Prosopon Therapy News and Info

Greetings!

Thank you so much for your attention and interest in Prosopon News and Info. I intend to publish this monthly for now. In our inaugural issue we cover:

• What is Somatic Trauma and Attachment Therapy (STAT)?

• Philosophy and Education: The Blog

• Hopes, Fears, and Salves: Prosopon is Evolving!

A Somatic Trauma and Attachment Therapist or “STAT” for short is any practitioner who supports clients in improving their quality of life with:

• an understanding of the intersection of all of the systems of the body and mind like the nervous system/neurotransmitters, the psyche (unconscious/conscious mind often experienced through language and other symbols), musculoskeletal system, endocrine system, parts or subpersonalities, cellular function, fascial system, etc.,

• talk, touch, and movement combined together, moving fluently between between each with consent and as needed in a session,

• working interdisciplinarily by knowing how to refer and consult with healthcare practitioners both traditional and wholistic.

STATs can be found under a variety of licensures such as Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Massage Therapy, Licensed Professional Counseling, Psychiatry, Nursing, and so on who have trained in Somatic Experiencing, Internal Family Systems, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, and other modalities.

The STAT field is a big reason for this newsletter born out of conversations I have been having for over a decade now. The STAT field operates like its own field but there is some confusion. Individual practitioners under different licenses often worry they are overstepping the boundaries of their licenses despite doing ethical work and providing positive change to clients. Furthermore, these results are not anecdotal. Empiricism (✨SCIENCE✨) is on our side.

I declare that providing bodymind work that improves lives beyond a shadow of a doubt should be supported and practitioners should feel free to use the full range of techniques that get results. I believe if we define this field we can protect practitioners doing good work while protecting the public by putting forward rigorous training, evaluation, and supervision requirements that do not currently exist for all license paths to becoming a STAT.

You can read more about STATs at prosopontherapy.com.

BTW: If someone has already defined this field, please do let me know. I have done market research for years and I am not seeing it. If this is already a thing that would save me a lot of time and effort because I can just join an existing association and refer practitioners 😊.

Philosophy and Education: The Blog

Click HERE for the Blog!

I am FINALLY writing all these thoughts down after all this time. I spent the first decade of my practice in dark room with no windows absolutely entranced with what I was feeling under my hands and witnessing in my clients. I was and still am enthralled.

Thanks to brave researchers like Porges, Schleip, Bowlby and Ainsworth, Van Der Kolk, and more, what I was seeing in people no longer seems like woo-woo magic. I am still in awe of the range of human experience and the capacity to heal and change but I no longer feel like I have to hide my experience because its too hard to explain why healing happens the way it does.

Due to a combination of the somatic field becoming scientifically legitimized and spending enough time in observation I can now present my mostly baked musings in written form. I will alert the reader of this newsletter to new additions to the blog.

Each post is a “living” post, if you will, meaning I go back, edit, and update and I change my mind and learn new things. So if a post seems a little drafty from time to time, that is why.

Please peruse the archives of prior months. There you’ll find plenty of juicy STAT tidbits. In the month of December 2023 I published to following:

• Bodytherapy <=> Psychotherapy

• Not Meditation, Not Slowness, Not Self-Improvement. But Also These Things

• Karpman’s Drama Triangle

• Trauma Affects Your Fascia and Fascia Affects Your Trauma

• Enter the Multiplicity

• How to Join People in Dark Places

• Frozen in Fear: Why Thawing is Hard and How to Do It

Hopes, Fears, and Salves: Prosopon is Evolving!

I have been a business owner since I was 23 but for some reason, 14 years later, I just realized that I own a business. Writing, teaching, and STAT sessions have all been key components of my work. This year, I am taking my business more seriously. I am no longer doing the accounting myself and I have hired a business coach.

My mindset shift has enabled me to get creative and kickoff an expansion process. With any change process its normal to have hopes and fears about the outcome.

Hopes:

• I am creating more regular teaching and content offerings because I enjoy doing it and I keep getting asked by others for it.

• I am getting my LPC-S, the counseling supervision license, so that I can train LPCs interested in STAT

• I am promoting the STAT field in hopes of better support for clients and clinicians

Fears:

• More offerings and marketing means more eye balls which means more opportunities to fall on my face

• More responsibility means my mistakes have broader reach

• Promoting the STAT field feels like I’m both doing something super obvious but also really risky

Salves:

• The feedback I get historically on my offerings are that they are helpful and enjoyable

• Mistakes are learning opportunities for ✨EVERYONE✨

• I really think we need this field to be defined and delineated and I’m willing to make calculated sacrifices to either find a version of this delineation that already exists or create it from scratch