Panic disorders and chronic anxiety are not just patterns of thinking, they are patterns of physiology. A client once told me her panic attacks felt like a switch being flipped inside her chest, heat flushing up her neck, and a tunnel closing around her vision. She had tried to reason with it, to breathe it away, to “think positive,” but her body kept writing the same story. This is where somatic experiencing becomes useful. It treats panic not as a mental error but as the nervous system’s attempt to protect, stuck in overdrive.
Somatic experiencing, often shortened to SE, is a body‑based therapy model developed to work directly with the physiology of stress and trauma. It approaches anxiety states by helping the nervous system complete thwarted survival responses, recover a sense of safety, and widen capacity to feel strong sensations without tipping into overwhelm. In practice, that translates into small, well‑timed experiments in feeling and movement, guided attention to the body’s signals, and a steady respect for pacing.
Why the body leads the way
If you have had a panic attack, you know the body moves first and fast. Heart rate spikes, breath gets shallow, hands tingle, and the thinking brain tries to explain what is happening. That explanation often arrives late and loud. The amygdala and brainstem circuits can launch a fear response in under half a second. Cognition catches up after the fact. When therapy focuses only on thoughts, it is engaging the slower part of the system and asking it to outpace the alarm. Sometimes it works. Often it does not.
SE puts the body in front. Slow the body down in a way it can tolerate, then the thoughts often follow. This does not mean ignoring beliefs, memories, or meaning. It means sequencing the work to match the organism. When physiology settles, shame about panic softens, intrusive thoughts quiet, and clients regain choice.
How somatic experiencing frames panic
In SE language, a panic attack is a surge of sympathetic arousal without enough containment, followed by attempts to shut down or flee that cannot complete. The system gets stuck between “slam the brakes” and “floor the gas.” Over time, this looping leads to sensitivity, then avoidance of triggers, and eventually to a life made small. The aim is not to remove activation from your life. The aim is to help your system move through activation and back to baseline more efficiently, with less fear of the sensations along the way.
Three principles keep the work safe and effective:
Pendulation. The nervous system naturally oscillates between activation and rest. Therapy tracks and gently encourages this swing, instead of forcing exposure. Moving attention from a hot spot to a neutral or pleasant sensation, then back, teaches the body that intensity can crest and recede.
Titration. Rather than tackling the whole panic pattern at once, SE breaks it into tolerable pieces. Thirty seconds of exploring a rising heart rate can be plenty. We aim for just enough activation to nudge change, not enough to retraumatize.
Completion. Animals complete stress responses through movement, breath, and discharge. Humans often inhibit these impulses. SE looks for the micro‑impulses, like a tiny urge to push with the hands, a swallow that tries to come, a breath that wants to deepen. Allowing these to finish can release stuck states without reliving the original event.
A brief case vignette
Consider Maya, a 34‑year‑old engineer with sudden panic while driving on highways. She had white‑knuckled her way through several attempts to “just do it,” which made the attacks worse. In our early SE sessions, we did not start on the freeway. We started with Maya sitting in a chair, tracking how her forearms felt when she imagined holding the steering wheel for two seconds, then stopping and looking around the room to find three blue objects. She noticed a flutter in her chest, then a pleasurable warmth in her hands when she looked at a framed photo. We spent several minutes moving between these two sensations, letting her body learn that activation could rise and fall.
By session five, Maya felt heat come up her chest and, without prompting, her shoulders made a slight pressing motion forward. She said it felt like wanting to push something away. I placed my hands on a padded wall mat and invited her to push against it for a slow count of five. Her breath deepened on its own. We let her body rest until a spontaneous sigh arrived. A week later, she took an exit with less effort than before. She was not cured, but the spiral had started to unwind.
What a session actually looks like
People often expect dramatic catharsis. In reality, sessions tend to be quiet and methodical. The therapist helps you notice small sensations in the present. You might track the temperature of your palms, the stretch in your jaw, or the pressure of your feet on the floor. The pace is slower than most people are used to. This is not an accident. The nervous system needs time to register changes.
There may be brief imaginal work, such as recalling a panic trigger for only a few seconds, followed by orienting to the room or contacting a sense of support. Micro‑movements are common. Clients often find themselves wanting to push, turn, curl, or lengthen. These impulses are not random. They are the body’s language for finishing what was interrupted.
In SE, silence does some of the heavy lifting. We use it to wait for signs that the system is processing: an exhale, a change in skin color, tears without collapse, a wave of warmth, tingling resolving into steadiness. These are not theatrics. They are objective shifts that signal the nervous system is recalibrating.
Working with a panic surge in the moment
When a panic swell hits, logic can feel distant. Having a brief protocol helps. Keep it compact so you can remember it even when you are rattled.
- Name the level of activation out loud using a small scale, such as zero to ten. Do not chase accuracy. A quick “I am at a seven” helps your cortex rejoin the process. Orient with your eyes. Let your head and neck slowly turn to take in the nearest corners, the floor, the ceiling, and any daylight. Find one neutral or pleasing item and let your gaze rest for a few breaths. Contact your body through pressure. Press your feet into the floor for two to three seconds, release for two seconds, and repeat three to five times. If seated, add gentle pressure of your hands on your thighs. Choose a small sensation to track for ten seconds, such as the coolness of air at the nostrils or the warmth in your palms, then shift to something neutral, like the contact of your back with the chair. Pendulate between them for a minute or two. If an impulse to move arrives, try it safely. Pushing a wall, squeezing a pillow, or lengthening your spine by a few centimeters can complete a protective action your system is attempting.
This is not a cure. It is a way of buying yourself a little space during the wave, teaching your body that the wave crests and recedes. With practice, many clients report that surges shorten by 20 to 40 percent and feel less catastrophic.
How SE differs from and complements other therapies
Clients often arrive already versed in cognitive behavioral strategies, mindfulness apps, or medication. SE can sit alongside these tools without conflict. It is closest in spirit to mindfulness, with an emphasis on interoception and movement. But it is more active than standard mindfulness and more precise than general relaxation.
IFS therapy, which works with inner parts or subpersonalities, often pairs well with SE. For example, you might notice that a vigilant “protector” part amps up your chest and jaw before a big meeting. In an integrated session, we would pendulate between the bodily sensations of that protector and the presence of a compassionate self, allowing the protector’s felt sense to soften without forcing it aside. SE provides the physiological bridge that makes IFS less abstract for clients who struggle to imagine internal figures.
EMDR uses bilateral stimulation to help process traumatic memories. It too can bring the system to intense states. EMDR intensives, where several hours of work occur across one to three days, are useful when clients want momentum and already have enough capacity to manage big swings. I will often begin with several SE sessions to build regulation skills before scheduling EMDR intensives, especially with clients who experience frequent https://www.allichristiecounseling.com/ifs-therapy panic. That foundation reduces the risk of emotional whiplash and raises the ceiling for what the client can process in a condensed format.
Intensives of any modality promise concentrated work, and sometimes they deliver impressive gains. The trade‑off is load. Condensed schedules can flood a nervous system. When clients are in active burnout or sleeping poorly, I recommend a paced series first, roughly 6 to 10 shorter SE appointments to stabilize. Then, if desired, we consider an intensive block tailored to the person’s physiology, with clear off‑ramps and buffers before and after.
Cautions, pace, and edge cases
Not every client should dive straight into body work. Some arrive with medical conditions that complicate interoception. Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, asthma, or cardiac arrhythmias can mimic panic symptoms. We work alongside medical providers and adapt. For example, a client with asthma who panics when breath focus triggers air hunger might use visual orienting and light touch instead of respiratory tracking.
Dissociation changes the map. If you go spacey when you get anxious, diving into intense sensations likely backfires. In those cases, we start with finding neutral or pleasant anchors that are simple, like the weight of a blanket on your lap, a cool glass against your palm, or the rhythm of walking at a slow pace. Only when presence is stable do we approach the edges.
Medications, particularly benzodiazepines and stimulants, affect arousal profiles. This does not forbid SE. It changes pacing and expectations. Clients on long‑term benzodiazepines may need more sessions to notice subtle shifts. Clients on stimulants may benefit from slightly longer disengagement phases in session to let sympathetic activation settle.
Trauma content is not mandatory to make progress. Many clients reduce panic frequency without narrating traumatic memories. When memories do arise, we take them in snippets, often a single image or fragment, always wed to present‑moment body tracking.
The burnout connection
Burnout and anxiety feed each other. Chronic overwork erodes sleep, nutrition, and downtime, which narrows the window of tolerance. Then normal stressors trigger exaggerated responses. Somatic experiencing treats burnout not just as a workload problem but as a pattern of sympathetic bias with a collapsed parasympathetic rebound. Clients in burnout often cannot feel satisfaction or rest even after a break. The system has forgotten how to downshift.
We help reintroduce micro‑rest in the body. Five seconds of softening the jaw, seven seconds of gentle downward gaze, two minutes with the back supported and the exhale slightly longer than the inhale. It sounds trivial. Done many times a day, these small resets accumulate. After a few weeks, clients often notice that Sunday evenings are not as edgy. After a few months, the subtle pleasures of food, conversation, or sunlight return. As capacity returns, practical changes to workload are easier to execute because the system is no longer treating every email as a threat.
Home practice that actually helps
Skill building between sessions matters. The key is brief, specific exercises repeated often, rather than heroic efforts once a week. Choose two practices and stick with them for four weeks before adding more.
- Daily orienting. Two or three times a day, let your eyes slowly take in the space you are in. Name three colors and two shapes you can see. Feel your feet while you do it. Total time, under one minute. Pressure and release. Seated or standing, press your feet or hands into a surface for two to three seconds, then release for two seconds, repeating five to eight times. Aim for a sense of effort without strain. Pleasant tracking. Identify one neutral to pleasant sensation, such as warmth from a cup of tea or the softness of clothing on your shoulders. Track it for 20 to 30 seconds, then go about your day. Micro‑movement. Once daily, let your body follow a gentle impulse, like a slow twist to look over one shoulder, a yawn, or a push into a wall for five seconds. Notice what changes after. Boundaries in the calendar. Protect one 20‑minute block daily that is not for productivity. It might be a walk, a shower, or sitting quietly near a window. Treat it as a boundary rather than a reward.
Clients who keep practices this simple are the ones who still use them a year later.
Measuring progress without trapping yourself
Anxious minds love metrics. With panic, rigid tracking backfires. Instead of logging every spike, we monitor a few meaningful markers over 4 to 8 weeks.
First, recovery time. How long does it take to come back below a three out of ten after a surge. Many clients start at 30 to 60 minutes and improve to 10 to 20 minutes over a few months.
Second, agency. Can you influence your state even a little during activation. A single effective exhale, a successful wall push, or the ability to shift your gaze counts.
Third, life resumption. Which activities return. Driving short distances, attending a work meeting without sitting near the exit, or sleeping through the night two to three times a week are concrete wins.
Expect nonlinear change. Progress often looks like two easier weeks, one hard week, then a new baseline that is slightly better than the old one. Do not judge the whole process by a single bad day.
What to expect over a course of therapy
Frequency matters more than duration at first. Weekly sessions build momentum. Many clients notice movement in three to six sessions, though lasting change typically takes 8 to 20, depending on complexity, medical factors, and life stress. Some pivot to twice‑monthly maintenance after the acute phase.
Intensives can condense this arc. A focused day of SE and related work might include three 60‑minute blocks with generous breaks, a movement segment, and a simple integration plan to carry home. I reserve intensives for clients whose nervous systems already show enough swing between activation and settling in short sessions. If a client spends most of a 50‑minute hour above a seven out of ten, an intensive is premature.
When integrating with IFS therapy or planning EMDR intensives, sequencing is key. Build regulation and orienting first, layer in parts work second, then add trauma processing once the body shows it can rise and fall without flooding. In practice, this could look like four to six SE sessions, four to eight IFS‑informed sessions where parts learn to trust the body’s signals, then a brief EMDR intensive to target the root triggers that still light up the system.
Working with a therapist versus self‑guided practice
You can learn a lot on your own. Still, there is a ceiling to solo work. A therapist trained in somatic experiencing tracks micro‑signals you might miss and applies titration that is hard to do from the inside. The therapist’s calm presence is not just comforting. It is a nervous system input that your body reads as safety, which allows deeper change.
If you are selecting a practitioner, ask about their pacing philosophy, comfort with panic, and familiarity with medical conditions that overlap with anxiety. A good fit includes someone who can explain why slowing down helps without asking you to relive everything. If they also practice IFS therapy or EMDR, ask how they sequence modalities and whether they offer intensives for later stages of work.
Where SE fits when life is hectic
Clients in high‑demand roles often arrive with calendar fatigue. They ask for the minimum viable dose. For these clients, I suggest a front‑loaded plan: three sessions in two weeks to establish basics, then weekly for a month, then reassess. Between sessions, five minutes of daily practice, not twenty. We add skill in crumbs that fit reality, so the work survives contact with Monday morning.
For those on parental leave, between jobs, or in transition, we might go deeper. A two‑day mini‑retreat can be designed that weaves SE with movement, long walks, and extended rest, then a quiet week to consolidate. Properly timed, this format can make a durable dent in chronic anxiety without overwhelming the system.
When panic masks grief, anger, or unfinished stories
Anxiety sometimes stands in for a feeling that is not welcome in your family or culture. Grief and anger are common candidates. In session, a client might track pressure in the chest that at first reads as panic. Given time and permission, the pressure becomes heat and an impulse to cry or to press the palms away from the body. Completing those actions is not symbolic. It is a physiological correction. Muscles lengthen, breath returns, and the fear that the feeling would swallow you proves false. Later, talking about the meaning of the feeling lands more gently because the body has already released some of its charge.
Practical boundaries that reduce panic triggers
Environment and habits matter. You cannot somatically out‑train a life that keeps your foot pinned on the accelerator. Two changes show outsized impact. First, reduce caffeine to a single serving before noon. This alone reduces false alarms in many clients. Second, improve sleep consistency by anchoring wake time, even on weekends. Nervous systems recover with rhythm. Nutrition, sunlight in the morning, and brief exercise add layers of support, but these two anchors carry a lot of weight.
It also helps to reframe exit strategies. People with panic often sit near doors or plan escape routes, and then judge themselves for it. Keep the escape plan, but shift its meaning. It is not proof you are broken. It is a cue to your system that you are allowed to leave if needed. Paradoxically, this permission makes staying easier.
A sober word on expectations
SE is not magic. It will not erase all anxiety, and it will not fit every person. People who prefer intensely verbal processing sometimes find the quiet disorienting. Others, especially those who have spent years overriding their bodies to function, find that bodily truth is precisely what they need.
What I have seen, across hundreds of hours, is that the body often wants to heal. Given time, respect, and the right sequence, it remembers how to move from alarm to steadier ground. Panic becomes a visitor rather than a tyrant. Anxiety narrows its claims on your day. Capacity returns, and with it the ability to choose rather than react.
If that is the direction you want, start small. Learn to notice the floor under your feet. Let your eyes find something steady. Give your body five seconds of pressure, then a breath that ends on its own. Repeat, often. When you are ready, add a skilled guide. Piece by piece, your system can learn a new pattern that holds under stress, not just in the quiet of a therapy room.
Address: 9362 Teddy Ln, Suite 202, Lone Tree, CO 80124
Phone: (402) 765-8761
Website: https://www.allichristiecounseling.com/
Email: [email protected]
Hours:
Sunday: Closed
Monday: 8:00 AM - 6:00 PM
Tuesday: 8:00 AM - 6:00 PM
Wednesday: 8:00 AM - 6:00 PM
Thursday: 8:00 AM - 6:00 PM
Friday: 8:00 AM - 6:00 PM
Saturday: 8:00 AM - 6:00 PM
Open-location code (plus code): H42C+M6 Lone Tree, Colorado, USA
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Alli Christie Counseling provides mental health services centered on therapy intensives for high-achieving women in Colorado, with an office in Lone Tree.
The site highlights EMDR intensives, IFS therapy, Somatic Experiencing, and focused support for concerns such as anxiety, burnout, panic, trauma, and self-doubt.
The practice is led by Alli Christie Disney, LPC, and the Colorado location page says the office works with women from across the state, including Denver, Boulder, Colorado Springs, and Fort Collins.
For local visitors in Lone Tree, the office is listed at 9362 Teddy Ln, Suite 202, Lone Tree, CO 80124.
The practice appears best suited for women ages 16 and up who want a structured, longer-format therapy option rather than standard weekly sessions alone.
The official Colorado page also says online sessions may be available for people who prefer virtual work or want follow-up support after an in-person intensive.
To ask about fit or scheduling, call (402) 765-8761 or visit https://www.allichristiecounseling.com/.
For map directions and public listing context, see https://www.google.com/maps/place/Alli+Christie+Counseling/@39.5524957,-104.8803997,17z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x876c859f7a8fa043:0x7712f13d361a1824!8m2!3d39.5516997!4d-104.8794188!16s%2Fg%2F11h2cf2bsx.
Popular Questions About Alli Christie Counseling
What services does Alli Christie Counseling offer?
The official site lists therapy intensives, EMDR intensives, IFS therapy, Somatic Experiencing, anxiety support, and burnout-focused therapy content.Who is the practice designed to serve?
The Colorado location page says the practice specializes in working with high-achieving women ages 16 and up, including entrepreneurs, executives, and women in demanding fields.Where is the Lone Tree office located?
The contact page lists the office at 9362 Teddy Ln, Suite 202, Lone Tree, CO 80124.Does Alli Christie Counseling only offer intensives?
The homepage says the practice primarily offers intensive healing experiences, while also keeping limited availability for some ongoing sessions in a more traditional format.Does the practice offer online sessions?
Yes. The Colorado location page says online sessions are available for people who prefer virtual work or want remote follow-up support after an in-person intensive.What issues are mentioned on the Colorado page?
The site names trauma, developmental trauma, childhood trauma, anxiety, panic attacks, imposter syndrome, burnout, self-doubt, and phobias among the concerns addressed through intensives.What therapy approaches are mentioned on the site?
The practice highlights EMDR, Internal Family Systems (IFS), and Somatic Experiencing (SE) as the main modalities used in its intensive work.How can I contact Alli Christie Counseling?
Call tel:+14027658761, visit https://www.allichristiecounseling.com/, and follow https://www.facebook.com/allichristiecounseling/ and https://www.instagram.com/allichristiecounseling/.Landmarks Near Lone Tree, CO
Park Meadows — Park Meadows is one of Lone Tree’s best-known destinations and is described by its official site as Colorado’s biggest shopping mall. If you are near Park Meadows, Alli Christie Counseling’s Lone Tree office is a useful local reference point for planning therapy visits.Lone Tree Arts Center — The Lone Tree Arts Center is a major local arts and culture venue and a recognizable anchor in the city. If you spend time near the arts center, the Lone Tree office gives you a simple nearby point of reference for counseling and intensive therapy services.
I-25 and Lincoln Avenue — The Sky Ridge at Lone Tree Station mobility hub project identifies the I-25 and Lincoln Avenue interchange as a major transit and access point in Lone Tree. If that corridor is part of your regular route, the office location is easy to place within the same local area.
Lone Tree City Center — The city describes Lone Tree City Center as east of I-25 between Lincoln Avenue and RidgeGate Parkway, with a walkable mixed-use focus and light rail access. If you are near City Center or RidgeGate, the office is part of the same broader Lone Tree service geography.
High Note Park and Happy Canyon Trail — The city’s High Note Park page highlights the Happy Canyon Trail connection running under RidgeGate Parkway and linking toward Lincoln Avenue. If you live or work near the RidgeGate trail network, the Lone Tree office is a practical local counseling reference.
Bluffs Regional Park and Trail — Lone Tree’s resident guide identifies Bluffs Regional Park and Trail as a major local trail area with a loop trail and trail connectors. If you use the bluffs or nearby trailheads as your local frame of reference, Alli Christie Counseling remains a clear Lone Tree destination to work from.