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Untangling Trauma
Somatic Practice & Psychotherapy for Trauma, Chronic Pain & Persistent Physical Symptoms
Jane Kwok-Yee Leung, LMFT, SEP
This blog explores stress, trauma, somatic responses, relationships, chronic pain, and persistent physical symptoms. Articles look at how these experiences can affect the body, attention, emotion, and everyday life, while translating current research into practical understanding.
The goal is to better understand patterns of response and what may support greater flexibility over time.
Regulation Is a Foundation, Not the Goal
Regulation is often treated as another word for calm, but that is only part of the picture. Somatic practice can support regulation while helping us become more differentiated, notice patterns that have become linked, and develop more flexibility in how we respond.
Accepting Without Agreeing
We can understand why something happened and still struggle to accept it. Acceptance does not mean agreement. It means seeing the relationship or situation clearly enough to decide what to do next.
Boundaries in Relationships
Boundaries can bring disappointment, but relationships involve two people. This article looks at validation, compromise, emotional reactions, and the impact our choices have on each other.
Perimenopause and Mental Health: Changes in the Body, Mood, and Sexuality
Perimenopause can bring changes in the body, mood, sleep, and sexuality that are easy to overlook. This article looks at how physical and emotional changes can overlap, and how women can bring these concerns into both medical and mental health care.
Trauma, Stress, and the Body: Understanding Protective Responses and Healing
Trauma and repeated stress can shape how we respond to threat, relationships, and our own bodies. These patterns can change with time, support, and practice.
How Stress Becomes Suffering: A Nervous System Perspective
Ongoing stress can leave the body tense, overloaded, and slow to recover. This article looks at how stress creates additional strain and where somatic practice and psychotherapy may help.
The Vagus Nerve and Chronic Stress: Why Activation Is Not the Whole Story
The vagus nerve matters, but it is only one part of the stress response. This article looks at what vagus nerve activation can help with and why chronic stress requires a broader view.
Understanding Functional Neurological Disorder (FND): Symptoms, Movement, Attention, and Treatment
Functional Neurological Disorder can affect movement, sensation, seizures, speech, and other neurological functions. This article looks at current understanding of FND, treatment, and where stress, trauma, psychotherapy, and somatic practice may fit.
Attachment Protest and Withdrawal: Why We Pursue or Pull Away
In close relationships, one person may push for connection while the other pulls away. This article looks at attachment protest and withdrawal, the body’s role in conflict, and how somatic practice and psychotherapy may help.
Grooming and Relational Abuse: When Care and Harm Become Intertwined
Grooming and relational abuse can leave lasting effects on trust, intimacy, self-doubt, and closeness. This article looks at why later relationships may feel complicated even after the original harm has ended.
Growing Up Without Reliable Emotional Safety
Growing up with inconsistent or emotionally unreliable caregiving can shape what someone expects from closeness, conflict, and support. This article looks at how those patterns may continue into adult relationships.
Understanding Emotion Through the Body
Emotions involve more than thoughts. Body sensations, context, memory, and meaning all shape how we experience what we feel.
Why It’s Hard to Relax: A Nervous System Perspective
Relaxation is not always easy, especially after long periods of stress. This article looks at why slowing down can feel uncomfortable and how somatic practice and psychotherapy may help.
Chronic Pain and the Nervous System: Understanding the Pain–Fear–Tension Cycle
Chronic pain can change how someone moves, pays attention to the body, and responds to sensation. This article looks at pain-related fear, guarding, attention, and where somatic practice and psychotherapy may fit.
Fibromyalgia, Fascia, and Chronic Stress: A More Complete Picture
Fibromyalgia involves more than muscles and fascia, with pain processing, stress, and body-wide systems all playing a role.
The Fawn Response: People-Pleasing and Appeasement
The fawn response is often used to describe people-pleasing, appeasement, and self-silencing when conflict or disapproval feels difficult. This article looks at how these patterns may develop and show up in adult relationships.
The Gap Between Knowing and Reacting
Sometimes we understand a pattern clearly and still react the same way. This article looks at why that happens and how somatic practice can help create more room for choice.
Trauma and the Felt Sense of Safety
Someone can know they are safe and still feel tense or on guard. This article looks at how trauma can shape present reactions and the felt sense of safety.
Medical Trauma: The Emotional Impact of Medical Procedures
Medical care can be successful and still feel frightening or overwhelming. This article looks at how procedures, difficult recovery, poor communication, and loss of control can affect emotional recovery.
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