with nature slows me down and I am able to settle and re-evaluate what I need moving forward.

Any time we can add breathe will act as a reset to our system and provide that nurturing it is needing.

Our nervous systems need people… but not too much!

We are all feeling the loss of social interactions and physical connections and this affects our nervous systems.  Our systems crave social connection.  We are biologically wired to connect with others.

But, our need for connection sits on a continuum. Sometimes we need quiet and to be alone and other times we need to be surrounded.  One thing we need to pay attention to is what we are getting from each of these situations. What is our nervous system taking in and needing? 

In a time like this when our access to others is limited and often only via screens, it’s a good time to really sit with your nervous system and see what it “needs/gets” out of the time spent alone.  When we take the time to sit and think about this and “notice,” we may find that we are more comfortable with being alone than we originally thought!

Other people help us feel safe

One thing that others do for us is help evaluate safety. We use others as a reference to deem situations, people and places safe. We do this by looking at others, reading their reactions and then checking in to see if we are feeling/noticing the same internally.

This leads me to the question – without the presence of others – how do you know you are safe? What does safety feel like? How do you deem people or places safe? What do you look for to tell you? What stands out to you right away when you think about this?

Knowing what is safe is a job of our nervous system.  We take in sensory input and our system evaluates it and evaluates the risk and then matches what we are “feeling” to the actual risk of the environment.  When we view the environment as safe, then our system regulates itself. 

The science: safety and your nervous system

Dr. Steven Porges coined the term neuroception to describe our subconscious system for detecting threat and safety. We don’t have to think about whether or not we’re scared for our bodies to act scared, our bodies respond first. To be able to experience neuroception, we must be able to differentiate between safety and threat.  Neuorception is the detection of both.  To have an accurate read on the situation, we then need to be able to decipher correctly between the two.

So, for those who have had limited experiences adequately evaluating safety vs. threat due to trauma or abuse, we often find a mismatch. The nervous system finds all environments/people/situations as unsafe and our bodies physiology responds to the “threat”.

Growing your capacity for feeling safe

To be able to sit with yourself and identify different feelings and sensations can be hard and scary. Identifying our internal sensations, or our eight sensory system (known as the interoceptive system), is a great place to start. Our interoceptive system is our internal body cues – the ones we get when we are hungry, hot, tired, need to use the bathroom, and many other.

Taking the time to pay attention to these cues will give you insight into your system and whether or not it is aware, tracking the right sensations and if they are being “labeled” correctly.

There are different ways to learn to recognize our interoceptive cues:

·       one is to carefully track these cues, make notes, sit with the sensations. See if they are the same every day, different times of the day, and if you note differences, what is different.  Ultimately, we need to ensure we are tracking the right sensations and have the ability to notice and label them correctly.

·       Experiment with them. For example, use different temperatures – what do you notice when you touch a hot item on your foot compared with a cold item. Other than the temperature, what other sensations do you notice?

For me, working with interoception is the perfect blend between my 2 modalities.  Working with the sensory systems is one of my favourite parts of being an OT.  Exploring interoception and how somatic sensations show up in the body, how we work with them and teaching to the new “safety map” that they produce, is such a lovely blend with my SE work.

Learn to trust your gut

We have all developed our own language for ourselves, one that tells us if we are ok, and even who we are in the context of others and our world around us.  We develop this language early on and use it to guide our every interaction, choice and decision.  If our early life experiences have been those where we often felt unsafe or unsure of who to trust, our somatic vocabulary then is often overly attuned to sensations associated with pain, danger, alertness, and other survival driven sensations.

We become frightened by “normal” sensations and don’t know that these are part of our bodies natural functioning. As a result, we tend to minimize or ignore these signals and become disconnected to our bodies cues.  When we have not been able to trust these cues for a variety of reasons, we then can learn not to trust our “gut” or sensations at all. When felt, rumblings or cramping can also become overwhelming and scary. For people who lack a “safety map” due to past trauma experiences, this is one of the ways we can lead them away from the known danger map and help create that safety map.

 The pay off

Not only does interoception help us understand what our bodies are telling us, it also helps us identify a variety of emotions. Interoception allows us the ability to identity our own emotions, others emotions, the ability to take others perspectives, understand the meaning behind language, the ability to communicate effectively, problem solve, be intuitive and flexible in our decision making, have self-awareness and health management and give us the ability to form ideas on how we feel about certain people, places or situations. It forms us and our all that we value in life.  Therefore, being able to read our bodies cues is essential to gaining the most of our lives and our experiences. It impacts us each and every day. The goal is to be able to notice the body signals, connect to the signals and the emotions that accompany them. Once this is established, then we are able to regulate the body by choosing the appropriate action.

Once you know how to feel safe, you can take bigger risks too!

Research shows us that by seeking out discomfort and uncertainty you can diminish anxiety.  When you are able to face challenging situations using a new set of skills- voluntarily stepping out of your comfort zone- you can actually quiet down the alarm center of your brain and create a larger tolerance for new sensations, experiences and situations.  By developing a larger range of sensations, we are better able to track, label and understand what is going on in ourselves and the world around us. We are open to more possibilities.  Taking the time to sit with even micromovements or glimpse of safety can help you move to a place of curiosity to explore more sensations without avoidance or judgment.  To become resilient, we have to be able to trust that we will know how to navigate our way through discomfort. 

By tuning into your nervous system, learning to trust the cues, establishing a new safety map are a few of the goals we can achieve working together, and what I wish for all.  The benefits of this work will impact your health and well-being, your inter-personal relationships and how you navigate in the world.  Reach out if you feel you have the courage to take this first step. Together we can do hard things.

Resources:

Dana, D. (2018).  The Polyvagal Theory. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

Kain, K & Terrell, S (2018).  Nurturing Resilience.  Berkley, California. North Atlantic Books.

Mahler, K (2017).  Interoception. The Eighth Sensory System. Lenexa, Kansas. AAPC Publishing.

Porges, S. W. (2004, May). Neuroception: A subconscious system for detecting threats and safety.  Washington, DC: Zero to Three.

Wilson, R & Lyons, L (2013) Anxious Kids Anxious Parents.   Deerfield Beach, Florida.  Health Communications, INC.

For most Manitobans, summer is something we look forward to all winter long. We dream about the warm summer days, the trips to the beach in the hot sun, watching fireworks explode in the sky on the first of July, eating cold ice cream and drinking icy Slurpee’s.  However, for those with Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD), these summer pleasures can be overwhelming.  Knowing and understanding your child’s sensory preferences is not only important, but the only way to manage summer fun for the whole family. 

A trip to the beach can overwhelm a child with SPD: Planning is the key to fun for everyone!

Individuals with SPD perceive all incoming sensory input as abnormal, overwhelming and unorganized.  The way their nervous system receives the sensory input from the various senses and then turns it into accurate responses is skewed.  As a result, the way they perceive and/or respond to their incoming sensory data is impaired.    

Consequently, summer can then mean endless sensory overload. Take a trip to the beach, for example.  For a child with SPD, the tactile (touch) sensations of noticing each and every grain of sand and how it feels like needles on the body, and the endless need for sunscreen to be reapplied can be frustrating.  The combined input of the visual (vision) stimulation from the sun, the colors of all the beach umbrellas and toys, the auditory (hearing) awareness of each and every bug that is buzzing around, the waves and birds cries, other families’ sounds of play and amusement, the olfactory (smell) intensity of sunscreen and bug spray, the gustatory (taste) overwhelm of a Slurpee with the texture, taste and cold all to separate out and respond to appropriately, the vestibular unease that comes from walking on uneven ground/surfaces such as the sand along the shore line, proprioception of being able to right oneself when knocked over in the water is a lot of sensory information.  Finally, the interoception of feeling thirsty, hot and sticky and nauseated due to all of the above combined can lead a child to feel overwhelmed, and they may shut down, or have tantrums and meltdowns, as a result. 

Anticipating your child’s sensory preferences and using the information is a critical part of being able to manage summer fun for the whole family.  For the individual dealing with the sensory challenges, going into these environments can be anxiety provoking and can result in an array of behaviours.  

Ways to ensure fun for the whole family on a summer adventure are to do some planning into what outing would be the most fun for all, what location will help create ease and planning details down to day of the week and time of day is preferred.

Here are a few more tips to help you plan your day at the beach:

Choose the best location:

Researching the beaches, you want to visit is a good start.  If you have a child or family member that can’t handle the sand, you will want to look for beaches that have implemented a Mobi-Mat.  Mobi-Mats allow for direct access to the water from a path that avoids the sand.  Birds Hill Park and Gimli are two beaches that are close by to Winnipeg who have implemented this type of beach access.

Choose the best time of the day:

The earlier in the day the better to help with a reduction of noise on the beach from other beach goers. Also, cooler temperatures and less glare off the water are all things to keep in mind, and advantage of morning trips to the beach.

When it comes to sun protection: Get creative!

Wearing SPF beach wear and a protective hat can serve as an alternative for those who cannot handle the sensation of sunscreen on their skin.  Alternatively, trying mineral based sunblock lotion will help with the reduction of times it needs to be reapplied and many are now scent free to help those with olfactory sensitivity.  Using a beach tent or umbrella will help reducing the amount of sun exposure and reduce the sensitivity to the eyes.  Encouraging sunglasses also will help limit the intensity of the beach to the visual system.  

Reduce or replace overwhelming sounds:

While in the shade, cooling off,  it will also be easier to wear ear protectors if needed to block out overwhelming and unpredictable sounds.  Even the use of favored music with ear buds or earphones is a way to control the auditory environment if the idea of ear protectors is unappealing. 

Playtime:

For those whose vestibular and proprioceptive system can’t handle being in the water they may need support of another to navigate the moving sand under their feet or to support the push of the waves on their legs.   When in the water, encourage play with stable objects, not ones that move, because they can add another level of frustration and unpredictability to your child’s situation.  Alternatively, play on the beach which will provide a firm base of support.

Snack time:

At the end of the day if everyone is going for ice cream or a Slurpee, keep a preferred treat handy so no one is left out of the day’s fun.  Remember that ice cream and Slurpee’s can be overwhelming to the taste buds and the temperature may be too intense and feel like an assault to your child, thereby, taking away the fun and enjoyment that these treats are supposed to bring!

Be prepared for challenges by having calming activities handy:

Know that by the end of the outing the cumulative sensory experiences may have become overwhelming to your child’s system. Due to a lack of interoceptive awareness, they may not have been able to put a stop to the play before it became too much and now they may be in a complete state of dysregulation.  This is when having a calming preferred activity for the car ride home will come in handy. Also, knowing and explaining to the individual what has occurred so they can start to understand what their body was trying to tell them is important so that a “next time” can be better managed.

SPD can be challenging but it should not stop your family from going out on outings and enjoying the summer.  Outings  just need a bit of preparation, understanding and discussion.  We know that summer is short in Manitoba so use the tips above to find all the fun ways to enjoy it with your family!

Follow Megan on Instagram at @emergetherapyservices.