Somatic v. Talk Psychotherapy

Here is a look at some of the main differences between Somatic and Talk Psycotherapy. I love integrating somatic and talk therapy into session for more holistic and sustaible care and healing.

FOCUS

Talk Therapy: Focuses mainly on your thoughts, feelings, and the story you tell about your experiences.

Somatic Therapy: Includes verbalizing your story, but also pays attention to what’s happening in your body while talking about your story—like tension, breath, posture, or sensations.

HEALING

Talk Therapy: Healing happens through insight, reflection, and processing emotions, thoughts, and feelings with words.

Somatic Therapy: Healing occurs through the nervous system—by helping the body release stored stress or trauma and return to a sense of safety and regulation.

AWARENESS

Talk Therapy: You’re mainly exploring your inner world through language and memory.

Somatic Therapy: You learn to notice and track physical sensations, which often highlight emotions or patterns you might not be consciously aware of that can be preventing you from change, movement forward, healing.

RESOURCES

Talk Therapy: Often involves psychoeducation, cognitive and behavioral tools, insight-building, and exploring the past.

Somatic Therapy: May include grounding exercises, breathwork, body scanning, movement, sensation identification, or touch (if appropriate and consented to).

TRAUMA

Talk Therapy: Talking about trauma can sometimes be overwhelming or even retraumatizing.

Somatic Therapy: Offers gentler, body-based ways to work with trauma—without needing to go into every detail of the story. At times allows for more agency and flexibility in the trauma reprocessing.

As I mentioned in my previous blog post on Somatic Psychotherapy, when integrating somatic therapy and talk therapy, we will still talk, process, and gain insight into your behaviors and relationships. But we’ll also include your body’s experience when processing through different topics. The integration of talk therapy and somatic therapy allows for more holistic and sustainable healing. Somatic psychotherapy allows for long term healing because it focuses on the nervous system in the healing process.