Episode Transcript
Hi, this is Rachel recover. We're here with our special guest, Alicia Patterson. And she's an LPC and she does body work. So Alicia, tell us a little bit about yourself. Hi there. Thanks so much for having me and hello to all the listeners. I'm a counselor, psychotherapist. My specialty is somatic psychotherapy, which really just means including the body instead of only working with top down mental health approaches and the brain and mental health is so important. So I really like to bridge both of those worlds. I also have a body work, women's pelvic health, pelvic floor therapy practice. So I have kind of two different practices and I focus on Women's Health and love to share about it and talk about it.
Um, let's get into the questions. So tell us some patterns you've noticed with trauma survivors when doing pelvic floor exercises are things you notice in general. Yeah, it's one of my favorite things to introduce, and this is a term that a lot of different people use, so this is just my understanding of it. So don't take it for granted that it means a lot of different things for different people. But I talk a lot about body armor. And body armor can show up in our soft tissues, our muscles, our nerves, our blood vessels, our immune fluid, our organs. Like every part of our body, our connective tissues can hold quote armor patterns. So something that I've seen in working with and my own journey, you know, I've done everything that I offered to clients. I've really tried to experience myself. So what I've seen is that our whole system can work through these armor patterns, and it can be. It can be challenging, but I really think that it's worth it. It can create so much change to just be with what is happening in our body and letting our body express so. The armor spectrum that I often talk about is like a wide continuum, and the nervous system really kind of maps the way that I conceptualize armor patterns. On one end of the spectrum there can be numbness and frozen Ness and. Kind of like dissociative patterns. And once we come into feeling numb or cold or frozen, it is a feeling. It doesn't often feel good, and sometimes it's hard for people to stick with. It can be boring, it can be disturbing. It's like I know that someone's touching
me, but I can't feel, so I'd rather think about something else or do something or kind of distract myself if we stick with the sensation. A lot of times it will open up and start to melt into tension or pain or like burning or some type of like real discomfort. And then from there, things can sometimes get emotional. Real emotions will start to open up. People will get angry or ashamed or sad or, you know, kind of the deep contracted emotions. And if we stick with all of these steps, which is not always an easy thing to do, then eventually our body opens up into pleasure and warmth and tingling and like healthy. Resilient tissue patterns. So. I really see that. Trauma survivors and trauma can show up in so many different ways in the body and in the nervous system and in the brain really can work itself through these physical patterns and symptoms can resolve, which I think is pretty incredible just from giving them a lot of love and safety and permission to feel. Which is like a soft touch approach I don't really agree with. Hard touch, like manipulation, you know, kind of like being aggressive. I've seen really incredible things happen with just very gentle, permissive, like warm, soft, loving contact. Did that, um. To chew on, did that answer your question? I think So what are things you do to help with anxiety? Yeah, anxiety is a little bit related to. The bladder piece talking about the urinary
system. Um, anxiety for me, I see as very connected to the nervous system and very connected to the endocrine system. One of my favorite authors that anybody knows, Gabbamonte. He's like my favorite kind of body healing. He's a medical doctor. He talks so much about how the nervous system and the immune system and the endocrine system are like buddies and they work together. So one of the main strategies and tactics that I use for working with anxiety is to nourish the stress system in the body, which can mean nourishing the kidneys and the bladder, that urinary system that processes cortisol and adrenaline. And it can. It can really impact mood. It can impact nervous system experiences of how we respond to something that makes us nervous or afraid. Grounding skills. Mindfulness, meditation. Soft, gentle, trauma, informed body work with someone that you really trust. And it can be hard to find a trauma informed body worker that you feel really safe to have a process with. I also love herbalism. There's tons of holistic self-care techniques like Castor oil and making sure that we get good sleep and good food and. Ultimately, becoming grounded is the best. Medicine for anxiety. And becoming grounded and really getting into connection with our bodies. Is sometimes a complicated process, which is why I love somatic psychotherapy, because it's an ongoing process of forming a relationship with ourselves. So my official degree is dance movement therapy. So I've used a lot of movement therapy throughout
my life to get me grounded into my body because talk therapy wasn't really working for me. How would we find this type of a therapist? Ohh gosh um well there. A semantic therapy is, I think it's really growing and it's a little bit of the. Like. Taboo in the psychology world, there's a lot of understanding, starting to come out really only in the last 10 years about how important the body is like. One of the biggest books that people seem to know is called the body keeps the score. Oh yes. There's so much information about the nervous system and movement therapy in our brain and neuroscience and our tissues and how our body registers. A trauma history, so. Finding anybody that has openness to working somatically. Can be easy, easier. I think finding someone who has a degree in somatic psychotherapy can be a little more challenging because there's not very many programs in the country. The psychology world has kind of shunned the somatic world for a long time and it's starting to make a big re entry, but only in the last decade. So there are modalities such as somatic experiencing sensory motor psychotherapy, somatically inspired EMDR therapy, and asking a practitioner if they have training in any of those. Specialties or Googling and looking at therapy listings. There, there are a lot of us out there and there are as many of us somatic people as like clinically trained, kind of classic psychology, more of the
Western. You know, like assessments and diagnosis and clinical, heavy duty, clinical side of things. It's a little bit of a culture clash in a way. Well, because, I mean, I know in the east, eastern world, I mean there's a lot more yoga and Tai Chi and that sort of thing. And that's considered body work as well, I would assume. And there's a reason why. It has, you know, substantially more health benefits than most other. I mean, even if you exercise and you hit the gym, I mean not those those, you know, those are helpful, but there's a reason why yoga. And Tai Chi are so health beneficial. Absolutely, because they're working with the meditative. Soothing. Rhythmic, really. It's good for us. I think the Western world is, you know, we have a lot of benefits and privileges and perks and we have a lot of gaps and we have a lot of ways that we are. Really. In a crisis? I mean, we have a mental health crisis in the United States that is one of the worst in the whole world. And um, it's interesting. You know, I think that the West has. A lot to learn from. Other places that have just such a different way of being and working with their whole body. A holistic. Mindset. Most definitely. I can't hardly date a guy without anxiety and depression. I'm like, these are 30 year old men. Yeah. And it's just like. It's not just the women that are depressed. The men are equally as depressed, if not more so, because they don't really have any outlets. I agree. Yeah, I think that the.
Climate of. Heterosexual relationships in the United States is. Very, very challenging and I've worked with some people who have moved to the United States for their career. And you know. European women talking about how horrified they are at their experiences with United States men and it it's very painful that I mean. I think the men in this country are very. Underserved and even just as a therapist, all of the women's resources that I have, you know, all I have to do is type in a couple words and it's abundant. And the resources for men to work on their mental and emotional health or go to an event is. It's very hard to find, and if you do find it, then sometimes it's like. Like, I don't know how that looks, you know? Like I don't. It's very hard for me as a therapist to find resources for men and. And it's a problem that we have, I mean, I think. I don't want to talk about it is a really good book that I read for male depression. I don't know if you've read that one or not. I know I haven't heard about that. I will write it down though, thank you because male depression looks a lot different and it usually comes out in anger. Yes, because men are only allowed to be angry. Right. That's really the only emotion they're allowed to have that's unsatisfied. yes
Absolutely, yeah. One of my favorite writers is malidoma, someone he died a couple years ago and his whole work was coming to the Western world and working with Westerners and teaching them how to grieve and how to access their deeply repressed sadness. It's a hard to touch it when you don't know the path you know, and that's that's part of therapy is learning how to feel the full range of emotions. It's actually very satisfying. Once we start to practice our skills and have more feelings than just the only one that we've already felt, you know, maybe for our whole lives, it gets pretty boring. Well, I mean, even as a female, my therapist has even told me you don't like you like you don't like feeling your feelings. It's not fun for you, and maybe it's not fun for other people, but I. It's probably very common in the Westerns. We don't like to feel our feelings. Ohh yeah, me too. I'm in therapy. I love therapy. I advocate for therapy constantly. And I, my therapist is constantly saying to me, you're thinking your feelings, you know, you're you're very cerebrally talented, but it's hindering you and you're emotional. Died of yourself and it's been 14 years and I'm. In such a different place than when I started and. I still have all of these imprints. You know, we don't get away from our imprints. Our, the way that we grew up around. All of it is. That's our life's work, I believe. Do you have them do an ACE score survey? That's a great question. I will talk with people about the a survey at times. If. You know, assessments and surveys are. A little bit of a mixed bag for me. I really like to talk with people in a holistic. Like welcoming way. And sometimes assessments can be a little jarring. In some ways, it can. And just bring things to the surface in the way that can be hard for people
at times. I have pointed someone toward the a survey if I felt like it was indicated. Can be very validating for some people also. And um. But I I have a lot of questions in my intake paperwork about. Trauma history and history of abuse and neglect and talking with people about what it means. And and sometimes people will say, oh, you know, no, I have no trauma history. And then as we start to get into our work together, they'll share something that will happen with me and I'll say. That's psychological abuse, or that's sexual trauma, or. And then we get to work on that together. The ACE survey is an incredible tool and can be very illuminating for some people to look at. Race because. Doing body work and stuff that would be. I don't know if it would be super helpful for you, but. Yeah, I I like the survey. It's um. Yeah, it's always tricky like. What to do? I usually like to offer assessments and see what people are interested in instead of saying like. Here you go. Here's this form. You know, I think that creating safety is important before we start to dive into that material. But yes, I have used it at times.
I guess we finally talked about it. Would you consider yourself a trauma informed body worker? Is that because I know you also do counseling? How does that like, it seems like it's very intertwined. I think of like doing public floor like it's more of a physical therapy type. Of thing. Hmm. Absolutely. Yeah, I do. Present myself as a trauma informed body worker and one of the. Bernards it's a little challenging because because of my credentials, and I have credentials to do both sides of my practice. I keep them separate intentionally to protect my licenses and my clients, and just making sure that we're very clear about the work that we're doing together. The counseling field has. Way more liability and regulations and caution about all types of working with people. So if someone is a therapy client, I will do energetic nervous system support work with them at times, but all body work is always closed. And then for my pelvic floor therapy practice, that's a body work practice. And I have people sign a consent form that says this may be therapeutic, but it is not psychotherapy and the body work field has. A lot more openness to it, and there's not as much of the there are regulations, for sure, and there should be, and it's good. And it's not as strict as the counseling world. So with my body work clients I get to have. A little more flexibility. It is very emotional and psychological. I really believe in giving permission for things to be emotional and psychological. And I'm very clear with people that it is not a psychotherapy relationship. And if they want a psychotherapy relationship, then I put them. They have to be in that practice and I cannot do. You know, massage, work with them. That's really how I distinguish. Knowledge versus counseling is massage is oil on the skin and counseling is there's no skin to skin
contact. And that's basically what the regulations are. That's how they distinguish that type of work. Hi, guys. Thanks for listening. Rachel. And recovery will be back next week with Part 2 with Alicia Patterson with the LPC and body work. Thanks for listening. Always TuneIn on Thursdays at 10:00 AM and follow us on your favorite platform for podcast and for social media. And do you have any questions? Always come to rachelandrecovery.com. Thank you.
