Dorie helped me validate that what I was experiencing was real and appropriate.

I met Dorie Silverman at a time when I had fallen into an emotional abyss.  I was experiencing panic attacks, could not work, and in simple words, stopped wanting to live.  A few months prior, my close brother had died in a sudden, tragic military airplane crash, after which I developed complex PTSD symptoms.  And to compound the psychological trauma, in the months that followed, my partner suddenly packed up and left, our friends stopped talking to me, and a critical part of my family went no-contact.  I had been left lost, wounded, and without support in a city of 3 million people.  No one knew what to do with me.

At one point, I couldn’t feel anything anymore, I had gone numb, frozen.  The cognitive freeze was so intense that there were days when I couldn’t leave my bed, make a phone call, or prepare a meal.  Other times, the sound of an ambulance siren or the stimulating beat of a song would throw me into a panic attack; I screamed and cried until I fell asleep again.

First I recurred to traditional psychotherapy—five different psychologists tried CBT, SFT, and other methods.  Three psychiatrists prescribed various antidepressants and benzodiazepines.  And I self-medicated, too.  What I discovered was that, talking didn’t help me, tranquilizers didn’t help me, I was actually feeling worse.  I felt that people wanted to hear the story, get all the juicy details, but then they disengaged.  Anti-anxiety medication helped me sleep without nightmares, but I wasn’t processing what was happening, it was getting stuck inside my body.  My lower back hurt, all the time.

When I started working with Dorie, we didn’t talk about what had happened.  I didn’t have to recount all the experiences or get worked up talking about what people had done to hurt me.  I didn’t have to explain why I felt permanently damaged.  We focused on sensation, on what my body was experiencing.  We gave shape and texture to emotions, and Dorie guided me in moving them through and out of my body.  It was incredible… how these visualizations were so bizarre but so real… I went into our sessions feeling overwhelmed and heavy, but walked out feeling light.

Dorie taught me how to identify anger and move it through, in the strangest way, like a wild animal, so that it would finish and the next emotion could arrive.  She taught me how to regulate my nervous system with her 5-3-3 technique, to bring a sense of stability, and safety.  These were some of the weirdest things I had ever done in front of anyone.

And somehow, slowly, I started to heal.

Some things happened quickly—like learning how to feel safe where I am by feeling my body and regulating to my surroundings.  Other things, like the process of developing trust, have been slower, but I am making progress.  One of the most powerful things I learned from Dorie was how to notice what my body does when a panic attack or a freeze is coming, honoring those emotions and body sensations as real, not imaginary, and knowing exactly what to do so they can express, move through, and complete; so that can I move along to the next thing and not get stuck.  This saved me, big time, and every week I get better at it.

Most importantly, Dorie helped me validate that what I was experiencing was real and appropriate.  I wasn’t crazy.  She gave me hope that I would get better, and then she proved it.

I slowly started being able to work again, run errands, finish jobs, make new friends.  I started being able to stand up for myself in challenging situations.  I found a positive creative outlet and I am turning it into a business.  I am learning to identify trauma in others and be compassionate in the way I treat them, because they could be going through what I went through, too.

I believe that, as with plants and animals, healing the natural way by learning to connect to your body sensations takes more time, commitment, and consistency than traditional talk therapy or medicine.  It can also be more effective.  For someone like me, that had tried so many things but was left empty, Somatic Experience Therapy with Dorie worked.  I am climbing out of the abyss into a place that is much, much brighter.

Anonymous - Chicago, IL