Addiction: 9 Causes and Cures
A NEW TREATMENT CALLED SOMATIC EXPERIENCING
After a trauma jolts your nervous system into a state of high activation, one of the most instinctive ways we humans have at our disposal to discharge the intense energy trapped in our body's 'mind' is by knocking ourselves out with aerobic workouts -- biking, kick-boxing, or heck, chopping wood. But if Howard Hughes were alive today, we would advise him to try a more powerful and targeted approach to recover from his 1946 plane crash: a cutting-edge therapy called somatic experiencing.
One of the problems with traditional talk-therapy is that you can develop a new understanding of yourself and have amazing breakthroughs in self-awareness but they often fail to translate into real change. The realizations you get from psycho-therapy are still only thoughts in your head. Somatic therapists seek to anchor those realizations to felt-shifts in your body. They do this by inducing mild states of hypnosis, using sound, touch and other sensations.
“The therapist helps the client move back and forth between small pieces of the traumatic material,” write SE psychologists Diane and Larry Heller. Looping back and forth allows patients to discharge the activation in their nervous system as they work through the traumatic event in layers. Peter Levine originated this deeply intuitive and powerful mind-body therapy, and his basic book about SE work is Waking the Tiger. Here is a directory of trained professionals in this emerging field.
NEXT: Addicts + Artists = The Most Spiritual Beings
Addiction is also a way of avoiding change.
I would love to print out this entire series but am having trouble with some of the links that aren’t live. Is there a way to do this?
I also would love to see the videos mentioned. Are they available?