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Before We Feel, We Need to Feel Safe

Why Nervous System Restoration Must Precede Emotional Processing
Why Nervous System Restoration Must Precede Emotional Processing

In my work supporting clients through emotional and somatic integration, there is one foundational truth I have learned and return to again and again:

We cannot process what we do not feel safe enough to stay with.

That’s why I am so deeply passionate about helping people restore a baseline of safety in their nervous systems before attempting to process overwhelming emotions, memories, or sensations. Without a felt sense of safety—in the body, breath, and present moment—the inner work of healing can become not just ineffective, but retraumatizing.

As Dr. Arielle Schwartz wisely states:

“Assist the client to build tolerance for emotions and their accompanying somatic sensations.”

This is not about avoidance—it’s about preparation.It's about giving the body a say in the process.Because in trauma, the body did not have a choice. In healing, it must.


Processing Begins with Resourcing, Not Rehashing

Many people come to the work of emotional healing with the assumption that they need to go directly into the pain to resolve it. They try to "talk it out" or even "feel it all," thinking this will lead to relief. But if the nervous system is still in survival mode—frozen, shut down, or hyper-alert—then that emotional material cannot be fully metabolized.

This is why body-based preparation is essential.

Dr. Pat Ogden, pioneer of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, teaches:

“We can’t expect our clients to tolerate emotional activation without sufficient resources. We must help them build the somatic supports necessary to stay present with what arises.”

That’s the work I care about most: Helping people cultivate the capacity to stay and to be. a safe haven for themselves and each other through co-regulation. We cannot effectively co-regulate if we have not yet connected to an embodied felt sense of safety ourselves.

To stay includes, with a sensation, without running from it. To stay with a feeling, without collapsing into it. To stay with themselves, without suppressing, abandoning or overriding.


How I Work: Creating a Foundation of Somatic Safety

My approach focuses on guiding clients into relationship with their own body, with sensitivity, reverence, and choice at the center.

Using methods inspired by Schwartz, Ogden, and Dr. Peter Levine, founder of Somatic Experiencing, I invite clients to explore questions such as:

  • Can you use your breath to support the feeling of…?

  • What happens when you press gently and gradually into your feet or hands—does anything shift inside?

  • Is there a movement or posture that helps this emotion to feel held?

  • Can you imagine someone who could help you with this feeling—even just as an image?

  • Is there something you could say to yourself to feel more supported right now?

Each of these questions is not a cognitive task—but a relational bridge between sensation and safety, between emotion and embodiment.

One of the most important things I share with clients after they have build a relationship with their nervous system is:

"You are in charge of how much and when to feel. You can take breaks. With Vagal stimulation can you put the brakes on. This is your body. Your pace. Your power."

The Parts That Want To Feel—and the Parts That Are Afraid

So many of us carry internal contradictions: A part that longs to heal, and a part that fears what feeling might bring. A part that wants to connect, and a part that shuts down or sabatoges before it gets too close.

Rather than override the protective parts, I teach clients to work with them. We begin by acknowledging both:

“There’s a part of you that wants to feel this. And a part that’s afraid. Can we apply our somatic or grounding resources and just notice both without needing to change them?”

This slows the system down, or brings it out of a freeze response and it invites the body to restore balance and to support you. This simple and subtle acknowledgment creates an internal alliance—one in which all parts are welcome, and none are forced or judged. This is true Nervous System Informed Care©.


Why This Matters

When people don’t feel safe, they can’t access enough curiosity to integrate the stored stress. When the nervous system is bracing, the heart can’t open. And when the body doesn’t trust it’s safe to feel, it will store the reinforce the feedback loops between the body and brain and vice a versa and accumulate even more stress from what it cannot integrate and release.

Restoring nervous system safety allows the body to come out of survival first, preventing reliving the experience. From this place, emotions can surface with support, rather than overwhelm. And healing becomes not a re-enactment of past pain—but a reclamation of inner presence and inner peace.


Dr. Peter Levine reminds us:

“Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.”

I believe we must first become that empathetic witness to ourselves—through the breath, through the body, through slowly building Interoception and the capacity to be with what is.


This is the heart of my work.

And it’s why I will always start with the nervous system—because safety isn’t a luxury in healing. It’s an essential the doorway.




For a deeper dive into survival stress responses and related care plans visit

 
 
 

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