Jason Cowell, Somatic Psychotherapy

Whenever I get contacted by a new person who is thinking about whether therapy is something they want to consider, I offer them a space to meet with me to discuss the possibility – a free 30minute consultation. I do this for many reasons but what lies close to a top priority is that having this chat can often be eye-opening and (in)formative for the person – supporting how they prepare for the process of therapy and learn what is somatic psychotherapy. Invariably we discuss their reasons for reaching out, how do they notice and experience these life challenges and what would be their present orientation or expectation of success. Often there is an initial exploration of HOW is this thing called therapy conducted? What does it look like in practice and what do they feel is their role in the journey we are planning for?

What is most surprising are the habitual preconceptions and expectations that people have set about the therapy process. The medical model of treatment, and more benignly, popular culture and TV have greatly influenced how people think about the space.

A place to talk our way to relief?

In my experience people invariably expect a lot of talking and sitting and figuring out, problem solving their way to an ultimate ‘aha’ solution which will clear the fog, loosen the nut and offer relief and freedom from their existential pain. Therein lies an unchallenged truism, a rigid belief I encounter; that therapy is intrinsically about a lot of hard thinking work – a lot of mental drudgery and graft in order to locate and reconfigure the core mistakes of their character; to banish the badness within and burrow down within themselves and mine some rich vein of goodness within themselves. I can be seen as the someone who will ask the right questions and help to pinpoint the faults and set them in the right direction. This model works well for broken arms but not for broken hearts. These first bites into verbalizing expectations can highlight strong misconceptions not only about therapy, but about their inherent value and value as individuals. It sheds some insight into how we, who are hurt, can feel about ourselves. It can be experienced as…

It is our fault and we are choosing to feel bad and take actions to sabotage our own lives -help me to make better decisions.

However, I feel that rather than us believing we are the instigators of this process – making a choice in where and what we do – I feel it is often what is compelling us, driving and capturing our attention that overwhelms us and demands a spotlight that becomes what we focus on – catastrophizing thoughts are a common example. The reality can often be that you come to therapy because these forces within you choose now to be a time to heal. It compels us to cooperate and be the priority in your life. We are the instigators of violence upon ourselves if we ignore or resist this wise pain. Therapy can be the process of being supported to learn to build the capacity to trust what we can’t understand or put in words clearly yet. To build enough space to follow the pain rather than fight it, turn our attention away from it or to run away from it.

Maybe within the dark cave of your existence is the light you have always been searching for?

Weird huh?

A Somatic Map?

If you are curious about this process of somatic therapy and want to reach out about the possibility of journeying together, please email me on jasoncowell.counsellor@gmail.com.

Okay, maybe a simple map might help. If we were to see that our life can be viewed as a river -an external reality that we see, can touch and that we engage with in the present moment – action and reaction in-continuum. Our life can be about sitting on the proverbial bank surveying the relative stillness and meandering flow of water as it passes by moment to moment, ripple by ripple. Each ripple, each stirring is engaged with through trying to exhort energy/effort into fixing the imbalance of work, health, our intimate relationships, children and the myriad of responsibilities. This can ultimately mean we can view our life as a series of tasks and actions that add to or minimize our stress. The unspoken mantra can become Keep the plates spinning, keep on top of things and strive for happiness and satisfaction. In this way we stay on the bank and are separate from the ripples, we are doing life, ‘go-getters’ and ‘achievers’. External striving over internal curiosity.

You hold the key to your own happiness

But, you see, we don’t see the world truly as it is – we see the world as we are. What if the problems we experience as outside of ourselves are largely a product of how we feel within ourselves? What if how we see the world is largely a by-product of our life experiences, both nourishing and damaging? When we didn’t have words or clear memories in which to create a clear story in which to frame and understand what happened, we store the imprint psychobiologically (in our psyche and in our bodies). The idea of inherited rose(darkly?)-tinted glasses say it most accurately. What if, like the river, there is whole inner landscape, a rich untapped ecology that underpins this reality in which we inhabit. This unexploited world has its own unspoken language and rules of engagement. It cries out to us in unspoken ways such as depression, anxiety, critical thoughts, body tension, lack of sleep or headaches, to name a few examples.

It is our unconscious.

A place where every single moment of our life and the life of our family and ancestry is amalgamated and forged into a unique lens – A way of seeing and experiencing the world. Somatic therapy becomes a means of us together, as a team, sitting on the bank of the river and beginning the journey to step into, wade within and eventually swim, occasionally surf and, when safety and opportunity meet, to dive deep into the river bed of your life. We do this by being curious about the reaction in each moment – how our unconscious shows up and steers you away from being able to meet each moment afresh.

In simple terms, like any new relationship, we stay curious moment to moment and listen to how it begins to tell us about how you have needed to be or adapt in order to survive until now – to live another day. For example, how that hunch in your back, rather than just being a natural curvature, is a physical representation of the need to stay small and out of sight as a child for fear of being criticized or blamed for things in your family – or how we feel the influence of anger and suspicion when in new social situations as a sign of a powerful template that expects to see that people can’t be trusted and are only out for themselves. Perhaps the result of an abusive relationship as a child, innocent lost to manipulation. The cost of doing business.

In this journey words and language come to support these feelings, sensations, movements, gestures, images, memories, tensions, reactions and responses that come into our awareness. They can be a way to add to our experience rather than take us out of it.

If you are curious about this process of somatic therapy and want to reach out about the possibility of journeying together, please email me on jasoncowell.counsellor@gmail.com.

I wish you peace and kindness in your coming day.

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Somatic Psychotherapy could DRAMATICALLY impact the overall happiness in your life, potentially offer a much shorter and less expensive navigation through your therapy journey and provide a route to an authentic experience of empathy for yourself and others.

Somatic is the new buzzword that is doing the rounds in recent years in the field of psychotherapy. What does the term ‘somatic’ mean and what benefit could it bring for you, an average run-of-the-mill Joe (or Jenny!) thinking about beginning to seek or return to therapy?

Well, firstly to sum up, it could DRAMATICALLY impact the overall happiness in your life, potentially offer a much shorter and less expensive navigation through your therapy journey, provide a route to an authentic experience of empathy for yourself and others and overall leave you more bullet-proofed to potential future mental health challenges through empowering you to have more control over your own wellbeing.

Too good to be true? While the following is a simplified primer and aims only to skim the surface of the entire subject, I hope it can capture the essence of this way of working, stimulate your interest and leave you feeling therapy can offer you something new, exciting and genuinely empowering.

If you already know that Somatic Therapy is for you then please contact me jasoncowell.counsellor@gmail.com and book a free 30min consultation

What is Somatic Therapy?

To begin with, Somatic generically means ‘relating to body, especially as distinct from the mind’ (Websters Dictionary, 2022). However, in therapeutic terms it is not accurate to say it is simply about the body, that place from the neck down to your toes. Somatic therapy in practice encompasses the whole of yourself, both the mechanical, functional and feeling body but also the thinking, understanding and conceptualizing mind. You see, there really is no actual division between the mind and body – both are tied together literally and functionally – it is impossible (and ill-advised) to live exclusively from one or the other. Yet, our modern lives have habituated us to prioritize our thoughts over the clear wisdom of our body (‘I think therefore I am’ – Descartes). We are bombarded with messages that our external ‘reality’ is what matters. Everything from the mountains of social media’s subliminal messages of what constitutes ‘happiness’ and ‘fulfillment’ – all side-tracking the inner landscape. We must accumulate and show our happiness to the masses and yet being well is simply a matter of being motivated and supported to best attune to yourself so that you can hear and respond to the reality of your own little universe inside. All else, is a bi-product of that relationship in essence and is the lens through which we see and respond to the world. As Stephen Covey states “We see the world, not as it is, but as we are”.

An interesting fact is that 80% of the information we take in from the environment actually originates in our body (called afferent neurons – which heavily involve the GUT, hence the focus of gut health and probiotics to influence our overall wellbeing). Our ‘gut’ experience is set to inform how we see and evaluate what we experience. In effect then, only 20% of our perceptions (how we see and take sense of the world) is naturally thought through logically and consciously – like you would a crossword puzzle. The 80% (yes, that’s 80% again!) of our natural wisdom comes from our body and we are biologically designed as humans to attune to it, prioritize and trust its wisdom over everything else. In fact, what happens inside of us is biologically tied to our very survival and the more we are on its wavelength to listen to what it is saying non-verbally, the greater chance we have of our intrinsic needs being met. Indigenous communities are naturally attuned to nature and to themselves in this way, while we in the Industrialized world have lost touch with what our bodies are telling us moment to moment.

Feeling disconnected from ourselves

This forgotten ally then becomes our somatic self and we distance ourselves from our bodies and with it the epi-center of our intuition, believing we ‘know best’. In effect, we resign to make life decisions which are based on only 1/5ths of the facts – to think and talk our way through life with so little connection to ourselves and the world around us. Not a recipe for fulfillment in anyone’s book. This is one of the core reasons why many people turn up to therapy because the ‘cost of doing business’ in ignoring ourselves habitually leads to emotional, physical, relational and spiritual crashes. Often in the brave effort to reach out, the person or couple is disconnected from their somatic (intuitive, feeling) self and why often a beginning point of their journey is to slowly make friends with this treasure trove of wisdom and self-healing within themselves. To support you to find your feet on the ground – to Ground yourself. It can be a relieving and liberating experience. Many clients report feeling more whole and ‘together’ even after one or two sessions. It also means we feel more, that includes more of the good stuff – more of our true selves and with access to our full life-force and expression as an individual. Being suppressed can feel so robotic and rigid that feeling more can offer freedom to see the world through a different lens where there is possibility and richness in the air. As therapy progresses being more plugged into your body will also mean noticing the discomfort inside. However, with a patient and experienced therapist this too can be supported to exist and to get what it never had to this point in your life.

Therapy then, can first support you somatically by slowly and incrementally reintroducing you to your feeling body (your ‘felt sense’) and to feel safer and gain some mastery of what you are feeling and thinking. There are many ways somatic therapies can support contact. There are many disciplines with many approaches to invite this reconnection but the common theme, if done respectfully and safely, is to help to support you to go slow and within one’s capacity to dip your toe into this inner exploration in a way that offers you a successful, rewarding and comfortable experience. Together we avail of both your attention (where it is focused inside) and intention (what attitude or level of compassion you bring authentically to what you are doing) in this endeavour.

Some widely recognized approaches to Somatic therapy include EMDR, Somatic experiencing, Hakomi Therapy and Somatic Touch work. I am trained and experienced in all of these methods.

Your personal alarm system – The Autonomic Nervous System

The focus of somatic therapy often revolves around the Autonomic nervous system (A.N.S). Put simply, this is a traffic light system that scans for both danger and safety in your environment throughout our day. It does so unconsciously (autonomic = automatic) and sends us signals and instincts through our body as feedback. It is commonly understood as FIGHT, FLIGHT and FREEZE. In somatic therapy the A.N.S can be a great road-map to navigate all the information contained within our sensations and emotions we come to experience as we navigate this new place.

In short…
Green light = safety
Amber light = Fight or Flight
Red light = Freeze

The reality is that much of how we take in the world at difficult times has little to do with the present event, but is a reaction to past experiences and past challenges which left us overwhelmed and disempowered. Survival is our biological instinct at all times. Without asking us, our system encodes this experience and others like it into a mini-map (what it means about you, messages that other people are like this, situations like this are unsatisfying and need to be avoided at all costs). What we believe are choices are often instinctive survival responses to ‘protect’ us from harm. Somatic therapy then becomes a way to get some space from these reactions and to understand and support them to change thus releasing you from their grip.

Welcome to your Somatic world in a nutshell! For more detailed information I’d recommend the following –

Somatic Therapy in action- for Adults, couples and Adolescents

Finally, lets see this in action and what might be an example of working with a somatic focus in therapy.

In coming to therapy so many of the problems that present themselves as external issues are, in fact, often internal responses that need listening to.

An example

“If I would just pull myself together and realize this is no big deal then it will go swimmingly and I will get through this”

The natural 21st century reflex is to believe that if I am supported to think this through and understand my predicament then this will lead to relief and I will feel better – I can think and talk my way to happiness. Another common response to feelings of discomfort inside is to medicate the underlying anxiety and fear with medication to numb the response. This narrows the bandwidth of the problem and allows us to believe we know where it starts and ends –
Somatic Therapy is different. It supports us to experience that ‘if I can listen wholly to my response to this crisis – listen inside first and hear how my body communicates the impact and allow myself to just experience it (without trying to figure it out) this will lead me to tap into the whole of myself” (80% that is often ignored + 20% thought). This is in itself the conditions for healing.

Deb Dana (Book: Polyvagal exercises for safety and Connection) sums it up well when she encourages that ‘Story should follow State’ in supporting ourselves. Change therefore is founded on our capacity to observe ourselves and not how well we connect the dots of the issue in our heads, but to be ‘a fly on our own wall’ as it were. A good start then in somatic therapy is a combination of building our capacity to become a little separate from our experience in order that we can begin to observe and listen to, without judgment, what is actually being experienced by us.

Working somatically might then begin with coming away from the story and begin to refocus on our environment. To smell the roses as it were. This then might be a way to tune into the now of the moment and to communicate the reality of what is happening inside of us, as opposed to the story, which may be drawing you into the then of event. Somatic therapy often introduces you to the resources that are right here in this moment, the life-buoys that are present but so often we are unaware of – the wood in the trees as it were. We repeatedly initiate therapy by stimulating the safety signals within our A.N.S, which slow us down and provide some perspective potentially to what is troubling us. With this inner space established and maintained, we can then begin to feel less reactive to the event and can bring more choice and control over its impact on us in the present moment. New meaning and deeper insights often naturally emerge from just listening to ourselves.

This then offers more opportunities to respond to it in an empowered way and to offer compassion where before there might have been fear and a belief that we were at the mercy of the situation. Space and perspective will mean the work with your therapist offers interventions going forward that can be different and representative of your actual needs than based on a survival instinct that was more about the time of the actual event. Connection to this moment gives us access to what is happening inside ourselves (out thoughts and feelings) rather than being a slave to what is happening to us.

Where to get Somatic therapy online in Ireland?

I hope this brief introduction stimulated a desire for you to invest in your own self and to reach out to and initiate connect with your true self. I am here and will walk this path with you in full support of your dreams.

To book a free 30min consultation to see if we are a good fit to start your own journey in therapy or if you have any questions, please email me on jasoncowell.counsellor@gmail.com or stay on my website jasoncowell.ie or my LinkedIn profile on https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-cowell-575b735a/

The post What is Somatic Psychotherapy and why it could change you or your life, your relationship as a couple or of the Teenager in your Life? appeared first on Jason Cowell.

This is not a belief that I hold casually or without years of being on the front line of addiction. I have felt that too often the model of treatment was inherently toxic for any real change to be possible. Too often addiction is seen as a sign of fault in the person, that they are flawed and without the necessary capacity to be a healthy whole person without compromises being forged. They need to adjust to a skewed reality – that something is wrong with them. Treatment thus becomes a means to protect them from themselves, to guide them towards this realisation and to offer them the ‘truth’ about themselves and to light the only path to their ‘recovery’. The core of much addiction treatment becomes that the drug is the issue and without the drug you are recovered. It has been my experience that to have an addiction issue in Ireland is akin to being a leper and an outcast. The shame and worthlessness inherent in a human who is struggling to feel safe and less fragmented in themselves, is reaffirmed and solidified by the system that is meant to aid them. As a professional I could not understand how healing would happen if this is the underlying message being filtered – how could you summon strength when all you were being told is that you are weak and broken right from the beginning. I felt this injustice more I guess as I worked with young people as young as fourteen years of age.

I place the person and our relationship at the centre of the work and hold that they have all they need already, but need my expertise to be light-bearer for them as they journey.

That word was ‘safety’.

To be secure is to be in control of their lives. I often feel stopping the ‘work’ of addiction and beginning to listen was as much a gift to me than to them. It convinced me that the content of their life story, particularly their early life and how they adapted to experiences was why they needed support. Take away the drug and they are seen as the same as anyone who struggles with their existence. I decided to train to become a psychotherapist and work in a deeper way to help people reclaim (not recover) themselves. I have been inspired by the work of Daniel Siegel and Gabor Mate as a personal support through this transition. My work today offers as much of that listening ear as it did in those early days. I also offer a means to put their inner jigsaw together again, to begin to contain the turmoil, to slow the mind and to find peace in the early day when all around them has not yet stopped spinning. As this happens over time we can then begin the deeper journey to understand and gain access to their wounding in a way that is manageable and empowering to them. The work can be slow but it is always guided by where the person is on a given day or a given moment in their journey. The process comes second to your dignity and to your individual pace as a human.

This is a brief introduction to my work of addiction with adolescents and adults in Cork. I have worked now for five years as a psychotherapist and specialise in working with Trauma through the body. I am a fully accredited Psychotherapist and Addiction counsellor and trained in EMDR. I am currently undertaking my training in Somatic Experiencing in Antrim. I continue to work full-time and am deeply passionate about my work and consider it an honour to have this opportunity. I place the person and our relationship at the centre of the work and hold that they have all they need already, but need my expertise to be light-bearer for them as they journey.

If you or a loved one would like to talk about the possibility of change or wish to ask me any questions I would love to hear from you. If I can be of help I would be glad to make a difference. I work in Cork city and Kinsale, Co. Cork – Monday to Friday.

Website –  https://jasoncowell.ie/

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In working primarily with young people I am astonished in all aspects of the professional process; from referral to meeting parents and then meeting the young person themselves or networking with their wider world, how widespread the fantasy of anxiety, anxiety therapy and its root causes has permeated our daily life. It has become a buzz word, often linked to another such word, ‘stress’. It seems there is a growing yet blinded understanding that both are intertwined and both are a sign solely of the need to cope better. I can appreciate fully that to manage and soothe our emotions is a very necessary and worthwhile endeavour, after all, we cannot begin to effect real change unless we can begin the journey of turning towards and healing what is a terrible emotional wound for us. However, it is only the first step in beginning this journey and never should it be assumed that coping is good enough when there is a full, loving and rich life awaiting us if we can make that commitment and be allowed to make that commitment by those around us.

I am noticing too often that anxiety is seen as a stand-alone issue, floating in a vacuum, a phantom in a person’s life, untethered to them in any real way. The game is about exterminating the cause of pain but never to understand it as a sign of a wider issue…an unmet emotional issue. I urge you, be it parents, educators, social worker, mental health services, doctors, community/ youth organisations etc, invest in a young person’s future by giving them the resources to commit to their emotional health. If you take it seriously, they will too.

In this possibility, I am all too aware of the urgent need for simple re-education in regard to what is emotional health and what prevents it. The central role of early childhood adverse experiences and the emotional development of each child plays in present problems. So much of my time in dialogue with those connected to and in a  deep relationship with young people is to begin to shine a light on the role that this plays in the symptoms that arise.There is an enormous divide between what is filtered and disseminated into our ‘common’ knowledge of emotional health and what is real and factual. Anxiety is not the problem I say, it is just a glimpse of the lived experience of the person who feels unsafe. The work of therapy is to be a partner to the child AND TO THE COMMUNITY AROUND THEM to begin to address this feeling and the root causes. Therapy powerfully works when everyone has an understanding and places time and consistency to collaborate together. Yes, it is hard work but the possibility is that real and lasting change can occur. Real healing is now more possible when it does. I will strive every day for this possibility to become a reality, but I fear it will take the majority of my career to make it happen.

I will use my blog as a way to do the little I can to educate and inform whoever is willing to listen and I hope that can make a difference out there.

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Time and again I hear adults, parents, teachers and kids themselves ask for ‘coping mechanisms’ to distract from their anxiety. It is understandable that we habitually frame it this way, society is full of the unconscious belief that we should encourage dealing with pain by turning away from it – distracting ourselves from fear, from the unpleasant and the sense of overwhelming control it exerts on our life.

The reality is entirely different though.

I urge you to begin to see fear as just a small part of yourself, one small sub-personality, a part of you that has separated from you and begun to become overburdened and polarised in how it looks at the world. Think of it as it splitting from you in an extreme attempt to deal with life being hard. This part of you sees life through the lens of extreme danger and reacts by trying to protect and prepare for danger…like a soldier or body guard or a vicious animal (as is the case with anger at times). I need you to trust that these parts are trying desperately to help you in the way it can. They make life very hard in reality, often adding fuel to the fire, but they are doing their utmost to support you to survive what they believe is a life or death situation. It is the lesser of two evils if you survive to live another day.

You can feel hijacked by these parts, placed in the back-seat of a moment, a whole day or even longer when you feel altogether ‘extreme’ in what you do or say or think. Common parts that we all have are ‘the critic’ (ever found your mind wandering to thoughts of blame or ‘you are not good enough’?), ‘catastrophizing’ (thinking the ‘worst case scenario’ in everything), or ‘perfectionistic’ part (most commonly shows up during organising or accomplishing tasks etc). When these parts are in the front seat, all logic, perspective, control/ choice for ourselves all but vanishes and we are left at the mercy of their way of being. Have you ever said, ‘I just wasn’t myself at that time’? well, you were possibly more right than you thought!!

So every time you do those things that feel like just distracting know it is a hell of a lot more. When you go for that run, for example, you reconnect to yourself and the front seat, thus, shifting a ‘part’ back to the passenger seat. You introduce your vitality, passion, your aliveness and your Adult self to the moment. You energise and bring yourself into the front seat. You are no longer hijacked by fear, but soothed by yourself (your self). Reminding you of your ‘you-ness’ lets this protection know that you got this and today you have the capacity to take care of yourself in a healthier way, that you can begin to deal with whatever the situation is. So don’t underestimate what you carry alive inside you every moment of every day – That which is alive in you since you were born. Helping you feel less anxious is less about distraction then and more a search for the things, people and places that act as a reminder of your own innate strength. This is what dissolves feeling anxious, not distracts from it.

If you are local and you feel that you need help with your anxiety, counselling services in Cork are available to you. Get in touch with me to arrange a confidential free consultation.

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Therapy thus becomes a journey now to feel the unfelt, to experience what was too much for our fragile young hearts – to repair and rework the scenes in a more accurate way, a real way. The therapeutic journey allows you to take into account others responsibility so we are freed from the historical onus on us to be wrong and not good enough. Every child will rather be a bold child with perfect parents then risk being a good child with less than perfect parents. We always blame ourselves for what was done to us as children, always.
It is this core felt sense that requires gentle and loving attention. The mind, the mental side is a consequence of this…how we learnt to square it all off, to make sense of the pain. It became a template for how we see ourselves, others and the world. Mentally we are left with thoughts of self-criticism, catastrophizing our lives away or projecting onto the world the anger and terror in ourselves.

What I guess I am urging you to understand is that the key to recovery is not in the reprogramming of our minds…but a healing of our hearts. When we feel safe and loved and accepted and valued in our relationship with ourselves and then with others…Our minds will begin to be free and open and available to us once again. Let’s start there…

Start at the heart…

Jason Cowell – Counsellor & Psychotherapist

Cork City & County

jasoncowell.ie

jasoncowell.counsellor@gmail.com

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This is a good poem about mindfulness

By Mary Oliver

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