I am an Empathetic Witness

One of the questions I’m asked most often—by clients and by people who simply read this newsletter—is “Does somatic work really heal trauma?”
The short answer: Yes.
The longer answer: Somatic healing is deeply grounded in decades of scientific research on the nervous system, neuroplasticity, and the way our bodies store unresolved emotions and stress responses. While some still think of somatic work as “alternative,” it’s actually used widely by therapists, counselors, and trauma specialists across the world. The brain and body are always in conversation—and when we work with both, healing becomes not just possible, but predictable.

Here are three books that forever changed my life and beautifully explain why somatic healing works:

1. Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma — Dr. Peter Levine
Levine is one of the founders of the somatic modality and the creator of Somatic Experiencing—the exact lineage I’m training in now. His work explains how trauma is held in the nervous system, why symptoms linger long after events are over, and how the body can complete the survival responses that were interrupted. This book is foundational, accessible, and scientifically sound.

2. How to Do the Work — Dr. Nicole LePera
LePera bridges psychology, neuroscience, and holistic health to help us understand how childhood experiences live in the body and shape our adult patterns. She breaks down the science without diluting it, weaving in her own story to show how healing the nervous system transforms emotional stuckness, codependency, and self-sabotage.

3. Daring Greatly — Brené Brown
Brown’s research on vulnerability and shame shows why emotional openness is essential to healing—not weakness. Her work gives language and validation to the tender, human parts of us that somatic work helps bring back online.

A favorite Peter Levine line:
“Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.”

Personal Trainer for Your Nervous System

I used to think that “trauma” was a word reserved for the really big stuff — the kind of experiences everyone collectively nods about and agrees are awful. War. Abuse. Major accidents. The things that make headlines. I didn’t think anything in my life qualified. What I had lived through felt too small, too ordinary, too easy to dismiss. And honestly? Calling it trauma felt almost disrespectful to people who had survived those universally recognized “Big T” events.

But then I learned something that completely rearranged my insides: if you were born, you’ve experienced trauma. Truly. The process of being born is technically traumatic — your tiny nervous system gets overwhelmed, everything feels dangerous, and you don’t yet have the capacity to cope. Voilà. Trauma. And the wild part? Trauma isn’t about the event itself. It’s about our perception of the event — whether our body had the capacity to deal with it at the time the trauma occurred.

No one taught me that. No one explained that coping can look like deep breathing or zoning out or overeating or dissociating or even binge-watching a show you don’t even like. These aren’t flaws. They’re human.

My own trauma didn’t arrive in a single dramatic lightning bolt. It was quieter than that — the slow accumulation of years spent trying to regulate another person’s nervous system instead of my own. It was the years of feeling “othered,” never quite belonging, being bullied as a kid and again as an adult — only to later discover I’m autistic and that so much of my life finally made sense. It was one major car wreck. It was a job where I was harassed daily until my nervous system basically threw up its hands and quit. All of it eventually settled into my body as chronic pain conditions — including one notoriously called the “suicide disease,” because the pain is so unbearable and medicine still hasn’t figured out what to do with it.

For a long time, I felt guilty calling any of this trauma. It felt like I was taking something that didn’t belong to me. But refusing to name it didn’t help me heal — and it didn’t help anyone around me either. My body already knew what I’d lived through. I was the one who needed to catch up.

Trauma leaves unprocessed emotions tucked away in the body, and the body stays in a stress response meant only for short bursts — not for living an entire life. That’s when burnout, chronic pain, autoimmune issues, numbness, emotional disconnection, sleep problems, and all the “not-so-fun” stuff shows up.

But here’s the hopeful part: our nervous system is neuroplastic. It can relearn. It can heal. It can change. Polyvagal theory gives us a roadmap for that — and nervous system regulation became the thing that finally helped me come home to myself.

A client once called me a “personal trainer for her nervous system,” and honestly, it made me laugh. But she wasn’t wrong. I had to learn to care for my own system before I could guide anyone else. And now? I get to witness people reclaim themselves every day.

Your body remembers what you’ve been through — and it’s never too late to help it feel safe again.