Somatic Experiencing for Dissociation and Freeze
Dissociation, at its core, is not a character flaw or a vague mental quirk. It is biology doing its best to keep you alive when fight and flight are off the table. The freeze response, often paired with dissociation, is an ancient survival strategy that lives in the body long after the danger has passed. People describe it as going offline, drifting, or watching life from behind glass. In practice, it looks like missed conversations, hours lost to scrolling, a body that feels far away, or a brain that will not make decisions even on simple tasks. Many of the clients I meet arrive frustrated by this pattern and worn down by years of thinking their problem is motivation. It is not motivation. It is protection.
Somatic Experiencing, often shortened to SE, is a gentle, structured way of working with the body’s survival energy so that the nervous system can thaw. It respects the pace of your physiology rather than forcing big breakthroughs. When dissociation and freeze are in the mix, this titrated approach matters more than most people realize.
What freeze and dissociation are trying to do
Imagine a car skidding on black ice. Slamming the brakes makes things worse, but so does flooring the gas. You need a steady hand, small corrections, time. Freeze is the body’s version of that steadying maneuver when it senses overwhelm. The sympathetic system surges to prepare for threat, then a parasympathetic brake flips on hard to prevent collapse. From the outside it looks like apathy or numbing. From the inside it often feels like a fog, a heavy stillness, or a shut door. Dissociation can be subtle, like missing parts of a meeting, or dramatic, like losing time. I have heard people say their arms feel like props or that their voice sounds like it belongs to someone else.
This is adaptive during overwhelming events, but afterward the nervous system may still hold incomplete survival responses. Think of an animal that started to run, then had to freeze. There is stored mobilization energy in the muscles and breath, sometimes paired with immobilization. Over months or years, this can show up as chronic tension layered with exhaustion. It also breeds shame, since many cultures prize productivity and linear focus. I see this collide with anxiety and burnout often. People push harder to break the freeze, which spikes anxiety. They crash and blame themselves. Burnout then adds a second freeze, the kind born of depletion. It becomes a loop unless we work with the body directly.
How Somatic Experiencing works, without the jargon
SE invites the nervous system to complete unfinished survival actions and reestablish a sense of safety and orientation. The work is not theoretical. It is in small moments of tracking sensation, noticing shifts in breath and temperature, allowing tiny impulses. The aim is not to dredge up every traumatic scene, though memories may arise. The aim is regulation.
A typical session might begin with orienting. Instead of starting with problems, we look around the room, letting the eyes land on shapes, colors, edges, and light. Orientation is not a trick, it is a neurophysiological https://www.allichristiecounseling.com/location/colorado signal to the midbrain that, in this moment, you are somewhere with exits and resources. Many people notice their shoulders drop or their gaze widen. From there, we pendulate, which means we move attention between places of relative ease in the body and places of activation. This back and forth allows the system to taste activation without going over the falls. Over time, micro completions are possible: a hand that wanted to push might press into the arm of a chair; a foot that wanted to run might press down and feel the floor answer. These sound small. They are not. The nervous system speaks in these micro-movements.
There is often a sequence that unfolds, though it is not scripted. At first, many people feel nothing. That is normal with dissociation. The task is to find any thread of sensation that is tolerable. I might ask, when you say you feel nothing, where do you feel the nothing most clearly? We might discover it is a wide, cool space behind the sternum. Ok, can you notice the edges of that cool space. Is it round or long. Does it have a color. Simply tracking begins to bring the cortical brain into dialogue with subcortical states. Over minutes or weeks, the nothing becomes textures, then impulses. Once people can feel more, we titrate contact with harder material. We do not push. We touch the edge, return to safety. That rhythm builds capacity.
What progress looks like when freeze starts to melt
Progress in SE rarely looks like fireworks. It looks like finding your hands again after a difficult meeting and realizing you can feel the weight of your mug. It looks like noticing you left your body and choosing to come back with a breath and a shoulder roll, then being able to stay for five minutes longer than last week. It looks like a body that twitches, yawns, or trembles involuntarily in session as the autonomic system completes something it never got to finish. It looks like a breakup memory that once wiped you out, now arriving as a wave that peaks and falls. It looks like going to bed without the armor of nightly wine. Clients often report that anxiety feels less electric and more like weather. Burnout moves from a fixed identity to a solvable problem, because your physiology can rest and refuel.
A story sticks with me. A technology leader came in describing a decade of high output punctuated by stretches of blankness. In the blankness, he could not write emails, could not decide lunch, could not answer his children. He had tried cognitive strategies, supplements, even cold plunges. In our first few sessions, he felt almost nothing. We tracked his eyes wanting to look left, then the pull of his right foot into the floor. After a while, his torso began to sway slightly when he talked about meetings that went south. A month in, he noticed that when his boss raised a voice, his ribs froze. We let his spine arc a little, his hands press gently against the back of the couch. The next week he found himself responding in the moment with a calm boundary instead of dissociating. That was not a mindset shift. It was a body that finally had more options.
Dissociation, memory, and pacing
People worry that if they let themselves feel, memories will flood in. With SE, memory can emerge, but the process gives you steering. We build anchors first. That might be sensing your sit bones on the chair as a home base, or a visual anchor like a plant across the room. Then we approach memories indirectly, through the sensations that arise when you think of them for two seconds, then return to the anchor. This prevents retraumatization. It also respects that the brain stores implicit memory in fragments of sensation, posture, and procedural tendencies. By working at that level, recall that does arise often integrates more smoothly. I have seen clients recover isolated slivers of memory in service of completing a nervous system pattern, then feel done, without needing to storyboard their history.
Timing is individual. I have had clients feel a shift in two sessions, and others need ten to find sensation. That range does not reflect willpower. It reflects how long your system has had to split off awareness in order to function, and how much daily stress continues to press the system into protection. If someone is sleeping four hours, drinking six coffees, and navigating an unsafe home, the body has no spare capacity. We talk about realities first.
Anxiety and burnout through a somatic lens
Anxiety is often a high sympathetic charge without effective completion. Think of it as a partially revved engine. Burnout, in contrast, looks like collapse layered over that charge, a stuck gas pedal under a brick on the brake. SE helps the system find small, safe completions so that sympathetic arousal can express, discharge, and finally rest. When this happens, ruminative thought loses its fuel. It does not mean worries disappear, but they stop crackling your body like a live wire.
With burnout, the early work usually focuses on increasing safety and resource. People want to fix burnout by optimizing. They download habit trackers, buy expensive supplements, and feel worse because they are adding demands to a depleted system. I often ask for subtraction instead. Fewer inputs, fewer obligations, fewer stimulations. Then, once the system has even a small surplus, we add gentle mobilization. Two mindful ramps of your spine during a meeting. A breath that lengthens the exhale by one count. A walk that begins slower than you think helpful. Gradualism does not thrill the mind, but it changes the body.
Why SE is a good fit for dissociation and freeze
SE is not the only path, but it shines with freeze because it privileges neuroception, the body’s evaluation of safety, over cognitive insight. Dissociation dulls interoception, your ability to sense internal states. SE rebuilds that ability without forcing you to dive into content that overwhelms you. The work respects the protective function of freeze, which paradoxically allows it to soften. The therapist watches for signs like micro facial shifts, breath changes, a tiniest clench in the jaw, a glaze in the eyes, and helps you steer.
There is also an advantage in SE’s use of external resources. People with dissociation sometimes forget they can borrow regulation from the room, the chair, a view from the window. We practice feeling supported by gravity, by seat and floor, by the simple act of letting your back have something to lean on. This goes beyond cliché grounding techniques. When done with attunement and attention, these supports tell your nervous system it is not alone.
How SE pairs with EMDR, IFS therapy, and intensives
I often blend SE with IFS therapy or EMDR protocols, especially for clients with complex trauma. With IFS, parts that carry fear or shame can be approached more gently if the body is not locked in freeze. When you track sensation while dialoguing with a part, you often find that a protector who seems rigid actually softens once the body has an outlet for stored charge. Parts work becomes less about persuasion and more about physiology.
EMDR intensives can be highly effective, yet they can also stir significant activation in people prone to dissociation. If someone has a history of going blank during high arousal, I build SE skills first: orienting, pendulation, titration, coupling dynamics, and containment. Then we can use bilateral stimulation in shorter sets, monitor somatic markers, and pause for regulation as needed. In my practice, a week of SE-focused preparation has turned a previously overwhelming EMDR target into a manageable series of sets with clear completions. Intensives, whether EMDR intensives or mixed-modality formats, demand energy and capacity. SE helps build both, so the intensive becomes metabolizing rather than flooding.
Not everyone needs or benefits from intensives. They can be ideal when you have a specific cluster of targets, a limited window away from work, and robust support. They can also backfire if your daily life is chaotic or if your system needs more time to trust the process. The decision hinges on resourcing. If you are sleeping adequately, have time for integration activities, and can adjust commitments for a week afterward, an intensive may accelerate progress. If not, weekly or twice-weekly sessions with steady SE groundwork often produce more durable change.
What a session looks like when freeze is present
Here is a compact picture of how a therapist trained in SE might work when dissociation and freeze are reliable visitors.
A slow start focused on orientation: sound in the room, light and shadow, exits, the feel of chair and floor. Check for eye focus and breath. If eyes glaze, back up. Establish two or three resources: a place in the body that feels neutral or pleasant, an image that signals safety, perhaps a supportive object. Test each with small doses of activation. Pendulation between activation and resource: contact a piece of activation for a few seconds, return to resource, and repeat, staying in a tolerable range. Allow micro impulses: a push into the chair, a gentle twist, a stretching of toes. Pause to feel after each impulse. Close with integration: orient again, reflect on any changes in temperature, muscle tone, breath, or space. Assign one small daily practice, never more than two minutes.
The specifics vary. Some days there is more stillness, other days more movement. The common thread is respect for the window of tolerance and a bias toward tiny wins.
Edge cases and complications I watch for
Some clients have medical conditions or medications that influence interoception and arousal. SSRIs can flatten sensation for some people, stimulants can heighten it. This is not a problem, but it calls for finer titration. A history of fainting or vasovagal responses means we avoid sudden shifts from immobilization to strong mobilization. For clients with hypermobility or pain disorders, we adapt positions to avoid strain. I also pay attention to developmental trauma that involves relational ruptures. In those cases, direct eye contact can feel too activating early on. We might use side-by-side seating or focus on a shared external anchor instead.
There are also times when freeze keeps you safe. If you are living with ongoing abuse or unsafe housing, increasing your access to sensations might make things harder at first. We discuss harm reduction, safety planning, and in some cases defer deep work until basic safety is in place. I would rather help you stay dissociated enough to function in a dangerous context than yank away a strategy without replacing it.
Building a micro practice between sessions
Between sessions, I encourage what I call micro practices. Think of them as 15 to 60 second invitations to your nervous system. The point is not to perform a routine. It is to remind your body that options exist.
Orient during transitions. Before opening your laptop, look around the room, name three objects, feel your feet for two breaths. Track one neutral sensation daily. Maybe it is the cool edge of the pillow at night or the warmth of your mug in the morning. Give your body one completion. Press both hands into a wall for five slow breaths, feeling your back receive the force. Stop while it still feels good. Choose an exhale practice. Inhale naturally, exhale a beat longer than usual, pause, repeat five times. Longer exhales favor the parasympathetic system. After difficult calls, shake your hands briskly for five seconds, then let your shoulders drop. Notice any small discharge like sighs or yawns.
When practiced consistently, these moments accumulate. They also inoculate against the binary of all on or all off that characterizes freeze.
Measuring change without self-gaslighting
People who dissociate often doubt their own perceptions. So we build behavioral metrics. Track two or three signals that matter to you. Examples include how long it takes to initiate a small task after a stressor, how often you lose time for more than ten minutes, how many nights per week you fall asleep without a crutch, or whether you can notice early signs of shutdown before they take over. Expect fluctuations. A week with a difficult anniversary may look worse on paper. The trend over six to eight weeks tells more truth than any single data point.
We also look at your environment. Are you scheduling back-to-back meetings with no time to orient between them. Are you using workouts that spike sympathetic arousal right before bed. Are you consuming a diet of constant micro stressors through your phone. SE will help, but even a high quality method cannot outrun daily habits that keep your system on edge. Adjustments do not need to be dramatic. Twenty minutes of protected transition time across your day often yields outsized benefits.
Where SE sits among other therapies
Cognitive therapies teach you to reframe thoughts. Psychodynamic therapies help you understand patterns. Mindfulness sharpens attention. IFS therapy builds a respectful relationship with the parts of you that carry trauma or protect against it. All of these can be useful. The unique offering of SE is that it gives you a handle on the subcortical systems that move faster than thought. Once you can sense and influence those systems, other therapies often land better. Parts express themselves through the body. Cognitions ride on physiological states. Mindfulness can become resourcing rather than a bypass.
For some clients, short targeted EMDR work simplifies a stuck memory so that SE can proceed more smoothly. For others, SE establishes enough capacity that EMDR intensives become an efficient next step, compressing months of work into a few focused days. The map is not one size fits all. What matters is sequence and fit: build safety, increase capacity, then work the hardest material with enough support to metabolize it.
A few practical details therapists rarely say out loud
Sessions that work with freeze tend to run best with a calm start and gentle finish. Rushing in from traffic and diving into trauma is a recipe for fog. I often recommend arriving early to sit in your car and let your eyes wander the horizon for two minutes. After a session with a lot of discharge, leave ten minutes before your next meeting. Your nervous system needs that buffer to consolidate gains.
Expect plateaus. The body learns in steps. After a few weeks of good momentum, you may hit a boring stretch. This does not mean nothing is happening. It usually means your system is integrating. Pushing for novelty during a plateau can backfire. Trust the basics. Then, once enough stability is present, we might gently challenge the pattern by inviting a hair more activation and staying with it a hair longer.
Also, hydration and electrolytes matter more than they seem. People in dissociative states often under drink or over caffeinate. Blood volume and electrolyte balance affect how safe the body feels mobilizing. I ask clients to aim for steady hydration and to notice how their somatic work feels after a salty snack compared to a sugary one. This is not cure-all advice. It is a practical variable you can control.
When to seek additional support
If dissociation leads to regular unsafe situations, like losing time while driving or blacking out from high arousal, you need a treatment plan that accounts for risk. That might mean temporarily avoiding certain stressors, arranging transportation, or looping in a physician to screen for seizure activity or sleep disorders. If self harm urges or severe panic accompany dissociation, skills from DBT can add containment. If you suspect neurodivergence, assessment can clarify sensory processing differences that shape how SE should proceed.
None of this contradicts the core idea: your body is protecting you. Our task is to widen the menu of protection options so that freeze becomes one tool, not the only one.
A note for those who feel hopeless about the fog
I have sat with many people who used the word broken. They tried years of talking and did not feel better. What shifted for them was not a grand revelation. It was a thousand small choices to feel a palm against a table, to let a breath leave a second longer, to notice a swallow and not rush past it. It was a therapist who slowed them down right at the moment they wanted to speed up. It was the day they realized that the fog receded a few minutes sooner than last time. If that is where you are, take heart. Freeze is strong because it kept you alive. With care and practice, it can soften.
Somatic Experiencing offers that care and practice. Used on its own or paired wisely with IFS therapy, EMDR, or even brief intensives when appropriate, it meets dissociation and freeze at the level where they live, in the body’s timing and language. Progress is measurable, not mythical. Your system can relearn options. Your attention can return. And life on the other side is not an abstract promise, it is the unmistakable feel of breath moving freely in your chest while you inhabit your own day.
Name: Alli Christie Counseling
Address: 9362 Teddy Ln, Suite 202, Lone Tree, CO 80124
Phone: (402) 765-8761
Website: https://www.allichristiecounseling.com/
Email: [email protected]
Hours:
Sunday: Closed
Monday: 8:00 AM - 6:00 PM
Tuesday: 8:00 AM - 6:00 PM
Wednesday: 8:00 AM - 6:00 PM
Thursday: 8:00 AM - 6:00 PM
Friday: 8:00 AM - 6:00 PM
Saturday: 8:00 AM - 6:00 PM
Open-location code (plus code): H42C+M6 Lone Tree, Colorado, USA
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Alli Christie Counseling provides mental health services centered on therapy intensives for high-achieving women in Colorado, with an office in Lone Tree.
The site highlights EMDR intensives, IFS therapy, Somatic Experiencing, and focused support for concerns such as anxiety, burnout, panic, trauma, and self-doubt.
The practice is led by Alli Christie Disney, LPC, and the Colorado location page says the office works with women from across the state, including Denver, Boulder, Colorado Springs, and Fort Collins.
For local visitors in Lone Tree, the office is listed at 9362 Teddy Ln, Suite 202, Lone Tree, CO 80124.
The practice appears best suited for women ages 16 and up who want a structured, longer-format therapy option rather than standard weekly sessions alone.
The official Colorado page also says online sessions may be available for people who prefer virtual work or want follow-up support after an in-person intensive.
To ask about fit or scheduling, call (402) 765-8761 or visit https://www.allichristiecounseling.com/.
For map directions and public listing context, see https://www.google.com/maps/place/Alli+Christie+Counseling/@39.5524957,-104.8803997,17z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x876c859f7a8fa043:0x7712f13d361a1824!8m2!3d39.5516997!4d-104.8794188!16s%2Fg%2F11h2cf2bsx.
Popular Questions About Alli Christie Counseling
What services does Alli Christie Counseling offer?
The official site lists therapy intensives, EMDR intensives, IFS therapy, Somatic Experiencing, anxiety support, and burnout-focused therapy content.
Who is the practice designed to serve?
The Colorado location page says the practice specializes in working with high-achieving women ages 16 and up, including entrepreneurs, executives, and women in demanding fields.
Where is the Lone Tree office located?
The contact page lists the office at 9362 Teddy Ln, Suite 202, Lone Tree, CO 80124.
Does Alli Christie Counseling only offer intensives?
The homepage says the practice primarily offers intensive healing experiences, while also keeping limited availability for some ongoing sessions in a more traditional format.
Does the practice offer online sessions?
Yes. The Colorado location page says online sessions are available for people who prefer virtual work or want remote follow-up support after an in-person intensive.
What issues are mentioned on the Colorado page?
The site names trauma, developmental trauma, childhood trauma, anxiety, panic attacks, imposter syndrome, burnout, self-doubt, and phobias among the concerns addressed through intensives.
What therapy approaches are mentioned on the site?
The practice highlights EMDR, Internal Family Systems (IFS), and Somatic Experiencing (SE) as the main modalities used in its intensive work.
How can I contact Alli Christie Counseling?
Call tel:+14027658761, visit https://www.allichristiecounseling.com/, and follow https://www.facebook.com/allichristiecounseling/ and https://www.instagram.com/allichristiecounseling/.
Landmarks Near Lone Tree, CO
Park Meadows — Park Meadows is one of Lone Tree’s best-known destinations and is described by its official site as Colorado’s biggest shopping mall. If you are near Park Meadows, Alli Christie Counseling’s Lone Tree office is a useful local reference point for planning therapy visits.
Lone Tree Arts Center — The Lone Tree Arts Center is a major local arts and culture venue and a recognizable anchor in the city. If you spend time near the arts center, the Lone Tree office gives you a simple nearby point of reference for counseling and intensive therapy services.
I-25 and Lincoln Avenue — The Sky Ridge at Lone Tree Station mobility hub project identifies the I-25 and Lincoln Avenue interchange as a major transit and access point in Lone Tree. If that corridor is part of your regular route, the office location is easy to place within the same local area.
Lone Tree City Center — The city describes Lone Tree City Center as east of I-25 between Lincoln Avenue and RidgeGate Parkway, with a walkable mixed-use focus and light rail access. If you are near City Center or RidgeGate, the office is part of the same broader Lone Tree service geography.
High Note Park and Happy Canyon Trail — The city’s High Note Park page highlights the Happy Canyon Trail connection running under RidgeGate Parkway and linking toward Lincoln Avenue. If you live or work near the RidgeGate trail network, the Lone Tree office is a practical local counseling reference.
Bluffs Regional Park and Trail — Lone Tree’s resident guide identifies Bluffs Regional Park and Trail as a major local trail area with a loop trail and trail connectors. If you use the bluffs or nearby trailheads as your local frame of reference, Alli Christie Counseling remains a clear Lone Tree destination to work from.