Trauma rearranges how a person relates to their body, their thoughts, and their sense of time. Some reactions swing wide and fast, others settle into a low hum that never turns off. When people say “I know I’m safe, but my body doesn’t feel it,” they are describing a split most of us recognize after stress, loss, or threat. Parts work, grounded in a somatic lens, gives language and leverage for that split. It allows us to meet the specific facets of experience that got stuck, while restoring the body’s capacity to settle. Done well, this approach is slow, practical, and deeply respectful of the protections that kept a person going.
What “parts” really means in the room
In therapy, “parts” is not a diagnosis, and it is rarely dramatic. It is the everyday way a person can feel pulled between impulses and beliefs. One part wants closeness, another scans for danger. A determined, high-functioning part handles deadlines, while a hurt, younger part wants to curl up under a blanket. Parts language creates a map. Instead of “I’m broken,” we begin to say, “A vigilant part does not trust my partner yet,” or “A tired part needs rest before I address this.”
Several models have mature frameworks for this, including Internal Family Systems, ego state therapy, and theories of structural dissociation. You do not need to adopt any one vocabulary to be effective. What matters is consent-based curiosity, recognition that every part is trying to help, and a practice of separating witnessing from fusion. Clients often breathe deeper once they realize they do not have to amputate a critical voice; they can learn what it protects, and renegotiate its job description.
Why the body must be at the table
Trauma is stored in patterns of tension, breath, orientation, and reflex. You can name a trigger, yet your diaphragm may still brace. Somatic work brings the body back into the conversation without forcing catharsis. The goal is not to unleash a torrent of memory; it is to help the nervous system re-find micro-moments of safety and choice.
In somatic experiencing, two principles deserve extra attention: titration and pendulation. Titration means contacting small doses of activation that the body can metabolize. Pendulation is the natural oscillation between distress and relief. In practice, that may look like noticing a fist clench for three seconds, then directing attention to the weight of your legs on the chair. You ride the wave, not the tsunami. Over time, this trains the nervous system to complete arcs of response that previously froze or looped.
Polyvagal theory provides a helpful shorthand for these states. Roughly, we move among mobilization, shutdown, and social engagement. The safe and sound protocol, developed by Stephen Porges, aims to bias the system toward social engagement by delivering filtered music that stimulates the middle ear muscles. Some clients report improved tolerance to sound and social cues after several hours of listening, typically guided by a trained provider. It is not a magic fix, and the research base is still building, but used within trauma therapy it can soften reactivity enough to attempt deeper work.
Clinics also use frameworks they call a rest and restore protocol to consolidate parasympathetic states. The specifics vary. Often it blends slow nasal breathing, longer exhales, supported positions, gentle vagal toning through humming, and sometimes HRV biofeedback. The point is not the brand name; it is teaching the body a language for settling that can be rehearsed daily, so parts work can happen on a steadier foundation.
A session arc that respects protection
A good trauma session opts for rhythm over revelation. The first five minutes matter. People arrive carrying the day on their shoulders, and we want the body online before we attempt meaning-making. The following cadence is one I return to, adapted to the person’s window of tolerance.
- Arrival and orienting: three to five breaths, eyes scanning the room, tracking points of contact and support. Map the room of parts: ask who is most present right now, and who is worried about being here. Negotiate with protectors: name their jobs, ask what they need to allow a little space for exploration. Titrate the target: touch a fragment of memory, sensation, or image, then return to a safe anchor. Close with completion: shake out, hum, or stretch, and state what a wiser, steadier part wants next.
This is not a rigid protocol. Some days, a session stays in step two and three because protectors have their reasons. That is honest work. Other days, a person naturally pendulates in and out of a memory with less prompting, and the therapist mainly marks the movement: “You noticed your throat loosen just now. Stay with that. What helps it loosen more?”
Micro-skills that make somatic parts work effective
Pacing is a clinical decision, not a preference. Bracing patterns can be subtle, and they exist for a reason. When I see a jaw set as someone talks about their mother, I may ask permission to bring attention to the jaw itself. That might lead to a swallow, a shift in the eyes, or a heat wave in the chest. We follow what unfolds, keeping doses small enough that memory edges can appear without erasing the witness.
A few elements tend to change outcomes. First, the therapist’s own regulation is the floor. If my breath races or my shoulders creep up, the room tightens. I check my own feet, slow my exhale, and orient before we begin. Second, language needs to be concrete. “Notice your hands,” “Let your back find the chair,” “Is it warmer or cooler there?” Verbs that name a specific action help more than abstractions about “processing.” Third, respect the literal body. If dizziness pops up, we do not push through. We lower the gaze, sip water, and widen the focus to the periphery of vision.
One client, a nurse in her 30s, described a “lava chest” that arrived every time her supervisor raised their voice. We treated it as a part’s signal rather than a symptom to mute. A protector, who had managed emergencies since adolescence, believed “freeze is death.” For weeks, that protector would not allow stillness in session. We honored that. We stood, and she paced while tracking her feet on the carpet. Only after that protector saw that the body did not collapse during two minutes of slow walking did it allow us to try sitting for thirty seconds. Two months later, the “lava” changed temperature to warm, then neutral. Her feedback was simple: “I realized I can move slowly without losing speed.”
Negotiating with protectors without power struggles
Protectors, whether perfectionist, cynical, or numb, show up early and often. They expect to be sidelined. If therapy attacks them, they dig in. Instead, we take their side. A classic move is to externalize the worst-case scenario in clear terms. “If we pay attention to that heavy stomach, what are you sure will happen?” The protector answers, “She will fall apart and miss work.” We negotiate: “Would you be open to a 10 percent experiment, with you monitoring, and we stop at the first sign of wobble?” Protectors usually agree when they have veto power.
Sometimes a protector’s fear is realistic. A single parent with unstable housing cannot afford two days of dissociation after a hard session. In that case, we shape the work for function. We run short, stabilizing sessions, schedule at the end of the day, and build agency through choices that fit real constraints. Integration is holistic or it is not integration.
The role of memory and meaning
Somatic parts work is not anti-memory. It is anti-overwhelm. Some memories, when approached through sensation and present-time resourcing, arrive on their own in pieces large enough to digest. Other times, explicit recall never comes, and the body still resolves the loop. What matters is the felt sense of completion: a breath you could not take then, taken now; a push you could not make, restored through a gentle press of your hands into the armrests; a phrase you needed to speak, finally spoken in a grounded voice.
Meaning follows. After a session where a client tracked a shaking in their thighs, they often say, “I thought I was weak. It turns out I was braced for years.” Or, “I thought I hated my father. I hate the silence we lived in.” Parts change their jobs when their person finds options they did not have before.
Vignettes from practice
A software engineer in his early 40s arrived with panic during performance reviews. Cognitive strategies calmed him at home but vanished the day of. His body signaled with sweaty palms and a numb mouth. We did four sessions focused on orienting to the room and slow head turns while imagining a supervisor’s voice. That got him from a nine to a six on his anxiety scale. The shift happened when we got the protector on board - the one who believed the only safe face at work was a blank mask. We practiced micro-expressions of interest and elements of the safe and sound protocol to increase tolerance to vocal prosody. During the next review he reported feeling his tongue, and he could say, “Can you repeat the last point?” That tiny question told his system it had agency. He still felt nervous but did not leave his body.
A retiree in her 60s with a long history of medical procedures avoided bathrooms in public places due to a single event years ago. Insight into the origin never touched the fear. We started with thirty-second visits to the clinic bathroom with me standing in the hall, eyes open. She kept a running commentary of sensations: cool tile, smell of cleaner, left calf tightening. Between each exposure we returned to a rest and restore protocol sequence on a mat: six breaths with a six-second exhale, hum on the out-breath, then a two-minute supported child’s pose with her head resting on a folded towel. After six weeks, she could enter most public restrooms, with two exceptions that we flagged for future work. She said the difference was realizing she could leave the bathroom at any time rather than white-knuckle through.
A graduate student in her late 20s presented with shutdown during arguments with her partner. She went mute, then blamed herself for stonewalling. Talk therapy had helped the narrative but not the freeze. We focused on the moment her throat “clicked.” When we caught the first click, we paused the content and put both hands on the sides of her neck where the muscles felt like guitar strings. Very gentle touch, with her own hands, while keeping her eyes open and feet flat, became the way through. Over two months, she learned to intervene earlier by clearing her throat and widening her gaze, which kept her within her window of tolerance during conflict. Her partner noticed arguments got shorter by about 30 percent and repair came faster.
Integrative mental health therapy: how the pieces fit
Parts work with a somatic base sits well inside integrative mental health therapy. The aim is not to stack modalities for the sake of variety, but to coordinate care that respects the nervous system. Medication can play a stabilizing role. In cases where hyperarousal leaves a person unable to sleep more than four hours, a short course of an appropriate medication may widen the window enough to engage somatic work safely. Collaboration with prescribing clinicians is essential, especially if a client uses benzodiazepines, which can blunt interoceptive awareness. The conversation is practical: what dose and timing support therapy hours without dulling needed signals.
Sleep, nutrition, and movement are not side quests. They load the body’s capacity to discharge and restore. For many clients, minimal changes shift a lot: a consistent wind-down that includes ten minutes of nasal breathing and lights dimmed an hour before bed; protein at breakfast to avoid late-morning crashes that mimic anxiety; a five-minute morning walk to reset circadian rhythm. Physical therapists and trauma-informed yoga teachers can teach graded movement that respects pain and hypervigilance. Occupational therapists can help design sensory diets that include weighted items, textures, and predictable routines.
The safe and sound protocol sometimes shows up as a bridge when a client startles at voices or struggles in noisy homes. It should be framed properly: expect subtle shifts in tolerance rather than dramatic breakthroughs. A rest and restore protocol, whatever name a clinic uses, works as daily homework. Choose two or three elements that are simple and portable. The goal is repetition, not intensity.
A short home practice that helps most clients
Sustained progress depends on what happens between sessions. People need a few tools that travel well and do not look like therapy. The following sequence takes five to eight minutes and can be used morning and evening, as well as before known stressors. Adjust as https://andersonuqyk236.huicopper.com/somatic-experiencing-for-grief-moving-through-the-waves needed for mobility and context.
- Orienting: let your eyes move slowly to three things in the room you did not notice before. Note one sound and one point of contact in your body. Breath and hum: in through the nose, out with a gentle hum. Aim for a longer exhale without strain, maybe a 4 in, 6 out pattern for one minute. Contact and containment: place a hand on the sternum and one on the belly. Warm the skin. Notice pressure, temperature, or movement under your hands for two minutes. Micro-movement: roll the shoulders, then press your feet into the floor for five seconds, three times. Track the rebound after each press. Choice statement: say out loud one small choice you can make in the next hour. Keep it behavioral and doable.
These five steps are not about forcing calm. They teach your body to recognize cues of safety, so parts that learned to brace can let go a notch.
When not to push, and what to do instead
Trauma therapy is full of edge cases. A person with recent head injury may experience dizziness with breathwork, so we avoid breath manipulations and rely on visual orientation and supported positions. Someone with active psychosis requires stabilization and a coordinated plan with psychiatry before any deep parts work; sensory grounding can be helpful, but trauma processing waits. People with unmanaged substance use often need concurrent addiction treatment; otherwise, sessions can become labs for dissociation. Severe sleep deprivation, common in new parents or shift workers, limits capacity to integrate - sometimes the entire therapy plan is “protect sleep first,” because everything else rides on it.
There are also relational edges. If a client has a history of complex betrayal, trust builds in inches. We earn our way into more vulnerable work by keeping our word about pacing. Ruptures happen. The therapist misses a cue, a session feels too fast, or a question lands like a challenge. Repair is part of the medicine. Naming the miss, checking what would have helped, and altering the plan shows protectors that change is possible without danger.
Evidence, outcomes, and practical measures
It is easy to overpromise in trauma work. Public conversations often highlight dramatic releases or quick fixes. Real progress is more often seen in numbers like these: panic attacks drop from daily to weekly, sleep increases from five to six and a half hours, conflict recovery time with a partner shrinks from two days to half a day, a person can ride an elevator two floors instead of only one. We can measure with validated tools like the PCL-5 for post-traumatic stress symptoms or the OQ-45 for overall functioning, but we should also integrate concrete, client-chosen indicators: number of avoided places visited, minutes of exercise completed, mornings without a stomach knot.
Somatic experiencing and parts-oriented therapies have growing but still mixed research literatures. Some randomized studies show improvements in PTSD symptoms and autonomic markers, while other conditions remain under-studied or results are modest. The safe and sound protocol has preliminary evidence for auditory hypersensitivity and social engagement shifts but requires more independent trials. That is not a reason to dismiss these tools, but a reminder to keep claims modest, track outcomes, and stay collaborative.
Telehealth and the body at a distance
Online sessions can support somatic and parts work with adjustments. Camera placement should show the torso and face so subtle cues are visible. Clients can prepare the space with a blanket, a firm chair, water, and a quiet signal if they share a home. We choreograph exits: if activation spikes beyond tolerance, we agree ahead of time to stand, look out a window, or step outside. For some clients, telehealth is safer because they control their environment. For others, privacy limits depth. We decide together.
A gentle caution: never assume a client will stay connected if flooded. Exchange phone numbers as a backup, and build brief, end-of-session rituals. One minute of orienting reduces the risk of someone closing a laptop mid-activation and carrying that state into the rest of their day.
The long game: integration over erasure
Integration does not erase history. It redistributes power among parts so no single state runs the show. A previously exiled, hurt part may still have sad days, but it is no longer the only voice at the table. A vigilant protector may still scan the room, but it learns to soften once it sees the exits. The body becomes a source of information rather than a battlefield. People start using simple sentences that mark change: “I paused,” “I noticed,” “I chose.” Those words, small as they look, signal that the nervous system is back in a workable range.
What does this look like two, twelve, or twenty-four months in? The first phase often centers on stabilization - orienting, breath, movement, and agreements with protectors. The second phase edges toward deeper processing of specific memories or patterns, always with titration and pendulation. The third phase weaves skills into life: difficult conversations, travel, medical visits, or work stressors become practice fields. The timeline varies. Some see marked change in eight to twelve sessions; complex developmental trauma usually takes longer, with step-backs and surges as life tests the gains.
Trauma therapy at its best restores dignity. Somatic and parts-based approaches, used inside an integrative mental health therapy framework, honor how bodies protect and how minds make meaning. They avoid false shortcuts while offering daily tools. Whether through a brief rest and restore protocol to anchor the morning, a careful application of the safe and sound protocol to nudge social engagement, or a steady practice of noticing which part is speaking, the work points in one direction: more choice, more connection, more room to move.
Address: 550 SE 6th Ave, Suite 200-M, Delray Beach, FL 33483
Phone: 954-228-0228
Website: https://www.amyhagerstrom.com/
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Monday: 9:00 AM - 8:00 PM
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Amy Hagerstrom Therapy PLLC provides somatic and integrative psychotherapy for adults who want mind-body support that goes beyond talk alone.
The practice serves clients throughout Florida and Illinois through online sessions, with Delray Beach listed as the office and mailing location.
Adults in Delray Beach, Boca Raton, West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, and nearby communities can explore support for trauma, anxiety, chronic stress, burnout, and midlife transitions.
Amy Hagerstrom is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner who works with clients in a steady, nervous-system-informed way.
This practice is suited to people who want therapy that includes body awareness, emotional processing, and whole-person support in addition to conversation.
Sessions are private pay, typically 55 minutes, and a superbill may be available for clients using out-of-network benefits.
For local connection in Delray Beach and surrounding areas, the practice uses 550 SE 6th Ave, Suite 200-M, Delray Beach, FL 33483 as its office and mailing address.
To learn more or request a consultation, call 954-228-0228 or visit https://www.amyhagerstrom.com/.
For a public listing reference with hours and map context, see https://maps.app.goo.gl/VZTFSS2fq1YPv7Rs5.
Popular Questions About Amy Hagerstrom Therapy PLLC
What services does Amy Hagerstrom Therapy PLLC offer?
Amy Hagerstrom Therapy PLLC offers somatic therapy, integrative mental health therapy, the Safe and Sound Protocol, the Rest and Restore Protocol, and support for concerns including trauma, anxiety, and midlife stress.Is therapy online or in person?
The website describes online therapy for adults across Florida and Illinois, and some service pages mention limited in-person availability in Delray Beach.Who does the practice work with?
The practice describes its work as being for adults, especially thoughtful adults dealing with trauma, anxiety, chronic stress, burnout, and nervous-system-based stress patterns.What is Somatic Experiencing?
Somatic Experiencing is described on the site as a body-based approach that helps people work with nervous system responses to stress and trauma instead of relying on insight alone.What are the session fees?
The fees page states that individual therapy sessions are $200 and typically run 55 minutes.Does the practice accept insurance?
The website says the practice is not in-network with insurance and can provide a monthly superbill for possible out-of-network reimbursement.Where is the office located?
The official website lists the office and mailing address as 550 SE 6th Ave, Suite 200-M, Delray Beach, FL 33483.How can I contact Amy Hagerstrom Therapy PLLC?
Publicly available contact routes include tel:+19542280228, https://www.amyhagerstrom.com/, https://www.instagram.com/amy.experiencing/, https://www.youtube.com/@AmyHagerstromTherapyPLLC, https://www.facebook.com/p/Amy-Hagerstrom-Therapy-PLLC-61579615264578/, https://www.linkedin.com/company/111299965, https://www.tiktok.com/@amyhagerstromtherapypllc, and https://x.com/amy_hagerstrom. The official website does not publicly list an email address.Landmarks Near Delray Beach, FL
Atlantic Avenue — A central Delray Beach corridor and one of the area’s best-known local reference points. If you live, work, or spend time near Atlantic Avenue, visit https://www.amyhagerstrom.com/ to learn more about therapy options.Old School Square — A historic downtown campus at Atlantic and Swinton that anchors local arts, events, and community gatherings. If you are near this part of downtown Delray, the practice serves adults in the area and across Florida and Illinois.
Pineapple Grove — A walkable arts district just off Atlantic Avenue that is well known to local residents and visitors. If you are nearby, you can review services and consultation details at https://www.amyhagerstrom.com/.
Sandoway Discovery Center — A South Ocean Boulevard landmark that connects Delray Beach residents and visitors to coastal nature and marine education. If Beachside is part of your routine, the practice maintains a Delray Beach office and mailing address for local relevance.
Atlantic Dunes Park — A recognizable Delray Beach coastal park with boardwalk access and dune scenery. People based near the ocean side of Delray can learn more about scheduling through https://www.amyhagerstrom.com/.
Wakodahatchee Wetlands — A well-known western Delray destination with a boardwalk and wildlife viewing. If you are on the west side of Delray Beach or nearby communities, the practice offers online therapy throughout Florida.
Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens — A major Delray Beach cultural landmark west of downtown. Clients across Delray Beach and surrounding areas can start with https://www.amyhagerstrom.com/ or tel:+19542280228.
Delray Beach Tennis Center — A public sports landmark just west of Atlantic Avenue and a familiar point of reference in central Delray. If you are near this area, visit https://www.amyhagerstrom.com/ for service details and consultation information.