Your body keeps a record of things your mind has tried hard to forget. You may notice it as a tight chest before a difficult conversation, a stomach that clenches when someone raises their voice, a wave of numbness that arrives right when you most want to feel close to someone. These are not random. They are your nervous system doing exactly what it learned to do, often long ago, to keep you safe. Somatic therapy is a way of working that takes those signals seriously.
I am Wendy Haggerty, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, an AASECT-Certified Sex Therapist and Supervisor, and a clinical sexologist. I work with adults in person in Sarasota and online across Florida and Connecticut. I want to be clear from the start about what somatic therapy is in my practice: it is talk therapy. We sit together and we talk. There is no physical touch of any kind in our sessions. The word somatic simply means that we pay attention to the body along with the words, because the body often knows things before language does.
What Somatic Therapy Actually Is
Most talk therapy asks you to think and speak. That matters, and we do plenty of it. But if you have ever understood a problem perfectly well and still found yourself reacting the same old way, you already know that insight alone does not always change how you feel. That is because a great deal of what drives us lives below thought, in the body and the nervous system.
Somatic therapy adds a second track to our conversation. Alongside the story you are telling, I invite you to notice what is happening in your body as you tell it. Where do you feel tension? Does your breath change? Is there an urge to move, to curl up, to push away, to go still? None of this requires you to perform or get it right. We are simply turning up the volume on information that has always been there.
Over time, this noticing becomes a skill. You start to catch the early flicker of activation before it becomes a flood. You learn that a feeling has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and that you can stay with it long enough to let it move through rather than getting stuck in it. This is quiet, steady work, and it can be genuinely life changing.
Why the Body Holds What Words Cannot Reach
When something overwhelming happens, the thinking, verbal part of the brain often goes offline. The parts that handle survival, the ones that manage heart rate, breath, muscle tension, and the impulse to fight, flee, or freeze, take over. This is not a flaw. It is a beautifully designed emergency system. The trouble is that the system does not always get the memo when the emergency is over.
So you can end up with a body that keeps responding to a threat that has long passed. A raised voice in the present borrows the alarm from a raised voice in the past. Closeness that should feel safe instead triggers a subtle bracing. You might not even have words for the original experience, because it was stored more as sensation and reaction than as narrative. This is one reason talking about a problem sometimes is not enough on its own. The body needs to be included in the conversation.
When we work somatically, we are not digging for buried memories or forcing anything to the surface. We are gently helping your nervous system update its information, so that it can tell the difference between then and now, between real danger and old echoes.
Learning to Regulate Your Nervous System
A lot of suffering comes from living at the extremes of activation. Some people spend their days revved up, anxious, on guard, unable to settle. Others go the other way, feeling flat, numb, disconnected, far away from their own lives. Many move back and forth between the two. Neither state is a character defect. They are both understandable responses to a nervous system that has not felt safe enough to rest in the middle.
That calmer middle is what we are building toward. In practical terms, regulation means having more room to feel what you feel without being swept away by it or shut down by it. We build this capacity slowly and in small doses. You might learn to notice the first physical signs that you are getting overwhelmed and to do something simple that helps you settle, like feeling your feet on the floor or letting out a longer exhale. Over many sessions, these small practices add up to a nervous system that trusts it can handle more.
I never rush this. Going too fast is its own kind of overwhelm. We move at a pace where you stay present and connected, which is where the real change happens.
Who This Work Tends to Help
Somatic therapy is not only for one kind of problem, but there are a few places where it is especially useful.
For trauma, it offers a way to work with what happened without having to relive it in detail. Because we track the body and stay within what you can tolerate, we can address the imprint of overwhelming experiences gently. If this is your reason for reaching out, you may also want to read about how I approach sexual trauma therapy, where a body-aware, deeply respectful pace matters enormously.
For anxiety and depression, somatic work gives you tools that live in the body, not just in your thoughts. Anxiety in particular is as much a physical event as a mental one, and learning to work with the physical side often brings relief that talk alone did not. You can learn more about that on my page about anxiety and depression therapy.
For intimacy and connection, the body is central. So much of how we give and receive closeness happens below words, in the language of the nervous system. If closeness feels complicated, or your body seems to say no when part of you wants to say yes, somatic awareness can help you understand and gently shift those patterns.
And for the very common experience of feeling disconnected from your own body, of going through life from the neck up, somatic therapy is a slow and kind way back home to yourself.
Feeling Disconnected From Your Body
A lot of people come to me describing a kind of numbness they cannot quite name. They function well. They meet their responsibilities. And yet they feel like they are watching their lives from behind glass. Pleasure feels muted. Rest does not restore. They sense that they have left their body somewhere along the way and are not sure how to get back.
Often this disconnection started as protection. If your body once held sensations that were too much, tuning it out was a reasonable solution. The cost is that you cannot selectively numb. Turn down the volume on pain and you turn it down on joy, comfort, and connection too.
Somatic therapy offers a patient, no-pressure way to come back into felt experience. We start with small, neutral sensations and build from there, always at a pace that feels safe. There is nothing to force. Reconnection tends to happen on its own once your body trusts that it is welcome again.
What a Session Is Actually Like
We sit and talk, the same as any thoughtful conversation with a therapist. The difference is that now and then I will invite you to pause and notice what is happening in your body. You are always in charge of how far we go and how much we slow down. Nothing is demanded of you. You can keep your eyes open. You can say no to any invitation. And to say it once more, because it matters: this is talk therapy, and I do not use physical touch of any kind.
Some sessions are mostly ordinary conversation with a little body awareness woven in. Others go deeper into a particular feeling or pattern. Both are valuable. You do not have to be good at sensing your body to benefit. Many people start out convinced they feel nothing at all, and that noticing is exactly the skill we grow together.
Somatic work fits naturally alongside the rest of what I do. It can stand on its own or blend into individual therapy, couples work, or sex therapy. You can see the full range on my services page, and if you would like to know more about my training and how I approach this work, my about page shares that. If you have practical questions, my frequently asked questions page covers many of them.
You Are Not Broken
There is a whole category of human experience that most of us were never given permission to explore. The way your body carries old fear. The way closeness can feel unsafe even when you long for it. The way you can go numb without ever choosing to. If any of this sounds like you, I want you to hear something clearly: you are not broken, and you are not alone. Your body has been protecting you the best way it knew how. In somatic therapy, we honor that, and then we gently teach it that it is safe to do something new.
I see clients in person at MindSpa Integrative Wellness Center, 5632 Bee Ridge Road, Sarasota, Florida, and online throughout Florida and Connecticut. If you are curious whether this way of working is right for you, I would be glad to talk. Your first consultation is free, confidential, and comes with no obligation. It is simply a chance to meet, to share what brought you here, and to see how it feels to talk with me. When you are ready, you can book your free consultation and we will take it from there, at a pace that feels right for you.
Related support
You can browse all of my services, read more about how I work, find answers on the common questions page, or book a free consultation whenever you feel ready.