Somatic Therapy & Nervous System-Informed Therapy

Body-Centered Therapy for Anxiety, Trauma & Burnout with a Licensed Psychologist in 40+ States

Many people come to therapy with deep insight into why they feel anxious, burned out, stuck, depressed, or reactive and still can’t get themselves to change.

Despite what we might tell ourselves, this isn’t a failure of motivation or effort. Instead, it’s often a nervous system issue.

Somatic therapy and nervous system-informed care focus on how stress, trauma, and overwhelm live in the body, not just the mind. When your nervous system has been chronically activated, depleted, or pushed into shutdown, insight alone isn’t enough. Your system may not yet have the capacity to do the work you’re trying to do.

Capacity, the Nervous System & Why Insight Isn't Enough

Many of the people I work with are insightful, self-aware, and intellectually understand what would help them feel better. They can name the “right” tools, the healthy habits, or the changes they want to make and still feel unable to follow through.

This is not a motivation problem.
And it is not something to feel ashamed of.

In my experience, this gap between knowing and doing is almost always related to nervous system capacity.

What I Mean by Capacity

Capacity refers to how much stress, emotion, and demand your nervous system can tolerate while still staying regulated enough to function, reflect, and make choices.

When your system is chronically activated, depleted, or stuck in survival mode, even helpful strategies can feel:

overwhelming
impossible to start
exhausting to maintain
emotionally activating rather than supportive

Trying to “push through” in these states often increases shame and reinforces the belief that something is wrong with you, which actually keeps the nervous system more stuck.

The Window of Tolerance

You may hear this described as the window of tolerance: the range in which your nervous system feels regulated enough to:

think clearly
stay present
access emotions without being flooded
take action without forcing yourself

When you’re outside that window (in fight/flight or shutdown), insight alone doesn’t translate into change. Your system is focused on survival, not growth.

Why We Start With Regulation

This is why my work often begins with nervous system regulation and capacity-building, rather than jumping straight into cognitive restructuring or deeper emotional processing.

By helping your system feel safer and more resourced:

strategies become more accessible
habits feel less effortful
emotional work feels tolerable rather than overwhelming
lasting change becomes possible without forcing

Once capacity increases, approaches like CBT, ACT, parts work, or trauma processing tend to land more effectively and sustainably.

This Is Not About Doing Less- It’s About Doing What Works

Starting with capacity doesn’t mean avoiding meaningful work. It means sequencing therapy in a way that respects your nervous system.

The goal is not to push harder.

The goal is to create the internal conditions where change can actually happen.

And when we start there, many clients are relieved to realize:

“Nothing was wrong with me, my system just needed support.”

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What Somatic Therapy Focuses On

Somatic therapy helps you understand and work with:

patterns of tension, fatigue, or numbness
chronic fight-or-flight activation (anxiety, urgency, irritability)
freeze or shutdown states (low energy, disconnection, depression)
emotional overwhelm or reactivity
difficulty feeling safe, grounded, or present in your body

Rather than pushing you to “calm down” or override your responses, we focus on listening to your nervous system and working with it.

Polyvagal Theory: A Nervous System Lens

While there have been some recent updates to this theory, the essential components of Polyvagal Theory gives us a framework for understanding how your nervous system shifts between states of safety, activation, and shutdown.

From this perspective:

Anxiety often reflects a system stuck in mobilization
Burnout and depression often reflect nervous system depletion or collapse
Emotional reactivity is often a protection strategy, not a character flaw
Difficulty resting or slowing down can be a learned survival response

When we understand these patterns, we stop blaming ourselves and start choosing interventions that actually help.

How I Use Somatic & Nervous System-Informed Work

My approach is integrative and collaborative, not protocol-driven. Depending on your needs and readiness, somatic work may include:

noticing internal cues (tension, breath, posture, energy shifts)
gentle grounding or orienting practices
learning to recognize early signs of activation or shutdown
identifying what helps your system feel safer (and what doesn’t)
building regulation skills you can use in real life
pairing body-based awareness with cognitive or emotional work

Importantly, what helps one person may feel unhelpful or even distressing to another. For example, traditional grounding or breathwork can feel unsafe for some clients. That information helps us understand your nervous system; it doesn’t mean you’re “doing it wrong.”

We always adapt the work to your capacity. Somatic and polyvagal-informed therapy is not about forcing a particular outcome. It’s about helping you feel more grounded, present, and able to engage with your life- on your terms.

Regulating First, Then Changing Patterns

For many clients, somatic and nervous-system work comes before deeper cognitive or trauma processing, not instead of it.

If your system is overwhelmed, depleted, or shut down, asking you to:

challenge thoughts
process memories
“push through” avoidance
can actually make things worse.

By first increasing nervous system capacity and safety, other therapeutic approaches (CBT, ACT, parts work, trauma processing) become more effective and more sustainable.

Some clients want to move toward deeper trauma processing over time. Others want to focus solely on regulation, present-day patterns, and learning how their nervous system works.

Both approaches are valid. The important piece is that you are in control of what feels safe for you.

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Who This Approach Is Especially Helpful For

This work is often a strong fit for adults who:

feel chronically anxious, burned out, or emotionally exhausted
understand their patterns intellectually but can’t shift them
feel disconnected from their body or emotions
experience shutdown, numbness, or low motivation
are highly sensitive, neurodivergent, or high-masking
have tried “talk therapy” before without lasting change

Many people are deeply self-aware. They understand what’s happening cognitively, but their nervous system hasn’t caught up yet. Embodiment helps bridge that gap.

Embodiment means learning to notice, trust, and respond to your body’s signals in real time, rather than overriding them or living solely from the neck up.

How to Get Started

The best way to begin is with a free 20-minute consultation. This gives us space to talk about what you’re experiencing, answer your questions, and decide together whether this approach feels like a good fit.

Somatic work is not about fixing you.

It’s about helping your system recover enough safety and capacity for change to become possible.

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Somatic and Nervous System-Informed Therapy FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

What states do you provide somatic and nervous system-informed therapy in?

As a licensed clinical psychologist and PSYPACT-authorized provider, I offer online therapy incorporating somatic and nervous system-informed approaches to eligible clients located in PSYPACT-participating states, including Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Maryland, and Virginia, among others.

You must be physically located in a participating PSYPACT state at the time of your session. If you’re unsure whether I can work with you, feel free to reach out or check the current PSYPACT list.

What is somatic therapy and nervous system-informed therapy?

Somatic therapy recognizes that stress and emotional experiences don’t only show up in our thoughts. They can also affect breathing, muscle tension, energy, sleep, attention, emotional reactivity, and our tendency to feel activated, overwhelmed, disconnected, or shut down.

In therapy, we pay attention to these physical experiences alongside your thoughts, emotions, relationships, and life experiences. My work is also informed by concepts from Polyvagal Theory, which can provide a useful framework for noticing and making sense of different patterns of activation, connection, and shutdown.

This isn’t about forcing yourself to relax or “calm down.” The goal is to develop greater awareness and flexibility in how you respond to stress so you have more options when difficult emotions or physical reactions arise.

How is somatic therapy different from traditional talk therapy?

Somatic therapy brings attention to what is happening in your body as well as what you’re thinking and feeling.

Many clients come to therapy saying, “I understand my patterns, I just can’t seem to change them.” Insight is valuable, but understanding a pattern intellectually doesn’t always make it easy to respond differently when you’re stressed, overwhelmed, or emotionally activated.

A somatic and nervous system-informed approach may help you notice physical cues earlier, understand patterns of activation or shutdown, and experiment with strategies for responding differently. I integrate this body-based awareness with cognitive, behavioral, and emotional work rather than treating somatic therapy and talk therapy as either/or approaches.

Who can benefit from somatic and nervous system-informed therapy?

This approach may be particularly helpful if you:

feel frequently on edge, overwhelmed, disconnected, or shut down
experience chronic stress, burnout, or emotional exhaustion
notice anxiety physically through tension, restlessness, a racing heart, or difficulty settling
freeze or avoid even when part of you wants to take action
are neurodivergent or high-masking and feel depleted from continually compensating
have gained insight in previous therapy but still struggle to respond differently in stressful moments

Many of the adults I work with function well outwardly while privately using enormous amounts of energy to keep everything going.

What does “capacity” mean in therapy?

I use capacity to describe the amount of stress, emotion, stimulation, or demand you can manage at a given time while still having enough access to your attention, emotions, and coping skills to respond with some degree of choice.

Capacity isn’t fixed. It can vary depending on sleep, health, chronic stress, sensory demands, relationships, workload, trauma reminders, and many other factors.

When you’re overwhelmed or depleted, strategies that sound simple on paper may be much harder to access. Therapy can help you recognize those limits earlier, develop strategies for navigating activation or shutdown, and gradually build greater flexibility in how you respond to stress.

Will I still learn practical tools and strategies?

Yes. Somatic and nervous system-informed therapy doesn’t mean we only focus on bodily sensations or regulation exercises.

Depending on your needs, our work may include somatic grounding or orienting practices, strategies for emotional regulation, CBT and ACT tools, parts-informed work, boundary-setting, behavioral changes, and approaches for managing chronic stress or burnout.

The goal is to choose strategies based on what is useful and accessible to you rather than assuming the same technique will work for everyone.

What if breathing or grounding exercises make me feel worse?

Then we pay attention to that. Breathing, mindfulness, and grounding exercises aren’t universally calming. For some people, particularly those with trauma histories, panic symptoms, sensory sensitivities, or discomfort focusing internally, certain exercises can increase distress rather than reduce it.

I don’t assume a technique is helpful simply because it’s labeled a “regulation” strategy. We can modify it, try something different, or not use it at all. Your response gives us useful information about what works for you.

Do I have to talk about or process trauma for somatic therapy to help?

No. You don’t have to describe traumatic experiences in detail or engage in trauma processing in order to benefit from somatic and nervous system-informed therapy.

Some clients eventually choose to do deeper trauma-focused work. Others focus primarily on how stress, overwhelm, or past experiences affect their emotions, relationships, behavior, and body in the present.

We’ll decide collaboratively what to focus on and move at a pace that is appropriate for your goals and needs.

Is somatic and nervous system-informed therapy evidence-based?

My overall approach integrates established evidence-based therapies, including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), with somatic strategies, trauma-informed principles, and concepts informed by Polyvagal Theory.

Research increasingly recognizes the importance of physiological and body-based experiences in stress and mental health, but specific somatic approaches vary considerably in their methods and level of empirical support. Polyvagal Theory is also an influential clinical framework, but aspects of the theory remain scientifically debated.

For that reason, I use somatic and polyvagal-informed concepts as tools within a broader evidence-based, integrative approach rather than treating any single theory as a complete explanation for how your nervous system or mental health works.

Do you offer somatic and nervous system-informed therapy online?

Yes. I provide somatic and nervous system-informed therapy through secure, HIPAA-compliant telehealth.

Somatic work can translate well to online therapy because we can pay attention to physical sensations, emotions, movement, breathing, and patterns of activation in real time. Some clients also appreciate being able to participate from their own familiar, private environment.