Navigating Overstimulation: A Somatic Approach
In the whirlwind of life's experience, it’s common to find ourselves grappling with an array of complex emotions. These feelings can range from deep grief and pain to pure, unadulterated joy or pleasure. But how do we “best” navigate this rollercoaster of sensations and emotions, to find a sense of balance and resilience within ourselves?
One approach is to somatically (soma = body) experiencing these sensations, grounding ourselves with the present moment, and honoring the full spectrum of our emotional experiences. In this post, we'll explore a quick, yet structured approach to somatic experiencing, reminding us that being more connected to our own feelings leaves us better equipped to work (and play) with life's sensational moments.
Step 1: Acknowledge It
The first step is to acknowledge that pain, stress or tension exists in you. It could be the images of recent world events, personal memories of toxic stress, unforeseen events or other wounding, or nagging fears of uncertainty about the future. These emotions can be overwhelming, and it's also crucial to recognize them. Ignoring pain won't make it disappear; instead it is likely to stay stuck within the body. Over time, this compiling of unprocessed emotions in the body leads many down a path of illness.
Step 2: Feel It in Your Body
Once we’re able to acknowledge that we’re holding stress, tension or pain, it's time to connect with it on a bodily level. Your emotions are not confined to your mind; they manifest physically. Yet many of us struggle, because we’ve mostly not been taught, that emotions communicate with us throughout the entire body, not just conceptually in the mind.
When you think about the feeling you’re holding, where is it felt in you? Place your hand on the part of your body where you feel this pain, tension, bracing or other sensation. Take a few deep breaths and become an observer to how your body responds to your own touch. Is it a tightness in your chest, a knot in your stomach, or tension in your shoulders? What did you notice after touching it? Did that place respond? Did something else happen? A shift, a yawn, a release, deep exhale, a whisper? The body is the gateway to understanding our emotions, and it’s as important to feel and observe them as it is to resist creating an intellectual story about what these sensations mean.
We can be with what is, as it is.
Step 3: Our Environment
As we work to be in touch with the language of our bodily experience, we can also play with orienting back to our immediate environment. Feel the room around us. Notice the temperature, the smell, the textures, and the visuals. What in the room lets you know you’re safe there?
As I type, I notice the soft gray paint color I chose for my office walls. The wood grain of my desk. A big window that lets in sunlight. Views of plants and big trees shedding their leaves for Autumn. I hear the dishwasher swishing away in the kitchen. The clicks of my keyboard. A mug still holding a bit of warm coffee. Blissful silence.
Immerse yourself in your surroundings, fully engaging with the present moment. I might ask “If I had never been in this room before, what might I notice about it?” This is grounding practice, and it helps us shift our focus from internal turmoil to the external world.
Step 4: Embodiment of Safety
In the final step, we bridge the gap between our inner emotional world and the outer environment. How does the place in your body that felt pain/tension/stress relate to your current surroundings? By syncing our bodily experience with our immediate environment and surroundings, we are updating our body to the present moment. This practice allows us to feel reality as it is now.
For the vast majority of us living with past experiences of toxic stress, relationship wounding and traumas, our bodies can become stuck within the constant reverberation of these unsafe experiences. The body is vigorously searching for safety, often without current familiarity to what safety actually feels like. This is where our consciousness can help our body so both are attuned to the present moment of our environment. We can both be with these sensations of reverberation , if they are present, and be with the presence (and hopefully safety) of now that is available to us.
Note: It's important to acknowledge that not everyone has a safe environment to attune to during somatic experiencing. If someone realizes that their current environment doesn't feel safe, it's a crucial moment for self-awareness and a call to explore ways to access a safer and more nurturing space for their healing journey.
The Duality of Feeling and Honoring Both
Life offers two ways of bypassing reality: either ignoring the world's pain and focusing solely on your own peace or disregarding your peace and fixating on the world's pain.
To truly build resilience, we find our way to honoring everything. We embrace both sides of this emotional spectrum. By doing so, we can navigate complex human experiences with authenticity and strength.
Life will often present us with the duality of feeling, where our own peace can coexist with the pain and trauma experienced by others. This duality can be challenging to navigate, as we grapple with our personal emotional landscape while bearing witness to the suffering of the world.
In a somatic journey of honoring both our inner peace and the outer world's turmoil, we discover profound capacity of the human heart. We learn that empathy and compassion in-and-of themselves do not require us to forsake our own well-being. They invite us to embrace the interconnectedness of our emotions and the world's experiences.
For highly sensitive people who are constantly taking in lots of information and processing it deeply, this can feel like a lot of work. Or an impossible task of balance. I get it. There is no “arrival” point here to navigating and being with our deeply feeling spirit.
When we acknowledge our own peace, we are not diminishing the importance of understanding others' pain. In fact, by grounding ourselves in our inner safety, we are better equipped to extend a compassionate hand to those in need, or advocate for safer environments for others. Our own peace allows us to support others effectively.
Conversely, as we bear witness to the immense pain of the world, it does not negate our right to experience joy, pleasure or happiness. By connecting with the suffering of others, we expand our awareness of the world's needs. This awareness enriches our own life and infuses it with deeper meaning.
In this practice of honoring both, we become a bridge between our own emotional landscapes and the world's sensations. We do not bypass the reality of pain or peace; instead, we integrate them into our human experience. By embodying this duality, we transcend the limits of personal emotions and become conduits for healing, transformation, and connection.
Daily Practice for Resilience
You can incorporate this structured approach into your daily life by spending five minutes at some point in your day with these steps. As you practice somatic experiencing and emotional grounding, you may notice a shift in how you navigate life's sensations.
Most of us are acutely aware that life is a daily blend of pain and pleasure, conflict and peace, grief and joy. As humans, we have the capacity to hold and honor contradictory feelings. There is always room to practice being with the full range of our experiences, developing a resilient and more flexible nervous system that can both see the world for what it is and be with the safety and strength of our sovereign self.
In this universe, and this existence, where we live with this duality of whether we exist or not and who are we, the stories we tell ourselves are the stories that define the potentialities of our existence. We are the stories we tell ourselves.
-Shekhar Kapur