Treating early developmental trauma can be a complex and challenging task for even the most skilled therapists. As healers, we often feel the pressure to quickly fix our clients’ complex problems. This is especially true when they have sought our services after having visited multiple providers before us, often to mixed results. However, developmental trauma is a tricky nut to crack, and healing it requires a different approach.  This is where somatic therapy comes in.  Understanding the underlying causes and patterns of developmental trauma is crucial. Developmental trauma is often a result of childhood experiences that can shape a person’s behavior and emotional regulation. It can lead to a variety of symptoms such as anxiety, depression, and dissociation.

How developmental trauma happens

Developmental trauma occurs when a child experiences a lack of nurturing, support, and protection during crucial stages of their development. This can lead to patterns of behavior and emotional disturbances on the nervous system level that can be difficult to identify and treat. It can affect all aspects of a person’s well being. From their physical and mental health, to their ability to form healthy relationships or attachments with others. Touch therapy, also known as somatic touch therapy, has been shown to help clients with developmental trauma to regulate their nervous system, process emotions, and build healthy relationships.

Why somatic touch therapy is helpful for healing early trauma

Studies have shown that somatic touch therapy can be an effective way to help clients with developmental trauma to regulate their nervous system. Developmental trauma can lead to disorganization of the nervous system, making it difficult for clients to manage their emotions and responses to stress. Research has shown that somatic touch therapy can help to reduce stress and promote relaxation, which can help to regulate the nervous system and improve emotional regulation.

Developmental trauma can lead to a variety of emotions, such as anger, fear, and shame, that can be difficult to process and manage. Often clients spend a lot of time just managing symptoms. Somatic touch therapy can help clients go beyond simply symptom management by allowing them to access and process these emotions & physical reactions in a safe and supportive way. In some cases, the symptoms are greatly diminished or may even become a non-issue over time.

The 6 core principles for healing early trauma using touch

That said, healing developmental trauma is definitely not easy. There are many programs out there to help both therapists and clients in this endeavor. But not all programs and practices are helpful. Here are a few practices and principles that I think are really essential for healing developmental trauma.

1. Practice Healthy Separation

Learn to identify what’s happening in your own body-mind experience as separate from your client’s. The tendency to merge with a client’s experience is real. And often it can lead to therapist burn out. This is especially true if you do any hands on work. You can easily get sucked into a client’s energy field and trauma material. On the other end of the spectrum you also don’t want to have overly rigid boundaries. Some healers, in attempt not to merge with clients will hold back too much. Not touching, responding to or having compassion for clients are just some examples.

2. Lay a Strong Somatic Foundation for Touch Work to Happen.

Somatic touch therapy can be a direct and extremely effective way to help clients                     with developmental trauma to heal. And it is considered an advanced skill. That’s                     why you should have a strong foundation in somatic work before attempting to use                 touch to heal this type of deep trauma. There are a few basic somatic therapy                             training programs I really like for this kind of foundational work. One program is                       Somatic Experiencing another is Pat Ogden’s work.

It’s important that you, as a therapist, get solid training and awareness of boundaries of self and others in order to provide sensitivity and respect for a client’s boundaries. Some clients with developmental trauma may have a history of physical or sexual abuse, and touch therapy may trigger traumatic memories or feelings of discomfort. Also if a client has never experienced a healthy boundary before they may become confused. Clients may have a tendency either to blur boundaries or to have overly rigid ones or some of both. That is why it is essential to create a safe and supportive environment as a foundation for touch therapy

3. Get Tools to Help you Stay Grounded, Regulated and Clear in the Midst of the Chaos.

Developmental trauma can lead to a variety of emotions, such as anger, fear, and shame in the client that can be difficult to process and manage. And that’s just the mental health side of it. Often there are a constellation of physical symptoms as well that are some times changeable. Clients often come in understandably overwhelmed and with a lot of confusing symptoms that can also lead to overwhelm for the therapist too.  Touch therapy can help a client access and process these emotions in a safe and supportive environment. But they can only do that if the therapist is relatively present and grounded.

4. Learn to See the REAL Nervous System Pattern that’s Underlying all those Confusing Symptoms BEFORE you Intervene.

Often there’s an underlying nervous system pattern that’s really running the show.  The truth is that when it comes to trauma, looks can be deceiving. And if we jump too soon for an intervention in order to relieve our client as quickly as possible ( which, let’s face it, many of us do) we end up missing the mark. This leads to spending too much time and energy throwing intervention after intervention into the trauma fire to little or no effect (at best), or worse, we end up making things worse. Why? Because in our rush, we failed to see what was TRULY going on in our nervous system and theirs. In other words, we didn’t take enough time with the assessment of the two bodies in the room before we intervened.

I don’t want that for you, or your client. What I’d like is for your to feel confident enough in your own regulation to actually see clearly. And from that clear seeing, to be able to know exactly when to intervene and also why.

5. Learn to Undo the Many Double Binds on a  Nervous System Level.

Because early trauma is by its nature a relational trauma, often many double binds exist for the client. Those double binds make up part of the overall pattern of disorganization in a client’s nervous system.

A double bind is a situation in which a person is faced with two conflicting options or expectations. In the context of developmental trauma, double binds can arise when a caregiver is perceived as unpredictable or inconsistent in their behavior towards a child. For example, a child may feel two seemingly opposite reactions towards their caregiver at once: the impulse to go towards that parent for protection and away from the parent out of fear. These conflicting emotions can create a sense of confusion and helplessness that can be difficult to overcome without therapeutic intervention.

This is why adult survivors of developmental trauma can  find it difficult to form healthy relationships with others in their present life. They have so many double binds when it comes to relationship. Touch therapy can help people process these double binds and also learn how to establish healthy boundaries, communicate effectively, and build relationships based on mutual trust, respect and safety.

6. Enjoy the Connection

Yes, trauma healing can be hard work, but it can be deeply rewarding too, both for client and therapist. Not enough people are talking about this side of it. Perhaps we are embarrassed to admit we all have this basic human need that gets easily overlooked, even in healing circles. But trauma healing after all is about restoring connection, maybe even for the first time. And that is a reason to celebrate!

Need help putting these principles into hands-on practice? Join us!

Whether you want more confidence in working with difficult cases of complex trauma, or you are interested in healing your own trauma or both, there is help and support for you!

Please consider joining us for Steve Terrell’s training on how to use touch skills for healing the effects of early developmental trauma. It’s called: Transforming the Experienced Based Brain (TEB). If you are in or near Saint Louis the place to go is here. If you are in another part of the country or world you can go here. In this training you will learn how to see, feel and treat developmental or attachment trauma. Knowing the how, why and what to do in a hands on, supportive environment, makes a huge difference. Hope to see you there!