Stress is just part of daily life, and even children and teens report feeling more stressed than ever these days. Thankfully, the stigma against mental health, both socially and in the medical community, has been lifted over the past twenty years. It is now possible to discuss things like job stress or social stress in the open and to seek healthcare options that will help you or your child to attend to your feelings of anxiety, stress, or fear.
Modern healthcare practices attempt to look at each person as a holistic whole, which means that regular healthcare and mental healthcare often work hand-in-hand to help people manage their stress or feelings of depression or worry. If you have been struggling with mental well-being, your doctor might recommend that you try somatic therapy.
What is Somatic Therapy?
Somatic therapy is a treatment modality that can be used by mental health professionals to reframe the way that stress impacts your life. Somatic therapy uses movement and meditation to retrain the brain to view stress as a factor of life but not a reason to exist in fight or flight mode. This kind of therapy can help to attend to PTSD, depression, anxiety, and many other forms of mental health issues.
Titration therapy is one of the various forms of somatic therapy, which can be ideal for those suffering from PTSD. You will work with a therapist to slowly walk through and revisit your previous traumas, reframing those experiences in a safer way as you go. Having support and guidance as you think about past suffering can help you to learn to look at these experiences without so much emotion, which can break the fight-or-flight response.
Talk therapy can also be an aspect of somatic therapy. Often, speaking about our discomfort, or past traumas can make them much less scary than when we keep them to ourselves. Your therapist will help you to establish boundaries with these memories, and reframe them in such a way that they can no longer generate negative responses.
Somatic therapy works for both adults and kids and can be a valuable added treatment option beyond things like anti-depressants or other traditional therapies that might be offered to those who report mental health struggles to their doctor.
The Role of Somatic Therapy in Healthcare
As regular doctors have become increasingly friendly toward the concept of mental health therapy, they have begun to refer patients to mental health specialists to attend to things like anxiety, PTSD, and generalized stress. This is a big change from the way that mental health used to be handled a few generations ago. Now that mental health struggles can be talked about in the open, patients and doctors can come up with treatment plans that involve specialists in a variety of fields.
Somatic therapy can be a great added treatment option alongside things like anti-depressants. Being able to take some control over your own feelings of anxiety, worry, or stress and knowing how to deal with them can help patients of all ages navigate daily life with much less discomfort.
Many family medicine doctors are quite comfortable these days with referring patients to see a somatic therapy specialist. You should be able to ask your doctor about this kind of therapy as a treatment option for your stress. If you need a referral to see a somatic therapy professional, your doctor should be willing to provide you with one.
It is greatly empowering for those who are struggling with trauma to be able to seek care and support for these wellness issues within the framework of traditional medicine appointments.
What Can Somatic Therapy Do For Me?
Somatic therapy can help you or your child to find better ways of viewing stress in your daily life. So much of what causes us anxiety cannot be changed. Acceptance of change and reframing the way that you view it can help immensely when it comes to routine, daily worries, and anxiety.
In the realm of PTSD and other longer-term traumas, somatic therapy can help the brain move out of fight-or-flight mode and into a more positive, healthy understanding of the world. Movement can be a key aspect of tackling issues with PTSD, and meditative practices can also help the body release cortisol and seek a more calm, measured response to stimuli.
Taking fight-or-flight out of any situation can make it much easier to logically decide what to do about the stress that has caused such a strong reaction. Somatic therapy teaches patients to recognize when they are in a heightened state so that they can start the process of reframing and self-care, which makes it possible to control this stress response.
Somatic therapy is just one of many kinds of mental health support and care that are offered to patients within the framework of modern healthcare. Now that family medicine doctors and other medical professionals have embraced the need for mental healthcare for people of all ages, it is possible to explore the kinds of mental healthcare that patients need in order to feel better and live a happier, more balanced life.
Somatic Therapy is a Recognized Option Within the Healthcare Reality Today
If you have been struggling with traumas from your past, daily stresses and anxiety, or depression, you might benefit from somatic therapy. You can discuss your options to seek this kind of treatment with your doctor, who should be open to referring you to get the kind of mental healthcare and support that you have been looking for. If your insurance allows it, you can also go straight to a somatic therapy professional and make an appointment.
Having a mental health diagnosis from your doctor can make the process of securing the care of a mental health professional that much easier. Now that modern healthcare and mental healthcare are so closely linked, it is easier than ever to get the treatment that you need to live a happy, balanced life.
