Somatic small body map protocol: renegotiating trauma with LGBTQIA+ service users

Abstract

Background LGBTQIA+ service users suffer microaggressions on a daily basis within a heterosexual, cisgendered society. They may become so accustomed to feeling unsafe that this becomes unconsciously considered the norm.Context A Somatic Small Body Map Protocol has been devised that introduces a lived experience of a safe environment. The protocol has been used with twenty service users in an individual setting. This paper explores specific responses from three different service users.Approach The protocol integrates psychodynamic art therapy with Somatic Experiencing in order to create a guided process that pendulates between somatic verbal feedback and the lived experience of the creative process, moving back and forth between inner sensations and their visual expression on paper, changing constantly in response.Outcomes The service users report positive feedback following the protocol that includes reduced anxiety, greater awareness of the effects of social homophobia on their psychological and physiological states and improved ability to contact difficult emotions without being overwhelmed.Conclusions The protocol may be useful within art therapy as a somatic tool to renegotiate trauma connected to microaggressions, increase awareness of bodily sensations and support the capacity to tolerate potentially overwhelming emotions.Implications for research The necessity of integrating somatic techniques when working with trauma is widely acknowledged. The protocol offers a structured tool to facilitate this, and specific training is being organised for its use. It may be adapted for use with other minority identities or in general to renegotiate any situation where a person has felt unsafe.Plain-language summaryPeople who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual or otherwise differ (LGBTQIA+) from heteronormative conventions concerning gender, biological sex or sexual orientation can often feel unsafe outside their home. They may be so accustomed to this, they don’t consider it unusual.To help change this, the art therapist has produced a guided process based around the completion of a small body outline that is coloured in according to the person’s physical sensations. Art therapist and service user then explore together what could be represented in the area external to the body outline in order to help the person feel as safe as possible. They will proceed to track the felt sensations created by these reassuring things, and explore what changes are now necessary inside the body outline to reflect how their feelings have transformed in this new environment. This paper examines three service users’ reactions to this experience.The process combines art therapy with Somatic Experiencing, the name given to techniques that use verbal communication to work with body sensations. The therapist supports the service user in contacting their body’s sensations and describing them so that they can be represented inside the outline. The body’s response to what has been drawn can then be explored. By introducing positive things during difficult moments, the art therapist can help the person become less anxious about feeling painful things.Many people believe that working somatically with body sensations is key when working with trauma and the art therapist hopes that this guided somatic art therapy process will be useful for other art therapists. She offers specific training for its use. This process may be helpful not just for LGBTQIA + people but for everyone who has felt unsafe at any time.

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