Somatic Psychotherapy

Therapeutic Support For:

  • You have been deeply hurt by something that has been closely associated with religion or spirituality: perpetrated by someone who is thought to be a stand in for the Divine, or wrapped in or justified by spiritual messaging. This takes myriad forms, but might look like abuse at the hands of clergy, or being raised in a highly controlling, judging, or authoritarian religious culture. These wounds are both existential and relational and impact all other areas of your life.

    Somatic psychotherapy can help you acknowledge the complexity of your experience, seek safety in your body, grieve the losses embedded within the experience, and reconnect you with your goodness and inner wisdom as you rebuild your belief system.

  • It can be hard to make sense of a childhood that was not filled with the attuned, loving, responsive care that you deserved.

    Somatic therapy offers an opportunity for you to explore how your history lives in your physiology and continues to impact your relationships, your decision making, and your capacity to thrive as an adult. We focus on building your capacity to feel safe, experiencing an embodied knowing of your own value, and supporting the development of self-trust and self-compassion.

  • Bad things happen: a car accident, a fall, natural disasters, an experience of inescapable attack.

    Somatic therapy services can help your body complete thwarted defensive responses and restore the body’s sense of safety and contribute to the resolution of lingering symptoms caused by the traumatic experience.

  • You desire to feel seen, heard, and connected within the relationships that matter.

    Somatic psychotherapy grounded in attachment and interpersonal neurobiology invites you into both insight and embodied awareness of how you show up in relationships, what is getting in the way of authentic connection, and how to move towards the love and connection you desire.

  • You are outgrowing what has been, but do not yet know what it ahead. Or, the future is upon you, but you weren’t quite ready for it! It can be extremely uncomfortable to be in this liminal space and to discern your next steps.

    Somatic psychotherapy can help build your capacity to linger in the discomfort long enough to uncover the wisdom that is important to bring with you into your next chapter, and to reveal the emerging invitations into authentic expressions of your wholeness.

  • Fear is a powerful driver of behavior; you move through the world doing what you can to avoid, or try to gain control over, what it is you are worried may happen. You often feel exhausted by your efforts, and yet the anxiousness remains.

    Somatic psychotherapy can help you uncover your core fear, explore where and how it shows up in your body, and how you might seek alignment and integration in your mind, body, and spirit in order for you to find greater internal freedom.

  • Grief undoes us. It strips us down to our core, and then invites us to rebuild ourselves in our given, often new, reality.

    Somatic therapy offers a space to allow your grief to move through your body and your heart, and to notice and honor the ways in which it is transforming you.

What is Somatic Therapy?

Somatic Psychotherapy sessions integrate the wholeness of who you are into your mental health treatment. Traditional talk therapy is combined with various somatic practices to support your emotional, relational, physical, and spiritual well-being.

Somatic comes from the Greek “soma,” which means body. In somatic therapy, you notice and pay attention to the sensations in your body as a way of accessing and integrating your experiences. By intentionally and mindfully becoming aware of the signals your body is sending, you have the opportunity to become familiar with how your nervous system reacts to different situations. You can become aware of any stress response patterns - fight, flight, freeze, or fawn - that have become fixated or “stuck” in your body and contribute to your responses to stress that may not always be the most helpful. Bringing conscious awareness to these responses, and creating space for these stuck responses to be completed, opens up the space for balance and flexibility to return to your nervous system. This “bottom-up” approach is particularly well-suited to healing and integrating traumatic experiences and histories.

What is Somatic Experiencing?

Developed by Peter Levine, PhD, Somatic Experiencing is a neurobiological body-based approach to trauma resolution. It seeks to restore the body’s natural capacity to self-regulate and connect to your innate life-energy by working with nervous system states that have become stuck within your physiology.

In these sessions, you will engage in a gentle process of moving between experiences of contraction and expansion, engaging with the subtle experiences of sensations, images, movement, emotions, and meaning, allowing the mind and body to work together to seek healing and integration.

I have completed training through the Advanced 1 Level on my way to becoming a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner. I have studied under Shideh Lenon, PhD and Joshua Sylvae, PhD.

Somatic Psychotherapy with Nicki

Clinical assessment, diagnosis, treatment planning and interventions are grounded in interpersonal neurobiology, attachment theory, and somatic modalities such as Somatic Experiencing.

For those who desire a therapeutic space where their spiritual practices and beliefs are honored alongside their emotional and personal growth, I also offer spiritually integrated psychotherapy, regardless of religious affiliation or spiritual identity.

I am a deeply relational clinician that believes you are the expert in your own life, and that you have the inner wisdom, strength, and resilience to take the next steps on your journey towards wholeness. As a therapist, it is my role to listen deeply and hold your story with reverence, while offering supportive space, tools, and resources as a companion on your path.

I have a M.A. in Clinical Psychology from Cardinal Stritch University in Milwaukee, WI. I have completed training as a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner through the Advanced 1 Level. A life-long learner, I have taken comprehensive and trauma-focused courses in Interpersonal Neurobiology with Dr. Dan Siegel and have completed additional trainings in Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy, Narrative Therapy, and Intergenerational Trauma. Additional learning in attachment theory, emotion focused therapy, and integral somatic psychology also influence my approach to therapy.

In-person in Milwaukee and Telehealth sessions offered for residents of Wisconsin.