How I Knew I Was Ready for Somatic Work
By Zenn
Therapy changed everything for me.
Through EMDR and deep inner work, I processed memories and experiences that had quietly fueled my anxiety, depression, and even the panic attacks that sometimes surfaced in adulthood.
I learned what healthy love looked like — and why it used to feel so foreign.
I ended relationships that no longer aligned, finished school, bought a home, and finally began to feel like I was building a life that matched my growth.
After an intense year, I “graduated” from therapy.
And in many ways, I was thriving. But underneath that, something felt… flat.
When the Tools Stop Working
Even though I wasn’t falling back into old coping patterns, I noticed I was struggling to stay connected to that feeling of aliveness and confidence I’d worked so hard to reach.
After losing a friend unexpectedly, everything felt heavier.
I tried to use the tools I knew — exercise, meditation, breathwork — but instead of comfort, I felt resistance.
I’d put on workout clothes and feel a wall rise up inside me.
I’d try to meditate and spend the whole time frustrated in my head.
I’d begin a breathwork session and end up angry, filled with energy that wouldn’t budge.
Despite all my insight and effort, I felt numb. Life felt muted — even when good things were happening.
I returned to therapy, and it helped. It always helped.
But once the sessions ended, the same pattern returned: I couldn’t sustain the work on my own. Something was missing.
The Missing Piece
When I first came across the concept of somatic work, something clicked immediately.
Here was an approach that focused not just on the story of emotion but on the sensation — the way it lived in the body.
Somatic work taught me about titration: meeting sensations and emotions in small, manageable doses so the body has time to acclimate and integrate.
That one idea changed everything.
While I had loved therapy and all the progress I’d made, I realized a part of me had grown tired — maybe even resentful — of how fast and how hard I had pushed myself to heal.
I had revisited painful experiences again and again until my system quietly (and then loudly) said, no more.
Somatic work offered something different.
Instead of revisiting the past at full speed, it invited me to slow down — to feel what was arising right now, without needing to fix or analyze it.
As I began to drop into my body, I could finally exhale.
The tension I had been carrying for so long began to move — not through effort, but through presence.
Learning to Stay With Myself
Even after the life-altering therapy I had, I realized that I didn’t fully know how to stay with myself — especially when things felt uncomfortable.
I knew how to make healthy choices.
I knew how to regulate.
But so many of those “tools” had become ways to get away from discomfort rather than be with it.
Through somatic work, that began to change.
I learned how to meet my emotions in the body — not as problems to fix but as messages to listen to.
Slowly, I reconnected with the parts of me I had once avoided: the ones that felt too vulnerable, too angry, too tired.
I stopped trying to feel better and started practicing how to simply feel.
And that changed everything.
What It Feels Like Now
My days aren’t all bliss and beauty.
I still have hard moments.
I still have days where I self-abandon — when I overthink, overwork, or disconnect.
But the difference is, I can find my way back.
Again and again.
That’s what this work is really about — not perfection, not constant peace, but a promise to keep showing up for yourself, one breath, one sensation, one moment at a time.
Maybe you’re in your own “in-between” season — no longer who you were, but not yet who you’re becoming.
Somatic work invites you to listen to that space, to move through it one breath at a time.
When you’re ready, I’d love to support you in that process.
