Finding Safety in Your Body with a Somatic Practice

When emotional overwhelm appears, telling yourself that you are safe doesn’t always help. A somatic practice can help you show your body that you are safe.

I woke in the middle of the night as the storm rolled in off the lake. Wind whipped through the open windows, shaking blinds and rattling the house. A flash of light spread across the sky, so bright that it blotted out the steady pulse of red lights on the wind turbines beyond the corn field. Soon, a rumble of thunder reached me, a deep guttural sound that reverberated in my chest.

Within moments, I was out of bed, rushing through the house shutting windows before the rain could blow in through the screens, trying not to knock over plants or decorative items scattered about this unfamiliar house.

As I scrambled in the dark, my mind drifted back to standing on the front porch of the home where I lived for thirteen years with my family, watching thunderstorms together from the safety of that sheltered place, rain spraying on our faces as our eyes lit up with each flash of lightning.

Old fears still feel real

In my rush to shut out the rain, this memory is quickly replaced by a deluge of fears, each one rising from deep within my body.

Fear of not shutting the windows in time. Fear that if I wasn’t quick enough, water would spill in through an open window. Fear that anger would seep into the empty spaces of my life the way rain soaked into the carpet below the windows. Those fears were several years old, but it felt like they were happening right now.

The hypervigilance from that time also returned. Constantly monitoring for shifts in mood, or a word emphasized in a certain way, or a tilt of the head that signaled something was off, or a sigh that seemed to go on for too long. Practicing conversations in my head before I spoke so I wouldn’t say anything that invited mocking or contempt. Scanning the environment for things that might trigger an outsized reaction, and trying to head them off before it happened. If I could predict the future, I might be able to change the outcome.

For so long, I thought I was imagining these fears and panic. I thought there was something wrong with me for reacting the way I did. I thought if I did more yoga and meditation, or made myself smaller, or ignored my needs, that everything would be okay. That I would be okay.

But I was chasing safety that didn’t exist.

Some of what was happening was conscious, but much of it was hidden deep within my body, out of sight of my mind. At times, it felt like a wild animal might jump out at any moment to attack. In my own home.

Triggers linger long after event

At the beginning of my relationship, this hypervigilance wasn’t present all the time. There were many good moments. But they alternated with moments of fear and needing to make myself smaller. Over time, the fear and shrinking increased, while the pleasant moments faded. But even in those quieter moments, my nervous system remained activated, not believing that the good times would last.

My fear eventually spilled over into panic attacks and dissociation; and night terrors, where I would wake screaming at an invisible ghost that returned each night to haunt me. During the last two years of my relationship, the panic attacks occurred almost every day. By then, I was frequently moving between panic and complete shutdown; struggling to get through my days, and afraid to leave the house, but also afraid to stay home.

When the relationship ended, I thought the intense fear and panic would stop. They didn’t. Anything that reminded my nervous system of that relationship or my house could trigger panic and overwhelm. A certain color or sound or tone of voice could send me deep into panic or dissociation.

I had to stop teaching yoga for many months, and trips to the supermarket or other stores often ended with a panic attack. Just working on my laptop on a Saturday afternoon could cause me to go blank for several minutes or longer, and plunge me into a pit of feeling worthless.

And if I turned the steering wheel on my car too far, I would immediately freeze. Many times, I had to pull over on the side of the road as I drove near the home I used to live in. Even now, when I’m in public, I find myself scanning for a familiar license plate or face, hoping to avoid a surprise encounter.

Somatic practice and trauma

It took almost a year of intense somatic practice and trauma therapy before the panic started to subside, before I could move through the world with less activation. But almost two years after the end of my relationship, these moments of overwhelm still happen. And my nervous system is on high alert much of the time—less than it was, but it’s not quite settled. Certain triggers, whether conscious or not, can send me into a spiral that ends with me being swept away.

My therapist calls this Global High-Intensity Activation, or GHIA, a label used in Somatic Experiencing, a type of therapy that helps resolve trauma.

With GHIA, the nervous system is always activated, and a person never experiences feeling safe or settled. This distress is constantly present in the body, regardless of whether there is any current trigger present. Some therapists describe GHIA like this—simply being alive is triggering. For many people with GHIA, the sympathetic activation is covered over by freeze or dissociation. I have experienced both of those, often one right after the other.

When my therapist first told me about GHIA, I cried. Hearing her describe GHIA gave voice to what I had been going through for so long. And it showed me a way out of the darkness.

Much of the work with my therapist has been to create more safety in my body, and to learn how to navigate moments of intense activation when they do occur.

Navigating moments of overwhelm

One of these moments happened yesterday when a memory from my relationship resurfaced—it was actually less of a memory and more of a feeling. I don’t always know exactly what triggers this kind of overwhelm, although sometimes later I can see the signs. For example, right now I am staying at a house that, in some ways, resembles my old home. But only superficially. And there’s a dog here that I have to walk, which reminds me of walking my own dog two years ago, and always feeling like I could never get her to go far enough.

Sometimes these small similarities are all that it takes to trigger panic or overwhelm, because the nervous system errs on the side of over-reacting. From a survival perspective, it is better to react to something that might be a threat but isn’t, than to not react to an actual danger.

Yesterday, I felt the overwhelm building throughout the day, starting early when I woke from a disturbing dream. It was like something was gnawing away at me from inside. Looking back, I should have used my coping tools to connect with that feeling and let it share what it needed to share. But I was busy. I had work to do. So I pushed through, trying to ignore the feeling.

That never ends well. Later in the day, the feeling broke through my attempts to ignore it. While I was sitting at my laptop, I was overcome by an intense feeling of abandonment, of being completely alone in my pain.

Somatic practice for overwhelm

In the past, that amount of overwhelm would have triggered a panic attack or dissociation, or I might have collapsed on the couch or floor for hours, stuck in freeze. Instead, I was able to use the tools I’ve learned to find a way through this darkness.

When I realized what was happening, I stopped what I was doing, sat down on the couch, and played a twenty-minute somatic practice from one of my somatic teachers. It’s a practice that I return to over and over again.

During this somatic practice, she guided me through orienting to my space; pendulating between the intense activation and a neutral part of my body; grounding my feet into the earth; finding a connection between my upper and lower body; and imagining the overwhelm flowing from my face and chest down into my legs and feet, and out into the earth.

This helped, but I still felt some activation. I was worried that this small seed of overwhelm would take root and grow. So I messaged two close friends to tell them that I was struggling, and asked them to send me a supportive message. For most of my life, I never would have done something so vulnerable. I always thought I should be able to navigate life on my own; even my therapist has chided me for not scheduling an early appointment with her when I am struggling. Over the past two years, though, I’ve learned how important it is to have co-regulation—which is another type of somatic practice.

My friends responded quickly and with incredible compassion. Not just with kind thoughts, but also jokes and memes, which made me laugh and helped my nervous system settle. After a few messages from them, the last of the activation dissipated.

Showing your body it is safe

In its place, I felt a renewed openness in my chest, and a feeling that I will be able to accomplish what my soul came down to earth to do.

Sometimes when you take the time to hear what your body is telling you, gently holding the pain, grief, or fear, you emerge with a greater sense of purpose and more clarity about your life.

On the night of that recent thunderstorm, when I started to feel the activation, it was the middle of the night, so I couldn’t reach out to my friends. So instead, after closing all the windows, I returned to bed, where I sat next to the one window I had left open.

I am safe, I told myself.

By then, the storm was passing, moving inland over the corn fields and beyond. I listened for the sound of the animals in the barn, but they were silent, waiting for the rain to finally end.

I am safe.

A cool breeze blew in through the window, brushing against my flushed cheeks like a soft feather.

I am safe.

The tops of the corn plants in the field outside were waving in the wind. It was too dark to see them moving, but I could hear the whisper of their leaves as they danced in the dark.

I am safe.

My nervous system started to settle. A softening of my gaze. The buzzy fluttering in my chest quieter. My breath deeper, like the slow inhales and exhales of a cat sleeping next to me.

I am safe.