Integrating Somatic Psychology, Parts Work, and EMDR to Treat Relational Abuse Survivors

Relational abuse survivors often enter therapy carrying the invisible weight of chronic dysregulation: emotionally, physiologically, and relationally. Their symptoms can mimic depression, anxiety, OCD, or bipolar disorder, but at the root is often unrecognized complex trauma. When we treat these clients through a lens of shame or pathology, we risk retraumatizing rather than supporting. Instead, we need a multidimensional approach that integrates somatic psychology, parts work therapies, and EMDR to create a pathway toward regulation, embodiment, and empowerment.

Understanding the Nervous System’s Role in Trauma

At the core of complex trauma is a disrupted autonomic nervous system. Survivors may swing between hyperarousal (panic, agitation) and hypoarousal (numbing, shutdown), with limited access to the “window of tolerance” where they can think, feel, and connect effectively. These physiological responses are not maladaptive. They’re protective survival strategies developed in unsafe environments.

Many survivors override bodily cues. They learned early on to make dangerous situations “tolerable,” which is a skill that later leads them to miss red flags or stay in abusive relationships. Helping clients listen again to their bodies and trust their felt sense is fundamental in healing.

The Power of Somatic Psychology: Reconnecting to the Body

Somatic approaches bring clients back into relationship with their physical selves, often after years of disconnection due to dissociation or trauma responses. But this work must be titrated with care. For many clients, even noticing the body is overwhelming.

Somatic interventions like pendulation (alternating attention between distress and safety), grounding techniques, breathwork, and mindful awareness of sensations support clients in developing affect and sensation tolerance. Therapists can model this regulation with their own breath and posture, using co-regulation as a foundational therapeutic tool.

Tracking signs of nervous system activation (think: tight jaw, shallow breath, or numbness) can open a dialogue about implicit memory and trauma responses. As clients begin to recognize these signals, they can start asking: “Is this response appropriate to my current environment?” That question alone can change everything.

Parts Work: Making Sense of Fragmentation

Chronic abuse, especially from early caregivers, can lead to structural dissociation. Clients may present with overwhelming shame, inner conflict, or behaviors they don’t understand because different “parts” of them are trying to protect against different dangers.

Parts work, including models like Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy or Structural Dissociation, allows us to validate and explore these internal divisions. Therapists can help clients access their Self—curious, calm, compassionate—and relate to their wounded parts with understanding rather than judgment.

This might mean asking:

• What does this part need?
• How old does this part feel?
• What is this part protecting you from?
• Can you connect with this part from a place of kindness?

Even slight shifts toward Self energy—curiosity, calm, courage—can anchor healing and reduce shame.

EMDR: A Structured Path to Integration

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) offers a powerful structure to help survivors reprocess traumatic memories. Through the lens of Adaptive Information Processing (AIP), EMDR assumes the mind’s natural inclination to heal when supported adequately.

For relational abuse survivors, the early phases of EMDR are crucial. Resourcing and stabilization (Phase 2) may include developing internal allies, identifying a felt sense of “yes” and “no,” and using imaginal safe spaces. These help clients build trust in their own nervous systems before confronting trauma memories.

Importantly, EMDR can bring past survival strategies like dissociation into the room. When that happens, we don’t pathologize; we get curious. “This is what it’s like when you disconnect,” we might say. “Can we explore this together?” With enough support, clients can safely revisit and reprocess experiences that once felt overwhelming.

Creating a Relational, Respectful Approach in the Therapy Room

Many survivors, especially those with fawning adaptations, struggle to say no. They’ve learned compliance as a survival skill. Therapists must explicitly create space for choice in session—about what to talk about, when to pause, even where to sit. As one of my mentors said, “I won’t do deep work with a client unless I know they can say no to me.”

This attunement also applies to offering reflections. Survivors have often grown up with distorted mirrors. Before sharing an observation, ask: “Would it be okay if I reflect something I’m noticing?” Empowering the client to choose helps rebuild trust in themselves and in safe relationships.

How to go from Management to Healing

Too often, therapy stops at symptom management to get clients “back in the window.” But that’s not enough. Without addressing the trauma that kicked them out of the window in the first place, we risk reinforcing a faux sense of regulation.

Integrating somatic practices, parts work, and EMDR helps us treat the roots, not just the branches, of trauma. Together, these approaches restore access to intuition, choice, embodiment, and ultimately, the right to live free from internalized harm.

As clinicians, our job is not to fix broken people, but to help hurting people reconnect with the wholeness that was always inside them.