Somatic Strength Studio

13/11/2025

Your emotions feel like your enemy. But really, they’re bodily sensations. They’re trying to tell you something important.

I know that when you avoid feeling the rage, the shame, the grief, the terror—you think you’re protecting yourself.

And part of you is. The part that learned, through experience, that feelings weren’t safe.

But here’s what I’ve witnessed hundreds of times in my therapy room: the real work in therapy is learning to not avoid those feelings and that the avoidance keeps you safe, only from getting your needs met in a healthier way that suits today instead of trauma time.

Because you can’t heal what you avoid in accessing or feeling.

The truth is this: Those feelings you’ve been running from feel as dangerous as your nervous system believes. They consume you. They last forever. They feel like they make you “crazy” or “weak” or “too much.”

And this is because your nervous system doesn’t yet have the capacity and skills to grow around them and safely contain them.

What keeps you stuck isn’t the feeling itself. It’s the avoiding and not knowing how not to.

It’s the fear that you can’t handle what’s inside you.

In somatic trauma therapy, we don’t push you to feel everything all at once. We don’t flood you or re-traumatize you.

Instead, we create safety. We go slowly. We help your nervous system learn, perhaps for the first time, that feelings can be felt without destroying you.

We learn that healing doesn’t come from pushing feelings away. It comes from learning to safely feel them, understand them, and work with them with compassion.

Your inner experience—all those thoughts, emotions, and sensations you’ve been running from—is actually the doorway to your freedom.

You deserve to feel at peace in your own body. You deserve to stop running.

Ready to begin? Apply to work with me via Link in bio. 💫

12/11/2025

Simple Somatic Practice to regulate the Nervous System through pain…Pendulation.

When we can retrain our brain and nervous system to access parts of our body that don’t hold pain, instead hold more pleasant soft warm easier sensations…we can regulate our nervous system to feel safe and not hit the panic button easily, giving space for less pain.

Give this a try and leave a comment if you found it helpful 👇🏻

05/11/2025

🍃“I’m just so overwhelmed.”🍃

👉🏼But what if you’re not overwhelmed…what if a part of you is overwhelmed?

👉🏼This distinction is the heart of parts-based trauma work, and it’s transformative. When we blend with our parts, we become them. “I can’t do this” feels like absolute truth.

👉🏼But when we unblend and use parts language. “A part of me feels like it’s too much”, We create space for our adult self to respond with compassion.

👉🏼This isn’t just semantic—it’s neurological. Parts language activates your prefrontal cortex, your capacity to observe rather than react.

👉🏼Parts language helps us manage triggers because it interrupts the automatic reaction. When something activates your nervous system, instead of spiraling, you can pause: “Who’s triggered right now? What does this part need? “

➡️ When triggered, try these:

Notice: “The parts are triggered today”
Ground: Feel your feet, lengthen your spine
Comfort: Place a hand on your heart, ask “Is this better?”
Breathe: Allow yourself to sigh

👉🏼Each small intervention is a 10% solution. Therapy helps 10%. Grounding helps 10%. A hand on your heart helps 10%. Add them up, and you get the relief you deserve.

👉🏼When we welcome all parts to the table, something remarkable happens: they start to trust us 10% more. And when our parts feel heard, they soften. The triggers lose their grip. We become whole.

Like this post if it gave you a small starting place today for your trauma healing💕

04/11/2025

When even trauma responses elicit abuse or abusive reactions…

In abusive environments, the responses one may have to being subjected to trauma…along with the original emotional experience… may also elicit more abuse or bullying…

This may look like being ridiculed, shamed, bullied or punished or being met with harsh or toxic reactions… when you try to fight back, avoid the situation or the person or use other avoidance strategies or when you felt so frozen and couldn’t more or when you may have been immobilised…

It may have left you feeling like you are damned if you do and you are damned if you don’t… it makes sense then that you maybe experiencing shame or fear around your own trauma responses…

This is a big reason why trauma recovery is so layered… because the relationship you may have had with your trauma responses maybe holding a lot of layered shame…

Often it maybe this layered shame that then goes onto be held in dissociative parts trying to create a sense of protection towards those survival responses that came about in response to the vulnerable emotional states…

Trauma recovery is long and layered and what was harmed day in and day out for years needs time to be soothed , processed and integrated…

If you are looking for a therapist that has really specific experience in supporting complex trauma and dissociation/fragmentation…I’ve got a few therapy spots open foe new clients.

Sessions held in Ashgrove and Mt Gravatt, Telehealth is available too.

✨Go have a peek at my website and apply to work with me using the link in bio ✨

28/10/2025

The next time your shoulders collapse in shame and your belly shrinks into the pit…here’s a small practice to work with the heaviness….

Sun Rays Into Your Body: A gentle, 2–5 minute reset to “thaw” shame’s contraction and invite warmth and openness.

🍃Arrive and orient: Sit or lie down. Let your eyes soften and notice three safe details around you. Imagine a safe place in nature where you feel held and at ease.

🍃Hand-to-belly anchor: Place one hand over your belly button. Feel the contact, temperature, and weight of your hand. If possible thank the shame for showing up and let it know that it is safe with you.

🍃Warmth visualisation: Picture the sun above you, just right for you today: warm, bright, and inviting. Imagine a soft ray landing at your belly, like light through a window, meeting your hand.

🍃Breath with the ray: Inhale gently toward your hand for a slow count of 3 or 4. Exhale for 4 or 5. With each exhale, let the warmth spread a little wider through your belly, ribs, and back. If it feels good, silently say: “Warmth in. Soften out.”

🍃Savor and notice: Stay with any pleasant or easing sensations for 10–20 seconds at a time.

🍃Track what shifts: breath rate, muscle tone, posture, or emotion. When ready, open your eyes wider and re-orient to the room.

Tips:
👉🏼Keep the sun “just right.” If the image is too intense, dim it or move it farther away.
👉🏼If shame spikes, return to step 1, feel the support under you, and shorten the practice and return to grounding.

24/10/2025

If you want to learn how to gently shift from shame to compassion, here is a small somatic practice to help⬇️

A gentle, 2–5 minute reset to “thaw” shame’s contraction and invite warmth and openness.

👉🏼Sit or lie down. Let your eyes soften and notice three safe details around you.

👉🏼Imagine a safe place in nature where you feel held and at ease.

👉🏼Place one hand over your belly button.

👉🏼Feel the contact, temperature, and weight of your hand.

👉🏼Picture the sun above you, just right for you today: warm, bright, and inviting.

👉🏼Imagine a soft ray landing at your belly, like light through a window, meeting your hand.

👉🏼Inhale gently toward your hand for a slow count of 3 or or 4 and Exhale for 4 or 5.

👉🏼With each exhale, let the warmth spread a little wider through your belly, ribs, and back.

👉🏼If it feels good, silently say: “Warmth in. Soften out.”

👉🏼Stay with any pleasant or easing sensations for 10–20 seconds at a time.

👉🏼Track what shifts: breath rate, muscle tone, posture, or emotion.

👉🏼When ready, open your eyes wider and re-orient to the room.

🍃Save this post to revisit when you have that part of you saying”you aren’t doing enough”.

24/10/2025

22/10/2025

Shame isn’t something that you just “feel” sometimes.

For you, it might be the filter through which you see everything. The constant hum beneath every interaction. The baseline feeling that something is fundamentally wrong with you.

You wake up with it. You carry it to work. It whispers when someone compliments you (“they don’t really mean it”). It screams when you make the smallest mistake (“see? you ARE broken”).

This is chronic shame—and if you grew up with childhood trauma, your brain literally wired itself around this feeling.

Here’s what’s happening in your nervous system:
When shame floods your nervous system, your anterior insula lights up—the part of your brain that processes emotional awareness and body sensations. Your dorsal anterior cingulate cortex activates (the same area that processes physical pain). Your thalamus joins in. Literally, your brain processes shame like social pain.

Your premotor cortex—responsible for movement and speech—gets involved too. That’s why shame makes you freeze, hide, go quiet. It’s not weakness. It’s neurobiology.
Biology that forced you to internalise all the blame, fault and brokenness when you had little power to hold those who harmed you accountable. Because if you did, you wouldn’t be given connection, you wouldn’t belong.

Here’s what matters right now as an adult: Guilt activates different brain areas than shame.

Guilt lights up your temporo-parietal junction—the area for empathy, understanding others’ perspectives, and making repairs. Guilt says “I can fix this.” Shame says “I am broken.”
If you grew up with childhood trauma, your brain learned shame early. You internalized “I’m bad” when you needed to hear “what happened to you was wrong.”

Chronic shame isn’t a character flaw. It’s a nervous system adaptation to an environment where you learned: “I am the problem.”

But here’s the truth: Shame is a feeling, not a fact. What was wired by survival can be rewired through safety. You’re a human being whose brain did exactly what it needed to do to survive. 🤍

Drop a 🤍 if this resonated. Comment “ME” if you’ve felt this. Let’s normalize talking about shame so it loses its power 🍃

22/10/2025

Hello Hello!

It’s been a while and there’s quite a few of you new here ❤️

Somatic Strength Studio is now unofficially Somatic Trauma Therapy…It’s simple, straightforward and more of a reflection of my practice now! You may see me fiddling around with changes in branding and design…I’m no brand manager so you can watch me learn and probably get it chaotic if not wrong 🫠

A little over 2500 people have invited this page into their (social media) life and I thank you for it! I’m excited to share more of my work and offerings!

So to those of you that are new... here is a little something about me and what I’ve been up to!

✨I’m excited to announce that I have fully moved into full time private practice and it’s been a whirlwind but we are landing here- with online & in person offerings for folks with trauma!

You will find me at Ashgrove on Saturdays, Mt Gravatt on Thursdays, , Tuesdays & Wednesdays at work from home with my clingy Aussie shepherd under my desk! .

👉🏼As a trained trauma therapist and a movement practitioner… I’m always looking for ways to learn the best practices in the field of trauma therapy & somatic healing to be the safe practitioner you need.

👉🏼I am currently enrolled in Somatic Experiencing 2026 and oh hey I’ve completed and certified in Trauma Informed Stabilization Treatment with Janina Fischer .

👉🏼My practice is built on integrating somatics, movement, parts work and body based therapy for trauma recovery for trauma survivors.

👉🏼Self therapy work is incredibly important part of being a reflective & effective practitioner and I am still sifting through my own developmental trauma and learning to heal, grow, rest, play and love every day.

It is not easy and I am grateful that it is not.☺️

👉🏼You’ll find me obsessing over all things space/deep sea, books, fiction/sci-fi/fantasy movies, rock music and art!

Well, I’d be lying…I mostly spend time with my high energy ausshole dog!

👉🏼To the best of my capacity I try to show up and post with authenticity on this page.

I am always up for a chat so feel free to connect or ask me anything!

To seeing more of you here…to being more of me here! ❤️

20/10/2025

Hi Welcome! Have you completed that chore that you started 6 days ago? No? Brain fog?? Yeah I get it, then you’ve found the right account!

Im Haritha, a trauma trained somatic therapist that specialises in how childhood trauma, chronic health, ND and trauma related dissociation affect the nervous system and body. Because guess what, that brain fog isn’t just coming from 1 thing 👀

➡️Tap that follow button and hang around with a therapist that gets how it feels like when you are overwhelmed by 4 different things and your body feels like a ping pong stuck in a blender💕

14/10/2025

➡️ You’ve been told you have an insecure or disorganised attachment style—and when you first found out, it made so much sense. Suddenly, every failed relationship, every ghosted date, every moment you felt “too much” or “not enough” clicked into place. There was comfort in finally having an explanation for why connection has felt so complicated.
But maybe, over time, that comfort started to feel a little heavy—like a life sentence. Like this is just how you are, and how you’ll always be. That no matter how much you learn or heal, your attachment fears and patterns will stay the same.

🍃 Here’s the truth:
If you had complex trauma in childhood, your attachment system became incredibly adaptive. It used every trial-and-error strategy it could to keep you safe and connected. Those brilliant, protective patterns eventually became what we call your “attachment style.”

Attachment researcher Patricia Crittenden reminds us that attachment strategies are dynamic. They shift with new experiences, safer environments, and more attuned people. This means your attachment style isn’t a fixed identity—it’s a living, breathing pattern that can evolve as you do.

💡So here are 10 small, secure attachment strategies to begin trying—each designed to stretch your vulnerability gently, without overwhelming your system:

1️⃣ Quietly notice your go-to feelings when you’re in distress.
2️⃣ Practice naming what you need—even if just to yourself or a trusted friend.
3️⃣ Wait an extra hour before replying when you feel urgency to fix or please.
4️⃣ Silently say “no” when you want to, even if only inside your head.
5️⃣ Label your emotions, beliefs, and fears as belonging to a part of you.
6️⃣ Stay with discomfort for 2–10 seconds before reaching for relief.
7️⃣ Practice tiny doses of vulnerability with safe people—repeat often.
8️⃣ Move your body before you engage in coping habits.
9️⃣ Practice self-soothing daily.
🔟 Pick up hobbies that are just for you—unrelated to relationships.

➡️ Ready to learn how to build secure attachment strategies that actually feel safe in your body?
TAP THE LINK IN MY BIO to work with me in therapy 🍃