Unmasking and Reclaiming: Somatic Approaches to Neuroqueer Experience

This presentation explored what happens when common somatic assumptions meet neuroqueer experience.

Somatic work often invites clients to notice internal sensation, slow down, become still, make contact or follow bodily signals. For some neurodivergent, queer and trans clients, however, these invitations may interact with sensory overload, masking, dysphoria, chronic social invalidation or different ways of accessing bodily information.

The presentation examined how Somatic Experiencing® principles can be applied without making neurotypical regulation the implicit goal. Topics included masking and embodied shame, interoception and sensory load, body awareness and dysphoria, self-regulatory movement, explicit consent and predictability, and multiple possible channels for accessing experience.

The central question was not how to make neuroqueer clients fit Somatic Experiencing, but:

How flexible can Somatic Experiencing become while remaining true to its principles?

The presentation later became the basis for a conceptual and practice-based paper on neuroqueer adaptations of Somatic Experiencing.