How do i know if somatic experiencing is helping my anxiety?

[MasonBW]

I’ve been working with my therapist on my anxiety for a while, and she recently suggested we try some somatic experiencing techniques. The idea of focusing on physical sensations to process emotions feels a bit strange to me, like I’m not sure I’m doing it right or if it’s really connecting to the underlying feelings. Has anyone else had this kind of experience where the body-focused approach just feels unclear or hard to access at first?

[Timothy_M]

First time I tried it I felt goofy. We used somatic experiencing and I was told to watch tiny cues—breath, the weight in my chest, a ghost of a tingling in my hands. It felt clunky for weeks, but slowly I started to link the sensations to what was behind the fear. Not dramatic, just less buzzing all the time.

[Paul.S]

I almost wrote it off at first. I kept waiting for a big realization and nothing showed up. The therapist kept it simple: notice a spot of tension, name the feeling in the body, breathe into it. I found my shoulders up, jaw clenched, and somehow naming that physical cue made the thoughts quieter for a breath or two.

[Thomas_M]

Sometimes I wonder if the issue isn’t the body work itself but other things like sleep, caffeine, or how I talk to myself in the morning. Still, I get why the approach exists; I just don’t know if I’m really accessing the 'real' feelings through the body yet. Is the real issue the body work or the underlying anxiety?

[MadisonAA]

I started with a tiny anchor: 30 seconds of just noticing the breath and how it moves the chest. Some days the mind wandered, sometimes I got a brief nod from the body. I kept a little log of what followed after each try—what changed in the next hour, what the sleep was like. Not a solution, but a data point I can return to.