Our Blog

This fall we graduated two cohorts from the Somatic Attachment Psychotherapy 2-year trainings. As we were basking in the glow of the hard and heart work, theirs and ours, we started thinking about getting an insider’s perspective to the training for the BBP blog. We asked for some thoughts, comments, testimonials, whatever people wanted to offer…here’s a few to chew on.

I spent my winter holidays mucking about with a few things—catching up on my reading (only fiction over the holidays), clearing out the attic (oh my goodness), making chocolate (with candied oranges and marzipan), taking time with friends, family and feline, and, I had the pleasure of digging into and finishing the A Not So Private Practice podcast (great title!) with hosts Laura Bull and Stephanie Davis, co-owners of Shoreline Counselling (both BBP alumni and facilitators!!!).

Read what eight seasoned Somatic Attachment Psychotherapists said about what they know to be true about their clinical practice.

Dr. Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory tells us that the autonomic nervous system responds to life threating or the perception of life threatening events (trauma), revolutionizing how therapists understand and work with trauma.

Meet Lisa Mortimore, PhD and Stacy Adam Jensen, MEd, and get a peek behind the scenes of the BBP world.

As a lifelong cyclist I know the harrowing things that can happen when we live life on two wheels. The good thing is that as a psychotherapist specializing in trauma, I know some of what it takes to process the trauma of accidents and near misses. I’m going to outline the simplest thing that we can do so that the fright of a near miss doesn’t get stuck inside our body, and compromise our ability to be safe on the bike.

Let’s be honest, private practice is an idealized and popular path for those of us with training as therapists and yet, none of the counsellor training programs offer any courses to support the visioning, launching or running of a private practice. 

The heart of Somatic Attachment Psychotherapy (SAP) and SAP trainings is the reparation of early attachment injuries through a framework that weaves together: attachment theory and application to clinical practice, trauma research and practice application, affect and autonomic nervous system (ANS) regulation, somatic psychotherapeutic principles and practices, and relational/interpersonal psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

Incident trauma enters our lives unanticipated and uninvited. It ruptures the fabric of life and can be devastating—whether it be motor vehicle collisions, medical diagnosis, assaults of any kind, natural disasters, accidents, illnesses, loss, and the list goes on. As therapists, we need to be cognizant not only of the intense disruption and dysregulation to the autonomic nervous system (ANS), but we need to be aware of the disruption to identity that often comes with the experience.