Somatic Psychotherapy for Nervous System Dysregulation
in Brisbane & Telehealth throughout Australia
Your nervous system deserves support that understands how it works.
When your nervous system is dysregulated, everything feels harder.
Does this resonate with you?
You're either stuck in overdrive, anxious, on edge, unable to settle or completely shut down, numb and exhausted. or chronically burnt out. There's no comfortable middle ground where you feel calm and present.
Your body reacts to everyday situations as if they're emergencies. A small comment sends you into panic, or you find yourself frozen when you need to act.
You swing between extreme states, rage one moment, collapse the next—and can't seem to find stability or balance.
Sleep is difficult because your nervous system won't let you rest. Even when you're physically exhausted, your body stays vigilant and alert.
You've tried breathing exercises, meditation, and relaxation techniques, but your nervous system seems to have a mind of its own. Nothing you do creates lasting change.
You may also struggle with…
Physical Symptoms of Dysregulation
Racing heart, shallow breathing, muscle tension, digestive issues, chronic pain, or temperature fluctuations. Your body is sending constant distress signals because your nervous system can't find its way back to regulation. You feel physically uncomfortable most of the time, and medical tests often come back normal.
Chronic Hypervigilance
You're constantly scanning your environment for danger. You notice every sound, every facial expression, every shift in energy around you. This constant vigilance is exhausting, but you can't turn it off. You feel like you're always waiting for something bad to happen.
Emotional Overwhelm or Numbness
You're either flooded with intense emotions that feel unmanageable, or you feel nothing at all, disconnected and numb. There's no in-between where emotions feel tolerable and manageable. This extreme swing leaves you feeling out of control and afraid of your own emotional responses.
Reactivity in Relationships
Small conflicts feel catastrophic. You lash out, withdraw completely, or freeze when faced with interpersonal tension. Your nervous system interprets relationship challenges as threats to your survival, making it difficult to navigate conflict constructively or stay connected during difficult conversations.
Difficulty With Transitions and Changes
Moving from one activity to another, changes in routine, or unexpected events send your nervous system into chaos. What seems simple for others requires enormous effort from you. You need extensive time to prepare for changes, and even then, your body reacts with anxiety or shutdown.
Recovery Takes Forever
After any stressful event even minor ones, it takes you hours or days to feel normal again. While others seem to bounce back quickly, your nervous system stays activated or shut down for extended periods. You feel like you're always recovering from the last thing and never building resilience.
It might feel impossible right now, but you can find regulation and ease in your nervous system.
You can learn to recognise your nervous system states.
You can develop tools to shift from dysregulation to safety.
And I can help you get there.
Somatic Psychotherapy for nervous system dysregulation can help you…
Understand how your nervous system responds to stress and why it gets stuck in extreme states
Recognize the early signs of dysregulation before you become overwhelmed or shut down
Develop practical, body-based tools to regulate your autonomic nervous system
Release stored activation and tension that keeps your system in chronic stress
Build capacity to tolerate a wider range of emotions and sensations without becoming dysregulated
Find that calm middle ground where you feel safe, present, and able to respond flexibly
Work with the protective parts of you that trigger dysregulation as a way to keep you safe
Create new neural pathways that support regulation, resilience, and well-being
What people with nervous system dysregulation often experience:
"I feel like I'm either in overdrive or completely shut down, there's no in-between."
"My body reacts before I even have time to think, and then I'm stuck in that state for hours."
"I know I'm safe, but my body doesn't believe it."
"Everything feels like too much. I can't handle normal life stress like other people can."
"I'm exhausted from being on high alert all the time, but I can't figure out how to turn it off."
"I'm exhausted from being shut down or frozen all the time, but I can't figure out how to turn it off."
"I try all the calming techniques, but nothing works when I'm in that activated state."
"I'm tired of my body controlling me instead of the other way around."
“Breathwork, exercise and meditation makes me worse”
My Approach
My approach recognizes that nervous system dysregulation isn't something you can simply think or breathe your way out of. Your autonomic nervous system operates largely outside conscious control, shaped by past experiences, trauma, and chronic stress that have altered how your body responds to the world.
I work with clients using Somatic Psychotherapy, Somatic Movement, TIST (Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment), and Polyvagal- Informed approaches to help you understand and work with your nervous system rather than against it.
Through somatic approaches, you'll learn to track your nervous system states, recognize the physical sensations that signal dysregulation, and use body-based interventions to shift your autonomic response. We'll work with your autonomic nervous system, emotional motor systems, limbic system, and arousal systems, to restore flexible, adaptive functioning.
Using TIST and parts work, we'll explore the protective parts of you that trigger dysregulation as a way to keep you safe. These parts developed intelligent survival strategies in response to overwhelming experiences. Rather than fighting against your body's responses, we'll help these parts feel safe enough to release their protective grip, allowing your nervous system to return to regulation.
This work is based on current neuroscience research into interoception, proprioception, and the role of the autonomic nervous system in trauma and stress. We understand that dysregulation is a sign that your nervous system has been overwhelmed and needs support to find its way back to balance.
My work with nervous system dysregulation will include helping you understand the difference between sympathetic activation (fight/flight), dorsal vagal shutdown (freeze/collapse), and ventral vagal regulation (safe and social). You'll learn to recognize which state you're in and use specific somatic interventions, including gentle movement, trauma informed breath work, sensory awareness, and bilateral stimulation to support your system in shifting toward regulation.
This integrated approach creates space for you to move beyond intellectual understanding into embodied healing. When we experience chronic stress or trauma, our nervous systems can become "tuned" to respond with excessive activation or shutdown. These patterns can persist even after the original threat has passed. Through careful, titrated work with your body's sensations and responses, we can help your nervous system learn new patterns of safety and regulation.
I have specialized training in working with trauma and nervous system dysregulation, and I understand how early experiences, attachment patterns, and unresolved trauma shape your autonomic responses. We'll work at a pace that respects your nervous system's capacity, always moving slowly enough that you can integrate the changes we're creating.
Through this work, you'll have the opportunity to develop:
Greater interoceptive awareness, the ability to notice and interpret your body's internal signals accurately
Skills to recognize when you're moving toward dysregulation and intervene early
A repertoire of body-based tools that work specifically for your nervous system
Compassion for your body's protective responses and the parts that trigger them
A felt sense of safety that allows your nervous system to rest and restore
The capacity to tolerate uncomfortable sensations without becoming overwhelmed
Resilience and flexibility in your nervous system responses
How This Therapy Can Support Your Nervous System Healing
Help you understand the three primary autonomic states and recognize which state you're in at any given moment
Teach you to track the early physical sensations that signal dysregulation before you reach extreme states
Work with your body's natural capacity for discharge—releasing stored activation through trembling, movement, and other somatic processes
Guide completion of interrupted defensive responses and shock, allowing your nervous system to complete survival actions that were thwarted during overwhelming experiences
Use titration to approach activating experiences gradually, preventing overwhelm while still processing what needs attention
Support pendulation, the natural oscillation between activation and settling that helps your nervous system build capacity
Address trauma held in procedural memory through body-based interventions rather than relying solely on narrative processing
Help you develop somatic resources, body-based experiences of safety, strength, and regulation that you can access when needed
Work with protective parts that trigger dysregulation, helping them find new ways to keep you safe that don't require chronic activation or shutdown
Create new experiences of safety in your body, giving your nervous system evidence that regulation is possible
Approaches
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Sensorimotor & Somatic Psychotherapies
Sensorimotor & Somatic Psychotherapies work directly with the body's sensations, movements, and physical experiences to process trauma. These approaches recognize that trauma is stored in the body and nervous system, not just the mind. By bringing awareness to bodily sensations, gestures, and movement patterns, clients can complete survival responses that were interrupted during traumatic experiences and develop new, adaptive patterns that support healing and regulation.
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Trauma Informed Stabilization Treatment & Parts Work
Trauma Informed Stabilization Treatment & Parts Work uses a phase-based approach to healing, prioritizing safety and stabilization before processing trauma. This method recognizes that trauma can cause fragmentation of the self into different parts or states. Through compassionate parts work, clients learn to understand, communicate with, and integrate these protective and wounded parts, creating internal collaboration and coherence rather than conflict.
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Somatic Movement
Somatic Movement utilizes intentional, mindful movement practices to release trauma held in the body, increase body awareness, and develop new patterns of relating to physical sensations. Movement becomes a language for processing what words cannot express, helping clients reconnect with their bodies, release chronic tension and pain, and build capacity for embodied presence and pleasure.
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Polyvagal Theory
Polyvagal Theory provides a framework for understanding how the autonomic nervous system responds to safety and threat. This approach helps clients recognize their nervous system states—social engagement, fight/flight, or shutdown—and develop practices to shift between these states intentionally. By building awareness of nervous system patterns, clients can cultivate regulation, safety, and the capacity for authentic connection with themselves and others.
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Attachment Based Framework & DDP (Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy)
Attachment Based Framework & DDP (Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy) focuses on healing relational trauma and attachment wounds through the therapeutic relationship itself. This approach recognizes that early attachment experiences shape how we relate to ourselves and others. Through attuned, responsive therapeutic presence and co-regulation, clients can develop earned secure attachment, repair developmental trauma, and build capacity for healthy, connected relationships.
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Movement Science
Movement Science applies research-based understanding of how the body moves, holds tension, and responds to stress to inform therapeutic interventions. This approach integrates knowledge of biomechanics, neuroscience, and embodiment to help clients understand their physical patterns, release chronic holding, and develop more adaptive ways of inhabiting their bodies that support both physical and emotional wellbeing.
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Dissociative Disorders & Structural Dissociation Framework
Dissociative Disorders & Structural Dissociation Framework provides a comprehensive understanding of how trauma can cause the personality to fragment into distinct parts or subsystems, each holding different experiences, emotions, and functions. This framework recognizes dissociation as an adaptive survival response to overwhelming trauma, particularly in childhood. Through specialized therapeutic approaches, clients can work with different parts of their personality structure—emotional parts that hold traumatic memories and experiences, and apparently normal parts that manage daily functioning—to achieve greater integration, cooperation, and wholeness.
You don't have to keep living with a dysregulated nervous system.
You don't have to navigate this alone.
I'm here to help you understand your nervous system and find your way back to regulation.
Together, we'll work to help you recognize your body's signals, allow safe de-activation, and build capacity for calm, present awareness, moving from chronic dysregulation to sustainable well-being.
Nervous System Dysregulation Therapy FAQs
Still have questions? Take a look at the FAQ or reach out anytime. If you’re feeling ready, go ahead and apply.
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Nervous system dysregulation can result from trauma (single-incident or complex), chronic stress, early attachment disruptions, or overwhelming experiences where your natural defensive responses were thwarted or incomplete. When your autonomic nervous system is repeatedly activated without adequate opportunity to discharge and return to baseline, it can become "stuck" in patterns of hyperactivation or shutdown. Research shows that the nervous system forms a complex dynamical system that can enter adaptive functional states when overwhelmed beyond a certain threshold.
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Somatic therapy works directly with your autonomic nervous system through body-based interventions rather than primarily through cognitive or emotional processing. While understanding your patterns is helpful, dysregulation exists at a physiological level that requires bottom-up approaches. Somatic therapy uses interoceptive and proprioceptive awareness, gentle movement, and nervous system tracking to help restore regulation. This approach is particularly effective because it addresses where dysregulation actually lives, in your body and nervous system.
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During sessions, you may experience a range of sensations as your nervous system begins to shift, you might feel warmth, tingling, trembling, deeper breathing, or gentle waves of emotion. There may be increased interoceptive awareness from numbness and disconnection. These are signs of your nervous system discharging stored activation and moving toward regulation. After sessions, many clients report feeling more grounded, calm, and present in their bodies. Some may feel tired as their system finally allows rest. We always work at a pace that respects your capacity, using titration to prevent overwhelm.
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The timeline varies depending on how long your nervous system has been dysregulated and what contributed to the dysregulation. Some clients experience significant shifts within a few months, while others engage in longer-term work to address complex trauma and deeply entrenched patterns. The important thing is that we follow a phase-based approach, building safety and resources before moving into deeper processing. Your nervous system's healing will unfold at its own pace, and we'll honor that throughout our work together
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I'd be honored to support you in finding regulation and ease in your nervous system. We'll start with a consultation where we can meet, discuss what you're experiencing, and see if we're a good fit to work together. The therapeutic relationship and nervous system co-regulation between us are essential for this work, so it's important that you feel comfortable and safe with me. If either of us feels we're not the right match, I'm happy to provide referrals to other practitioners who might be better suited to your needs.