Healing That Goes Beyond Talk
When you're living with trauma, anxiety, or chronic stress, it’s not just in your mind—it’s in your body. You might feel tense all the time, emotionally stuck, or like your reactions don’t match the moment. That’s not a character flaw. That’s your nervous system doing its best to protect you.
EMDR and somatic therapy help you access deeper levels of healing—without needing to relive every detail of your story.
Why Trauma Lives in the Body
Your body remembers what your mind might try to forget. When experiences overwhelm your ability to cope, the nervous system shifts into survival mode—fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Even after the danger passes, those patterns can linger: tight muscles, hypervigilance, emotional numbing, shame spirals, or shutdown.
Talk therapy can help you make sense of things—but EMDR and somatic work help your body complete what it couldn’t finish back then.
What Is EMDR?
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a research-backed therapy that helps the brain reprocess trauma in a way that feels safe, contained, and empowering. Using bilateral stimulation (like eye movements, tapping, or sounds), EMDR activates the brain’s natural ability to heal—releasing stuck memories, sensations, and beliefs.
You do not have to share every detail of the trauma to heal from it.
What Is Somatic Work?
Somatic therapy brings your body into the healing process. Through gentle awareness of sensations, breath, posture, and movement, we begin to notice how your nervous system responds to stress—and how it can also return to safety.
This approach is especially helpful if you:
Feel disconnected or numb
Get overwhelmed or flooded easily
Struggle with chronic tension, migraines, or digestive issues
Have difficulty naming or feeling emotions
Experience "freeze" or shutdown responses
Don't know why you're triggered, but you are
Somatic work offers simple tools for grounding, regulating, and listening to your body with curiosity instead of fear.
Who This Is For:
This work is especially helpful for:
Trauma survivors (childhood, relational, medical, or shock trauma)
LGBTQIA+ folks healing from family rejection or cultural trauma
Adults recovering from emotionally immature or unsafe parenting
Neurodivergent clients with sensory sensitivity, shutdown responses, or chronic hyperarousal
People who feel “stuck” in traditional talk therapy or tired of overanalyzing
Sensitive souls who feel deeply and need a more embodied path to healing
My Approach:
I integrate EMDR and somatic tools with compassion, slowness, and consent at every step. We’ll always go at your pace, and you’ll never be pushed to disclose or move faster than your body is ready for.
You might find yourself:
Naming and transforming old beliefs (“It was my fault,” “I’m not safe,” “I don’t belong”)
Learning how to feel safe inside your own skin again
Accessing calm, curiosity, and even joy where there used to be shutdown or fear
Creating new internal pathways for trust, connection, and resilience
Healing is possible—and it doesn’t have to retraumatize you in the process. Your nervous system is doing what it learned to do.
Let’s help it learn something new.
Contact Information
Kris@balancedrootscounseling.com
(360) 389-2048
© 2024, Balanced Roots Counseling, PLLC, All rights reserved.
Kris Williams, MS, LMHC, LPC, NCC




Typical availability for sessions:
Mon–Wed, 10am–12pm and 2pm–6pm | Thurs, 9am-12pm and 1-3pm | Closed Fridays

