Virtual Therapy
The body is the center of our experience. Somatic psychology helps us integrate our unconscious experiences and align what we think with what we feel.
As a therapist, I teach my patients to fully connect with their physical sensations and emotions to understand and modify habits, manage stress levels, and address feelings of anxiety and depression.
How can it help?
One of the most challenging experiences we can have as human beings is feeling trapped in our thoughts or emotions. We feel panic and anxiety, our thoughts swirl and overwhelm us, and we can’t calm down. At other times, we feel drained and struggle to perform even the simplest tasks. Through therapeutic work, we can identify these processes and develop new neural pathways that offer an alternative way to respond to our environment, rather than being stuck in old habits and patterns.
How we act and feel in our lives is closely related to past experiences, unresolved sensations, and our unconscious perception of what represents a threat to our well-being. As we gain a deeper understanding of how our emotions and psychological patterns function, we can make decisions with greater freedom and respond, rather than react, to life’s challenging events.
Advances in the field of neuroscience allow us to understand how different traumatic experiences such as abuse, violence, rejection, and neglect impact our development throughout life. To work with these parts of the brain, we use specific techniques that enable us to access implicit memories and reprocess trauma.
If we ever feel distress, anxiety, stress, or depression, we know these are physical sensations that are quite difficult to tolerate and cannot be resolved by just reasoning with our minds. The way forward is to learn to relate to these sensations and regulate our nervous system.
Through exercises drawn from mindfulness and various contemplative practices, we can learn to tame our minds, anchor ourselves in the present moment, use breathing to tolerate difficult sensations, and break harmful cycles.
Relying on the resources and resilience of each individual. Resilience is the ability to adapt, be flexible, and respond effectively to the world. Pain in life is inevitable: resilience is about integrating traumatic or painful events without getting stuck in vicious cycles or overwhelmed by unresolved sensations.
As a psychologist, I help my patients identify and develop the resources they have to feel well and calm. Through these experiences, we develop a sense of confidence in the body and our experiences; we can connect with painful sensations and begin to work through them because we know how to return to a state of calm and regulation.
Learning to identify the activation of our nervous system and bring it to a regulated state allows us to relate to our experiences without feeling overwhelmed. We can see clearly and find new ways to respond to life’s difficulties.
Somatic psychology integrates classical methods with techniques that help process physical sensations and emotions as they arise in the moment. Being more connected with our bodies enhances our capacity to enjoy life, love, and find peace. As a result, we develop greater resilience and adaptability to face difficult situations in life.
Sessions may resemble typical therapy sessions, with the key difference being a focus on noticing physical sensations, exploring bodily symptoms, observing habitual movements, paying attention to and working with the breath, and integrating relaxation and concentration techniques to reprocess stuck memories.
EMDR therapy (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is an integrative psychotherapeutic approach that has been extensively researched and proven effective for treating trauma. In sessions, bilateral stimulation (which can involve sounds or small vibrating pulsers) is used to process memories, sensations, thoughts, and emotions associated with the affected neural networks.
In an EMDR session, the patient begins by discussing a traumatic event and identifying the emotions, images, and thoughts that arise. The process involves observing how the memory unfolds and allowing resources and different ways of relating to the event to emerge.
EMDR can be used to address issues related to panic, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, violence, sexual abuse, self-esteem, phobias, accidents, fear, and depression.
Virtual Therapy
In order to offer this type of psychotherapy to a wide range of people, I work through video calls. Many of my patients are individuals who live in remote areas, where another language is spoken, who travel frequently, or who reside in regions where somatic psychology is not well developed. Psychotherapy via video calls is a new field that is evolving to meet the diverse needs of patients and is proving to be highly effective.