Author Interviews, Mental Health Research / 15.10.2025
When Talking Isn’t Enough: The Surprising Power of Somatic Psychotherapy
Editor's note: This piece discusses mental health issues. If you have experienced suicidal thoughts or have lost someone to suicide and want to seek help, you can contact the Crisis Text Line by texting "START" to 741-741 or call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255.
When Mara described her panic, she didn’t start with a memory. She started with a body: “My chest tightens and I can’t get my breath,” she said. “Then the memory follows.”
That pattern — sensation first, story second — is exactly why traditional talk therapy sometimes stops short. Talking can change our view of a problem. When anxiety, shame, or trauma get trapped in the body, we need to address it. We can do this by focusing on sensations and finding ways to regulate our feelings.
The limits of words alone
Talk therapies (such as CBT) are said to be evidence-based for many problems. They help people reframe thoughts, test beliefs and build coping strategies. For some clients these approaches are sufficient.
The issue is that if the nervous system becomes dysregulated, cognitive change only provides a short-term solution. People can intellectually understand their patterns without changing them. They will still get “taken over” by bodily reactions — breath changes, tremor, numbness, tension. My clinical experience is that insight without regulation often gives short-lived relief.
When Mara described her panic, she didn’t start with a memory. She started with a body: “My chest tightens and I can’t get my breath,” she said. “Then the memory follows.”
That pattern — sensation first, story second — is exactly why traditional talk therapy sometimes stops short. Talking can change our view of a problem. When anxiety, shame, or trauma get trapped in the body, we need to address it. We can do this by focusing on sensations and finding ways to regulate our feelings.
The limits of words alone
Talk therapies (such as CBT) are said to be evidence-based for many problems. They help people reframe thoughts, test beliefs and build coping strategies. For some clients these approaches are sufficient.
The issue is that if the nervous system becomes dysregulated, cognitive change only provides a short-term solution. People can intellectually understand their patterns without changing them. They will still get “taken over” by bodily reactions — breath changes, tremor, numbness, tension. My clinical experience is that insight without regulation often gives short-lived relief.