mental-health – LIBERTY PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION

Damasio’s Somatic Marker Hypothesis, explained:

Damasio’s Somatic Marker Hypothesis explains how bodily states guide decision-making, especially under uncertainty.

Core idea

When we face choices, our brain automatically reactivates body-based signals (somatic markers) linked to past experiences. These signals bias us toward or away from options before conscious reasoning finishes.

In short:

The body “tags” experiences with emotional–physiological markers that help the mind decide.

What are somatic markers?

Somatic markers are patterns of bodily sensation (e.g., gut tightening, warmth, dread, ease) associated with:

Previous outcomes
Emotional learning
Survival relevance

They arise from:

Autonomic nervous system activity
Hormonal responses
Visceral sensations
Emotional memory

How the mechanism works

Experience occurs (good or bad outcome)
The brain pairs the outcome with a bodily state
Later, when a similar choice appears:
- The body reproduces a faint version of that state
- The feeling biases attention and reasoning
Conscious deliberation then builds on this bias

This allows rapid pruning of bad options without exhaustive analysis.

Key brain regions involved

Ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) – integrates emotion and decision-making
Amygdala – emotional salience and threat learning
Insula – interoceptive awareness (feeling the body)
Brainstem & autonomic systems

Damage to vmPFC → intact intelligence but poor real-world decisions.

Classic evidence

Patients with vmPFC lesions:

Can reason logically about choices
Fail to use emotional feedback
Repeatedly make harmful decisions
Show absent anticipatory bodily responses (e.g., no skin conductance change)

This was famously demonstrated in the Iowa Gambling Task.

Why this matters clinically & theoretically

Somatic markers help explain:

Intuition and “gut feelings”
Why reasoning alone doesn’t ensure good judgment
Emotion as intelligence, not interference
Decision failures in trauma, addiction, and frontal injury

Relationship to trauma (important nuance)

In trauma:

Somatic markers can become overgeneralized
The body signals danger where none exists
Decision-making becomes threat-biased, not flexible

So healing often involves:

Updating inaccurate somatic markers
Restoring interoceptive trust
Reintegrating body signals with reflective awareness

In one sentence

Damasio’s hypothesis shows that rational thought depends on the body’s emotional memory—and without it, choice collapses.

Shervan K Shahhian

Embodied Knowing, explained:

Embodied knowing refers to knowledge that arises through the body rather than through conscious, verbal, or purely cognitive reasoning. It is a form of intelligence that is felt, sensed, enacted, and lived, often preceding language or explicit thought.

Core idea
The body knows before the mind explains.
This knowing shows up as sensations, impulses, tensions, movements, emotions, or visceral “yes/no” signals that carry meaning — even when you can’t yet articulate why.

Key characteristics
Pre-verbal — exists before words or narratives
Implicit — not always consciously accessible
Somatic — felt in muscles, posture, breath, gut, heart, skin
Context-sensitive — responds rapidly to environmental cues
Nonlinear — doesn’t follow step-by-step logic

Common examples
A gut feeling about a person or situation
Sudden bodily tightening signaling danger
A sense of ease or alignment when something is “right”
Emotional or physical reactions that contradict conscious beliefs
Therapeutic insight that arrives as a bodily shift rather than a thought
Psychological & neuroscience perspectives
Trauma psychology: The body stores survival learning when cognition is overwhelmed

Somatic psychology (Levine, Ogden): The nervous system encodes experience as sensation and movement
Damasio’s somatic marker hypothesis: Bodily states guide decision-making
Implicit memory: Knowledge without conscious recall
Clinical relevance

Embodied knowing is central to:

Trauma resolution
Dissociative phenomena
Attachment repair

Somatic therapies (SE, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Brainspotting)
Transpersonal and non-ordinary states
Symptoms often labeled as “pathology” are frequently expressions of embodied intelligence attempting regulation, protection, or meaning-making.

Distinguishing embodied knowing from imagination or belief
Embodied KnowingConceptual BeliefFelt immediatelyThought aboutOften surprisingFamiliarAffects physiologyMostly cognitiveHard to fakeEasy to constructLeads to actionLeads to explanation

When it becomes distorted
Embodied knowing can be misleading when:

Trauma conditioning dominates perception
Dissociation disconnects sensation from awareness
Chronic threat states bias interpretation
This doesn’t invalidate it — it means it requires attunement and integration, not suppression.

Cultivating embodied knowing
Interoceptive awareness (tracking breath, tension, warmth)
Slow movement and posture awareness
Pendulation between sensation and meaning
Naming sensations after feeling them
Letting meaning emerge rather than forcing interpretation
Shervan K Shahhian

Understanding Somatic Intuition:

Somatic intuition is the body’s capacity to sense, register, and communicate information before it is fully verbalized or cognitively processed. It’s often experienced as a felt sense rather than a thought.

From a psychological and neurobiological perspective, it reflects bottom-up processing — signals arising from the nervous system, viscera, and interoceptive networks that inform awareness.

What somatic intuition feels like

It can show up as:

A tightening or softening in the chest
A “gut feeling”
Sudden fatigue or alertness
Warmth, chills, or pressure
A clear sense of yes or no without reasoning

These signals are usually fast, subtle, and non-verbal.

How it works (scientifically)

Somatic intuition involves:

Interoception (insula activity: sensing internal bodily states)
Autonomic nervous system patterning (safety vs threat detection)
Implicit memory (stored experiences influencing present perception)
Predictive processing (the body anticipating outcomes based on prior learning)

Your body often detects patterns milliseconds to seconds before conscious cognition.

Somatic intuition vs anxiety

A key distinction:

Somatic Intuition Anxiety Clear, neutral, brief Urgent, looping, catastrophic Grounded in the present Pulled into imagined futures Feels informative Feels overwhelming Doesn’t demand action Pressures action

Somatic intuition informs; anxiety drives.

Trauma-informed understanding

In trauma-sensitive frameworks:

Somatic intuition may initially feel distorted if the nervous system learned to equate novelty with danger.
With regulation, the body’s signals often become more precise and trustworthy, not less.
What feels like “intuition” can sometimes be protective somatic memory, not prophecy.

Distinguishing the two requires slowness and curiosity, not suppression.

Clinical and transpersonal perspectives

Clinically: somatic intuition aligns with Damasio’s somatic marker hypothesis.
Transpersonally: it’s often framed as embodied knowing, sometimes interpreted as extrasensory — but this requires careful differentiation from dissociative or hypnagogic phenomena.

Grounding the signal in the body first helps prevent over-attribution.

Strengthening somatic intuition safely

Track sensations without interpreting them immediately
Ask: Where is this in my body? What’s its temperature, shape, movement?
Pair sensation with orientation to the present moment
Let cognition come after sensation, not before

Somatic intuition becomes clearer when the nervous system feels safe enough to speak quietly.

Shervan K Shahhian

Strengths-Based Psychotherapist, who are they:

A Strengths-Based Psychotherapist is a clinician who centers therapy on a person’s capacities, resilience, adaptive intelligence, and existing resources, rather than defining the client primarily by symptoms, deficits, or pathology.

Core Principles

1. Symptoms Are Adaptations, Not Defects

A strengths-based therapist understands that:

Anxiety = heightened threat detection
Dissociation = protective attentional control
Hypervigilance = survival-optimized perception
Emotional numbing = pain-containment strategy

The question shifts from “What’s wrong?” to:

“What strength is trying to protect you here?”

2. The Client Is the Expert

Rather than positioning the therapist as the authority:

The client’s lived experience is treated as valid data
Meaning is co-constructed, not imposed
Insight arises from inside the system, not outside correction

This resonates with IFS, somatic psychology, and non-ordinary perception models.

3. Identity Is Larger Than Diagnosis

Diagnoses may be used pragmatically, but they do not define the person.

The therapist emphasizes:

Personal values
Moral intelligence
Creativity
Spiritual or transpersonal meaning
Survival wisdom embedded in the nervous system

What Strengths-Based Therapy Looks Like in Practice

Language Shifts

Deficit Framing Strengths Framing “You’re avoidant” “You’ve learned how to preserve safety” “You’re dysregulated” “Your system is responding to perceived threat” “You’re resistant” “A part of you is protecting something important”

Clinical Techniques Often Used

Narrative reframing
Internal Family Systems (parts as protectors)
Somatic tracking of competence
Trauma-informed meaning-making
Resilience mapping
Post-traumatic growth exploration
Transpersonal inquiry (when appropriate)

Strengths-Based vs Pathology-Centered Therapy

Pathology Model Strengths Model Focus on deficits Focus on capacities Correct symptoms Understand purpose Normalize through diagnosis Normalize through adaptation Therapist interprets Client discovers ixing Integrating

Why This Matters for Trauma & Non-Ordinary States

In trauma and altered states:

Pathology models can re-traumatize
Strengths models restore agency
The nervous system is treated as intelligent, not broken

This is especially important when working with:

Dissociative phenomena
Hypnagogic imagery
Somatic intuition
Transpersonal or anomalous experiences

In One Sentence

A Strengths-Based Psychotherapist helps clients heal by recognizing their symptoms as intelligent adaptations, amplifying existing capacities, and supporting integration rather than correction.

Shervan K Shahhian

Non-Ordinary Perception, What is it:

Non-ordinary perception refers to ways of perceiving that fall outside everyday, consensus sensory experience — yet are recognized across psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, and consciousness studies.

What “Non-Ordinary Perception” Means

It describes perceptual experiences that arise when the nervous system operates outside its default predictive mode.

These experiences may involve:

Altered sensory integration

Expanded internal imagery

Reduced filtering of subtle signals

Changes in time, space, or self-boundaries

They are state-dependent, not inherently pathological.

Common Forms

1. Imaginal / Symbolic Perception

Vivid inner imagery

Archetypal or symbolic content

Hypnagogic or hypnopompic visions

Active imagination states (Jung)

➡ Often mediated by right-hemisphere and default mode network shifts

2. Somatic-Perceptual Knowing

“Knowing” through the body

Sensations preceding conscious thought

Felt sense, vibrations, pressure, or movement

➡ Linked to interoception and subcortical processing

3. Intuitive or Non-Linear Cognition

Sudden insights without step-by-step reasoning

Pattern recognition beyond conscious awareness

Time-independent knowing

➡ Seen in expert intuition, trauma adaptations, and contemplative states

4. Altered Sensory Thresholds

Heightened sound, light, or energy sensitivity

Synesthetic overlap

Blurred internal/external boundaries

➡ Often emerges during stress, meditation, psychedelics, or liminal states

5. Transpersonal or Anomalous Perception

Perception beyond the individual self

Experiences of guidance, presence, or contact

Remote or nonlocal impressions

➡ Studied in parapsychology, CRV, and transpersonal psychology

Clinical Distinction (Important)

Non-ordinary perception is not psychosis when:

✔ Insight is preserved

✔ Meaning is flexible, not rigid

✔ Functioning is intact

✔ Experience is state-dependent

✔ There is no compulsory belief enforcement

Pathology begins when threat-based interpretations dominate perception.

Trauma & Survival Context

From a trauma lens:

Non-ordinary perception can be a survival intelligence

The system learns to detect subtle cues when overt cues were unsafe

Heightened pattern detection ≠ delusion

This aligns with protective dissociation and adaptive hypervigilance.

CRV & Structured Access

In Controlled Remote Viewing:

Non-ordinary perception is trained, bracketed, and disciplined

Emphasis is on signal vs. analytic overlay

The nervous system learns regulated access rather than flooding

This is a key distinction between skillful access and destabilization.

Integrative View

Non-ordinary perception is best understood as:

A spectrum of human perceptual capacity, shaped by state, training, trauma, and culture — requiring regulation, context, and meaning-making.

Shervan K Shahhian

Somatic Intuition, what is it:

Somatic intuition refers to knowing through the body — information, signals, or guidance that arise as physical sensations before or without conscious reasoning.

It’s not mystical by default, nor purely cognitive; it sits at the intersection of neuroception, interoception, memory, and meaning.

What it feels like

Somatic intuition often shows up as:

A tightness or ease in the chest or gut
Sudden warmth, chills, or heaviness
A felt “pull” toward or away from something
A quiet sense of yes / no without words
Subtle shifts in posture, breath, or muscle tone

These sensations usually appear faster than conscious thought.

Where it comes from (psychologically & neurobiologically)

Somatic intuition emerges from:

Interoceptive awareness (insula, vagal pathways)
Implicit memory (body-stored experience, not narrative memory)
Pattern recognition based on lived experience
Neuroception (the nervous system’s unconscious safety/danger detection)

Your body is constantly integrating:

sensory data + emotional memory + relational history + environmental cues

…and signaling the result somatically.

Somatic intuition vs. anxiety

This distinction matters clinically:

Somatic IntuitionAnxiety SignalCalm, quiet, groundedUrgent, loud, catastrophicSpecific and briefDiffuse and repetitiveDoesn’t escalate when noticedEscalates with attentionOften followed by clarityOften followed by rumination

Trauma can distort intuition, turning protective signals into false alarms — this is where discernment is key.

Somatic intuition in trauma-informed work

In trauma psychology:

Symptoms are often misread intuition
Intuition may be offline (numbness) or hyperactive (over-signaling)
Healing restores signal-to-noise ratio, not “trusting the body blindly”

Modalities that work with somatic intuition:

Somatic Experiencing
IFS (tracking parts through body sensations)
Brainspotting
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy

Non-ordinary perception (contextual note)

Somatic intuition can be:

Ordinary (pattern-based, implicit cognition)
Enhanced through attention and regulation
Misattributed as external or paranormal when dissociation or arousal is high

Grounding and nervous system regulation determine whether somatic information is insightful or symbolic noise.

A simple discernment practice

When a somatic signal appears:

Pause and orient (look around, name the room)

Ask: Is this sensation calm or urgent?

Track it for 10–20 seconds without interpretation

Notice if it settles, clarifies, or escalates

True somatic intuition usually settles into clarity.

Shervan K Shahhian

Trauma Psychology, explained:

Trauma Psychology is the field of psychology that studies how overwhelming experiences affect the mind, brain, body, identity, and relationships — especially when those experiences exceed a person’s capacity to cope at the time.

1. What Makes an Experience “Traumatic”?

Trauma is not defined by the event, but by the nervous system’s response.

An experience becomes traumatic when:

The person feels overwhelmed
Escape or protection feels impossible
The nervous system cannot complete a defensive response
The experience remains unintegrated

This is why two people can experience the same event and only one develops trauma.

2. Core Domains Affected by Trauma

Brain & Nervous System

Chronic activation of the amygdala (threat detection)
Reduced integration in the prefrontal cortex
Altered hippocampal memory processing
Dysregulated autonomic nervous system (fight / flight / freeze / collapse)

Trauma is fundamentally a nervous system injury, not a character flaw.

Body (Somatic Storage)

Trauma is often stored somatically, not narratively:

Chronic tension, pain, or numbness
Startle reflex
Gastrointestinal issues
Dissociation from bodily sensations

Cognition & Perception

Black-and-white thinking under stress
Catastrophic interpretations
Time distortion (“it’s happening again”)
Fragmented or intrusive memories

These are adaptive survival strategies, not distortions in the usual sense.

Identity & Self

Trauma can fracture the sense of self:

Shame-based identity (“something is wrong with me”)
Parts-based organization (protector, exile, watcher)
Loss of continuity across time

This is why trauma psychology overlaps with ego state theory and parts work.

3. Types of Trauma

Acute Trauma

Single overwhelming event
Accident, assault, disaster

Chronic Trauma

Repeated exposure over time
Abuse, neglect, captivity, ongoing threat

Developmental Trauma

Occurs during attachment formation
Alters personality, affect regulation, and meaning-making

Complex Trauma (C-PTSD)

Affects identity, relationships, and worldview
Often misdiagnosed as personality pathology

4. Trauma vs Psychopathology (Critical Distinction)

Many symptoms labeled as “disorders” are better understood as:

Survival adaptations
Protective dissociation
Threat-based learning

Trauma psychology reframes pathology as intelligence under threat, which you’ve explicitly resonated with before.

5. Trauma & Altered States

Trauma increases access to:

Dissociative states
Hypnagogic imagery
Non-ordinary perception
Somatic intuition

Clinically, these can resemble psychosis — but functionally, they are often unintegrated protective states, not primary psychotic disorders.

This is where trauma psychology intersects with consciousness studies and parapsychology, though mainstream models rarely acknowledge this explicitly.

6. Healing in Trauma Psychology

Healing is not about remembering more — it is about:

Regulation before revelation
Restoring agency
Completing interrupted defensive responses
Re-integrating body, affect, and narrative

Modalities aligned with this:

Somatic therapies (SE, Brainspotting)
Parts-based work (IFS)
Attachment-informed approaches
Phase-oriented trauma treatment

7. Core Principle

Trauma is not what happened to you. Trauma is what happened inside you when what happened was too much.

Shervan K Shahhian

Black-and-white thinking under stress, explained:

Black-and-white thinking under stress (also called dichotomous thinking) is a very common cognitive response when the nervous system is overloaded.

What it looks like

Under stress, the mind collapses complexity into extremes:

All good / all bad
Success / total failure
Safe / dangerous
Right / wrong
For me / against me

Nuance, gray areas, and uncertainty feel intolerable.

Why stress triggers it

When stress is high, the brain shifts into survival mode:

Prefrontal cortex (flexible thinking) goes offline
Amygdala (threat detection) dominates
The system prioritizes speed over accuracy

Black-and-white thinking is fast, decisive, and protective — even if it’s inaccurate.

From a trauma-informed lens, this is not a “thinking error” but a protective simplification.

Common situations that intensify it

Emotional overwhelm
Interpersonal conflict
Trauma reminders
Sleep deprivation
Chronic anxiety or depression
Identity threat (shame, rejection, failure)

Examples

“If I can’t do this perfectly, I shouldn’t do it at all.”
“They disagreed with me → they don’t care about me.”
“I made one mistake → I am a failure.”
“If I feel anxious, something terrible must be happening.”

How it maintains distress

Black-and-white thinking:

Increases emotional reactivity
Escalates conflict
Reinforces shame and hopelessness
Narrows perceived options
Prevents problem-solving

How to work with it (not against it)

Because this pattern is state-dependent, the goal is not to “argue with thoughts” but to down-regulate the nervous system first.

Helpful approaches:

Grounding (sensory input, slow breathing)
Naming the state: “I’m stressed — my brain is simplifying.”
Introducing both/and language:
“I’m struggling and still capable.”
“This is hard and not permanent.”
Asking gentle questions:
“What’s one exception?”
“What’s a 5% improvement?”

Clinical note (relevant to your background)

In trauma psychology, black-and-white thinking is often:

A learned adaptation to unpredictable environments
A marker of nervous system load, not personality pathology
Reversible with regulation and safety

It becomes problematic only when it hardens into a trait rather than a temporary state.

Shervan K Shahhian

Trauma-Based Phenomena, explained:

Trauma-Based Phenomena refers to psychological, emotional, somatic, cognitive, and relational experiences that originate as adaptive survival responses to overwhelming or chronic stress, rather than as primary pathology. From a trauma-informed lens, these phenomena are expressions of nervous-system learning, not defects.

Below is a structured overview, integrating contemporary trauma psychology, somatic theory, and clinical practice.

1. Core Principle

Trauma is not what happened — it is what the nervous system had to do to survive.

Trauma-based phenomena are state-dependent adaptations that become maladaptive when the threat is no longer present.

2. Major Categories of Trauma-Based Phenomena

A. Somatic & Neurophysiological

The body “remembers” when cognition cannot.

Chronic pain with no clear medical cause
GI disturbances, headaches, fibromyalgia-like symptoms
Startle response, muscle bracing, shallow breathing
Autonomic dysregulation (sympathetic dominance / dorsal vagal collapse)
Psychogenic non-epileptic seizures (PNES)

Key concept: The body as a storage medium for unprocessed threat

B. Perceptual & Dissociative

Often misdiagnosed as psychosis or neurological disorders.

Depersonalization / derealization
Time distortion, emotional numbing
Fragmented memory or amnesia
Parts-based consciousness (ego states)
Transient voice-like experiences under stress

Clinical distinction: Trauma-based dissociation is state-linked, not fixed.

C. Cognitive & Meaning-Making

The mind organizes reality around safety.

Hypervigilance & threat scanning
Catastrophic thinking
Trauma-based belief systems (“The world is unsafe”)
Rigid moral or existential frameworks
Black-and-white thinking under stress

Important: These are predictive models, not delusions.

D. Emotional & Affective

Emotions become survival signals rather than communicative states.

Rage, shame, or terror disproportionate to present events
Emotional shutdown or alexithymia
Grief that feels “timeless”
Attachment panic or abandonment fear

Often mislabeled as: mood disorders or personality pathology

E. Behavioral & Relational

Survival strategies mistaken for character flaws.

Avoidance or compulsive control
People-pleasing / fawning
Addiction, dissociation through work, food, substances
Re-enactment dynamics
Trauma bonding

Frame shift: Behavior is communication of unmet safety needs

3. Trauma-Based vs Pathology-Based Interpretation

Trauma-Based View Pathology-Based View Adaptive response Disorder Nervous system learned threat Brain dysfunction Context-dependent Trait-based Meaningful symptoms Random symptoms Healable Chronic

4. Why Trauma-Based Phenomena Are Often Misdiagnosed

Overlap with psychosis, ADHD, bipolar, somatic disorders
Lack of developmental & somatic assessment
Over-reliance on DSM categorical thinking
Insufficient inquiry into timing and context

5. Healing Orientation (Not Symptom Suppression)

Effective trauma work focuses on:

Nervous system regulation
Bottom-up processing (somatic → affect → cognition)
Restoring agency and choice
Meaning-making without traumatization

Modalities include:

Somatic Experiencing
Brainspotting
EMDR
Parts-based therapies (IFS, ego-state)
Polyvagal-informed interventions

6. A Reframing You May Appreciate

Trauma-based phenomena are intelligence under constraint.

Symptoms are solutions that outlived their context.

Shervan K Shahhian

Stored Somatically Psychotic-Like Symptoms, explained:

Yes, psychotic-like symptoms can be stored and expressed somatically, especially in the context of trauma, chronic stress, or nervous-system dysregulation. This is a well-recognized phenomenon in trauma psychology and does not automatically indicate a primary psychotic disorder.

What “Somatically Stored Psychotic-Like Symptoms” Means

These symptoms arise when overwhelming experiences are encoded in the body rather than integrated symbolically or narratively. When re-activated, they can look psychotic, but their origin, course, and treatment are different.

Common Somatic Expressions

Hearing voices during heightened arousal (often internal, fragmented, or state-dependent)
Feeling externally controlled, invaded, or monitored
Paranoia that fluctuates with bodily states (sleep loss, hunger, pain, autonomic activation)
Dissociation with loss of agency or identity instability
Somatic hallucinations (pressure, energy, movement, presence)
Delusional-like interpretations that collapse when the nervous system settles

How This Differs From Primary Psychosis

Trauma-Somatic Psychotic-Like Primary Psychosis State-dependent Persistent across states Triggered by body cues Largely independent of body state Insight often returns Insight often absent Improves with regulation Requires antipsychotic focus Meaningful, symbolic Often fixed, concrete

Mechanism (Bottom-Up)

Trauma overwhelms cortical integration
Memory fragments lodge in subcortical and autonomic systems
When activated → primitive threat meanings emerge
Mind attempts coherence → psychotic-like narratives

This aligns with:

Van der Kolk (body keeps the score)
Porges (neuroception)
Janet (dissociation)
Trauma-informed psychosis models

Clinical Relevance

Mislabeling trauma-based phenomena as psychosis can worsen outcomes
Somatic approaches often lead to rapid de-escalation

*See a Psychiatrist

“Possible” Effective Approaches

Brainspotting / EMDR
Somatic Experiencing
Sensorimotor psychotherapy
Polyvagal-informed regulation
Parts-based work (trauma-informed, not pathologizing)

These allow the body to complete defensive responses that were frozen at the time of trauma.

Important Clarification

Having psychotic-like symptoms:

❌ does not mean “you are psychotic”
❌ does not imply loss of reality testing
✔ often means the body is replaying unresolved threat states

Shervan K Shahhian