Westside Therapist is a group psychologists (psychotherapists) providing psychotherapy counseling. We are also a psychotherapy resource for adults and teens living in the Santa Monica area. We service the greater LA area with the majority of our clients from West Santa Monica, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, West Hollywood and other area of Southern California. We can help with addiction and recovery, depression, anxiety and relationship issues. In the Santa Monica area, finding the right psychotherapist (psychologist) can make all the difference.

SE & Therapy

Trauma is part of life—most of us have been traumatized in one form or another. Although not all traumatic events result in symptoms, trauma-related issues are widespread in our modern lives. Unresolved trauma may manifest in the following ways:

• Anxiety and panic attacks • Chronic pain
• Rage • Migraines
• Addictions • Gastrointestinal disorders
• Dissociation • Chronic tension

SE is typically part of face-to-face sessions and involves a client tracking sensations in the body. It’s effective for all types of trauma and is often used as an adjunct to talk therapy.

Shock Trauma: Catastrophic Injuries, Car Accidents, Surgeries,
Natural Disasters, Sexual Abuse/Assault, Physical Abuse

Developmental Trauma: Abandonment, Loss, Neglect, Verbal Abuse

Somatic Experiencing practitioners help clients build awareness to release physical tension remaining in the body after trauma. Residual trauma occurs when the survival responses (i.e. fight, flight or freeze) of the nervous system are activated but not fully discharged after the traumatic situation has passed.

Kathy Kain, a facultymember with the Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute, summarizes the reason a client might consider SE:

1. Something bad happens.
2. You don´t know how to deal with it.
3. It gets stuck inside of you.

If our bodies know how to heal, then why haven’t we done so? Just as we have a primitive part of our brain that governs survival responses, we also have higher brain functions of emotional and cognitive responses which often interfere with this natural process. In other words, we often overthink it. Somatic Experiencing is a method of supporting our bodies to access this innate capacity for healing and to apply it to resolving trauma.

Having completed the 3-year training program with the Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute, Andrew is certified as a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner.

 

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