Healing That Goes Beyond Talk
When you're living with trauma, anxiety, or chronic stress, it’s not just in your mind—it’s in your body. You might feel tense all the time, emotionally stuck, or like your reactions don’t match the moment. That’s not a character flaw. That’s your nervous system doing its best to protect you.
EMDR and somatic therapy help you access deeper levels of healing—without needing to relive every detail of your story.
Why Trauma Lives in the Body
Your body remembers what your mind might try to forget. When experiences overwhelm your ability to cope, the nervous system shifts into survival mode—fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Even after the danger passes, those patterns can linger: tight muscles, hypervigilance, emotional numbing, shame spirals, or shutdown.
Talk therapy can help you make sense of things—but EMDR and somatic work help your body complete what it couldn’t finish back then.
What Is EMDR?
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a powerful, research-supported therapy originally developed by Dr. Francine Shapiro in the late 1980s. EMDR helps the brain safely reprocess traumatic or overwhelming experiences so they no longer feel as charged or intrusive in the present.
Using gentle bilateral stimulation (like eye movements, tapping, or sounds), EMDR engages the brain’s natural healing ability. This process helps release stuck memories, sensations, and beliefs, allowing space for new feelings of safety, empowerment, and clarity.
One of the strengths of EMDR is that you do not need to share every detail of your trauma in order to heal from it.
What Is Somatic Work?
Somatic Experiencing® (SE™) is a body-based approach to healing trauma and chronic stress. Developed by Dr. Peter Levine, SE works with the nervous system — helping release patterns of fear, overwhelm, and shutdown that keep us feeling stuck.
Even when we “know” something isn’t dangerous, our bodies can react with anxiety or panic as if it is. SE gently helps untangle those responses by tracking sensations in the body, creating space for new patterns of calm, safety, and resilience.
This approach supports your natural ability to self-regulate, reconnect, and move toward more balance, hope, and joy.
This approach is especially helpful if you:
Feel disconnected or numb
Get overwhelmed or flooded easily
Struggle with chronic tension, migraines, or digestive issues
Have difficulty naming or feeling emotions
Experience "freeze" or shutdown responses
Don't know why you're triggered, but you are
Somatic work offers simple tools for grounding, regulating, and listening to your body with curiosity instead of fear.
Who This Is For:
This work is especially helpful for:
Trauma survivors (childhood, relational, medical, or shock trauma)
LGBTQIA+ folks healing from family rejection or cultural trauma
Adults recovering from emotionally immature or unsafe parenting
Neurodivergent clients with sensory sensitivity, shutdown responses, or chronic hyperarousal
People who feel “stuck” in traditional talk therapy or tired of overanalyzing
Sensitive souls who feel deeply and need a more embodied path to healing
My Approach:
I integrate EMDR and somatic tools with compassion, slowness, and consent at every step. We’ll always go at your pace, and you’ll never be pushed to disclose or move faster than your body is ready for.
You might find yourself:
Naming and transforming old beliefs (“It was my fault,” “I’m not safe,” “I don’t belong”)
Learning how to feel safe inside your own skin again
Accessing calm, curiosity, and even joy where there used to be shutdown or fear
Creating new internal pathways for trust, connection, and resilience
Healing is possible—and it doesn’t have to retraumatize you in the process. Your nervous system is doing what it learned to do.
Let’s help it learn something new.
Contact Information
Kris@balancedrootscounseling.com
(360) 389-2048
© 2024, Balanced Roots Counseling, PLLC, All rights reserved.
Kris Williams, MS, LMHC, LPC, NCC




Typical Availability
Monday: 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM, 2:00 PM – 7:00 PM
Tuesday–Wednesday: 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM, 2:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Thursday: 8:00 AM – 12:00 PM, 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Friday: Closed

