Working With Trauma, Stress, and Physical Symptoms

Early experiences, relationships, stress, and changes in health can shape how we respond. This may show up as anxiety, shutdown, overwhelm, difficulty feeling safe in relationships, feeling disconnected from the body, or finding physical symptoms harder to manage during stress.

My work brings together somatic practice and psychotherapy. Depending on what brings you to therapy, we may work with developmental or relational trauma, chronic pain, functional neurological symptoms, other persistent physical symptoms, or the emotional impact of living with a chronic health condition.

Somatic work may involve noticing what is happening in the body, tracking changes in sensation and response, and working with patterns of activation, shutdown, or overwhelm. The goal is not simply to feel calm, but to have more flexibility in how you respond to what is happening.

Physical symptoms can have a significant emotional impact. Working with that impact does not mean the symptoms are psychological or caused by trauma.

Who This is For

This work may be helpful if you:

Notice patterns of anxiety, overwhelm, shutdown, or disconnection
Understand your patterns intellectually but still find them hard to change
Have a history of developmental or relational trauma
Live with chronic pain, functional neurological symptoms, or other persistent physical symptoms
Are adjusting to a chronic health condition or changes in physical functioning
Find that stress or difficult experiences affect how you feel in your body

What to Expect in a Session

A slow, supportive pace that allows us to work with what feels manageable
Coupling Dynamics — exploring how sensations, emotions, memories, meanings, environments, and relationships can become linked, and working toward greater flexibility
Supporting greater flexibility around activation, shutdown, and protective responses
Building awareness of the relationship between body and mind, including physical signals, emotional responses, and patterns that may have become automatic
Somatic tools you can use during and between sessions to support regulation and flexibility
We work through verbal guidance, imagery, attention, movement, and somatic cues

Understanding Trauma and Protective Responses

Anxiety, overwhelm, and shutdown can reflect patterns of protection that develop in response to stress and trauma.
When experiences feel unsafe or unpredictable, protective responses can become more automatic. Over time, this may show up as heightened activation, withdrawal, shutdown, or difficulty feeling settled.
Key Articles

The following articles explore developmental and relational trauma, nervous system and somatic practice, and chronic pain and persistent physical symptoms.

Developmental & Relational Trauma

Trauma and the Felt Sense of Safety
Looks at why someone can know they are safe and still feel tense or on guard, and how past experience can shape present reactions.

Attachment Protest and Withdrawal: Why We Pursue or Pull Away
Explores what can happen when one person moves toward connection while another pulls away, including the bodily responses that can become part of the pattern.

Nervous System & Somatic Practice

How Stress Becomes Suffering: A Nervous System Perspective
Looks at how ongoing stress can affect tension, sleep, concentration, mood, and recovery, and where somatic practice may help.

The Vagus Nerve and Chronic Stress: Why Activation Is Not the Whole Story
Explains the role of the vagus nerve in stress physiology while placing it within a broader understanding of chronic stress.

Chronic Pain & Persistent Symptoms

Chronic Pain and the Nervous System: Understanding the Pain–Fear–Tension Cycle
Explores how pain-related fear, guarding, attention, and changes in movement can become part of the experience of chronic pain.

Understanding Functional Neurological Disorder (FND): Symptoms, Movement, Attention, and Treatment
Reviews current understanding of FND, treatment approaches, and where stress, trauma, somatic practice and psychotherapy may fit.

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