Somatic Resiliance & Regulation

What is Somatic Resilience and Regulation?

Somatic Resilience and Regulation (SRR) is a somatic approach to supporting recovery from developmental trauma developed by Kathy L. Kain and Stephen Terrell, PsyD. It involves techniques for recognizing early developmental trauma (such as abuse, neglect, or unmet basic needs) and impacting attachment styles; early learned ways of attaching and connecting to primary caregivers.  These experiences create a lens and ways of viewing the world that continue to impact individuals as adults, causing symptoms that may be difficult to reconcile in traditional ways.

Through clinical, non-intimate touch (by means of working through the brainstem and kidney-adrenal systems), these methods support and restore resilience and self-regulation.

Developmental trauma interrupts one’s ability to self-regulate, and has effects on attachment and physiology. Early attachment experiences have profound effects on the ability to bond. Our earliest experiences with a primary caregiver show us how often we are shown up for. We send out signals, and when or if those signals are returned teach us whether we will be shown up for. When infants or children have neglectful or intermittent early experiences, they can fall in to a deep state of collapse that can re-emerge in later times as deep loneliness or depression. Learning first to co-regulate and then to self regulate can allow individuals to build an understanding of when younger parts of themselves send out a ‘calling card’ of a symptom, asking for those long unmet needs to be met. By then having a dialogue with the younger parts, and finally (imagining) giving the younger self what it needs and never received, resolution and healing can occur. When the young nervous system sends out a signal and it is ignored, or met intermittently, it results in a perception that the world is an unsafe place. We then continue to send out signals, and most often, end up attaching to other disregulated nervous systems. Untill we learn to co-regulate, and then self regulate, we cannot begin to resonate with other, more regulated nervous systems.

In more simplified terms, we seek out relationships, often unconsciously, in the hopes that we will finally be seen and met in ways we have not been before. But until we build the ability to recognize unhealthy patterns, we get stuck in repetitive relational patterns. We cannot change anything we do not have an awareness of.