Many of your clients have been trying to handle their relational stress all by themselves for years. Someone told them that breathing differently might help. So, they went to a breathwork class with a friend. But even with the breathwork they’re still having trouble with anxiety when they don’t get a response from someone they care about. They tried somatic practices that they learned on Instagram. And these gave them something to do when their body starts to mobilize, but they still don’t really feel better. The stress that’s been there just doesn’t go away.
This is because your client is living with an instinct pattern, deep deep down in their body, that’s telling them there’s a real threat present. Their body is telling them they’re in danger, and none of the tricks they try are able to change that.
After trying to fix this on their own, exhausted by the anxiety and fear loops they get caught in, they often end up believing that they, in fact, are the problem.
Your client’s developmental capacity gets organized (or not) in their earliest relational environment. If you work with attachment-wounded clients you might notice the same roadblock happening again and again. Your client develops real somatic awareness and learns how to locate resources that help to soothe them in times of major distress, and yet, their relational patterns don’t change. They keep getting caught in the same loops.
The capacity to settle under relational stress develops in the body of a child in relationship with the body of their caregiver. Through repeated contact and attunement across the early years of life, humans learn how to manage emotional experiences, they learn how to self regulate. The infant borrows regulation from their caregiver, and through that borrowing, the infant, then child, then adult learns to settle on their own. But when a child’s relational needs are not met, the underlying developmental capacity does not fully form.
This is why we see a lot of adults reacting to the world with the same emotional capacity as a toddler, young child, or teenager.
Dr. Bruce Perry’s research is incredibly useful in helping us to understand what I’m talking about here. If you haven’t already read his book “The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog” I highly recommend it. Perry shows us how the brain forms from the bottom up, and each successive level, or in his language, “sequence of development,” depends on the stability of what came before it. What this means from an anatomical standpoint is that the brainstem, which governs the most basic arousal and survival functions, has to be sufficiently organized before the limbic system. Otherwise, the part of the brain where emotional regulation occurs, can’t calm the body or connect with another person. During development, receiving cues of attunement or mirroring of behavior helps this part of the brain to develop. When developed, the child has the skills to experience emotions without becoming overwhelmed.
The cortex, where insight and self-reflection happen, cannot do much at all until both lower levels are reasonably settled.
It’s also important to note that the cortex doesn’t fully form in early life. It takes time to develop. This is why a child can’t think about or rationalize an emotional experience.
For clients whose early relational environment could not provide what their developing nervous system needed, insight-based approaches simply aren’t effective. These kinds of approaches don’t provide what individuals like this need to settle and feel safe enough to regain access to their higher thinking.
What the nervous system actually needs in those circumstances is someone regulated. Someone whose system is settled enough to offer something the client’s system can borrow, the way they were supposed to borrow from their caregiver but could not. This is what co-regulation means, and it is the mechanism through which your clients can learn something new by getting what they didn’t get from their caregivers from you.
Your presence as a practitioner gives your client the ability to borrow a regulated, attuned nervous system. Your clients have longed for this their whole lives. That longing has shown up as a constant desire for self-sufficiency and a desire for closeness that arrives then gets pushed away. Your regulated presence creates something that addresses a deficit no breathwork session or Instagram tool ever could.
You might not have been taught to think like this, but it’s not your fault. The training in most courses focuses on protocols, techniques, and practices, and tends to overlook the fact that your nervous system is the primary instrument of change.
I’ve studied the field of somatics in incredible depth, and I’ve found that there has been evidence of how attachment patterns are formed, and the role the body plays in working with these patterns, for decades.
Ruella Frank mapped how developmental movements from infancy show up in the present-moment behavior of adult clients. Pat Ogden’s work demonstrated that action tendencies are tied to procedural learning that verbal processing alone cannot change.
The client who experienced an early life environment that could not provide consistent safety carries those imprints into the work you do together. These patterns show up in the way they move, interact with you, the patterns of speech they use, their relationship with work, and the way they orient toward or away from you. All of this is there before anyone says anything.
Reading what the body communicates before your sessions begin is a skill you can learn. Unfortunately, it’s not mainstream and it takes years of study to learn by piecing together specialized trainings, none of which are easy to access if you’re not a psychotherapist or trauma specialist.
On August 6, I ran a free live training called How To Read What Your Client’s Body Is Saying Before They Say A Word.
It’s for you if you already have clients and have a sense that something more is possible in your work together.
We cover the method I have used with more than 500 practitioners across 28 countries to help them produce results that their existing training alone was not producing.
You can watch the recording in our free community. The recording is free, and a somatic background is not required.
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