Bibliotherapy: Ilene Smith’s Moving Beyond Trauma

A client recommended, Moving Beyond Trauma: The Roadmap to Healing from Your Past and Living with Ease and Vitality by Somatic Experiencing practitioner, Ilene Smith. They shared it was their favorite book since being on a healing path. They found it easy to read and it helped them understand how talk therapy alone was not enough to heal from trauma and it contextualized why Brainspotting had been such an effective treatment intervention for them.

Smith explains how “psychological stress is held and manifests in our physical body” or how “we hold our issues in our tissues.” She talks about how our nervous system is smarter than our brain, how our cognitive brain cannot override our nervous system. To heal we need to address the emotions, sensations, and pain held in our bodies. Talk therapy alone is not enough to heal.

Smith states most psychological and mental health issues are rooted in trauma. I agree with this. Depression is often nervous system collapse due to prolonged, chronic stress or past trauma. Anxiety is nervous system hyperarousal connected to a lack of safety in the past. I often see physical health issues such as GI distress, migraines, and chronic pain that once the past trauma is addressed, the symptoms subside.

What I found most interesting about this book, is that Smith includes several self-assessments that the reader can take to better understand your nervous system functioning and then shares exercises to strengthen or calm your nervous system. The assessments are linked here and free on her website.

I loved an analogy she used about leaning into emotions verses avoiding or resisting them. Imagine pushing against a heavy object such as a boulder, think of the effort and resistant you experience? Now imagine leaning into the boulder, what happened to the resistance in your body? Maybe you sense support and relaxation instead? We need to lean into our sensations to move through them and find health and ease.

Coriander Living Collective uses a somatic approach to healing. Addressing the whole person system. Please reach out if you’re ready to lean in and move through what’s been holding you captive!