Trauma-Informed Somatic Therapy: Portland to Seattle

Somatic therapy is a body-aware approach to healing — it pays attention to the conversation happening between your emotions, your stress, your trauma history, and your nervous system (which, let's be honest, is often having a very different conversation than your brain is). At Soma Roots Therapy, we integrate somatic work with trauma-informed psychotherapy, because your body has been keeping the receipts the whole time, and it's ready to be part of the healing process — not just along for the ride. The goal is helping you build more safety, awareness, and connection with yourself, from the inside out.

Traditional talk therapy often focuses on thoughts, emotions, and insight — the stuff happening above the neck. Somatic therapy zooms out to include what's happening in the rest of you too: tension, activation, shutdown, breath, and the nervous system patterns running quietly in the background (often without an invitation). Soma Roots Therapy is rooted in Gestalt, Internal Family Systems, and somatic trauma therapies — approaches that help our clients build a real, working relationship with the wisdom of their body, instead of just thinking really hard about it and hoping that's enough.

Soma Roots Therapy specializes in working with trans, nonbinary, queer, neurodivergent, and other communities that systems have worked overtime to make vulnerable (we see you, and we see the overtime). As a practice, we are affirming, trauma-informed, and grounded in radical acceptance and decolonial practices — which is our way of saying: you don't have to translate yourself for us, explain why your existence is valid, or pre-apologize for taking up space. We already know, and we're glad you're here.

Yes — Soma Roots Therapy offers telehealth options, which means therapy happens wherever you are (couch, car in the driveway when you need five extra minutes, blanket fort, all valid). The one catch: you need to be physically located in Oregon or Washington at the time of your session — that's a legal thing, not a vibes thing, so even if your heart is in Portland but your body is on a beach in Mexico, we'll have to wait until you're back in-state.

Yes! Soma Roots Therapy offers telehealth therapy to folks anywhere in Oregon and Washington — or as we sometimes (jokingly) say, "Portland to Seattle." But let's be real: not everyone lives in a big city with a coffee shop on every corner, and we're not interested in pretending the Pacific Northwest begins and ends at I-5. Whether you're in a major metro, a small town, or way out where your nearest neighbor is a herd of cows, you're equally welcome here. As long as you're physically located in Oregon or Washington during your session, telehealth means we can meet you where you are — literally.

Yes! Soma Roots Therapy offers telehealth therapy to folks anywhere in Oregon and Washington — or as we sometimes (jokingly) say, "Portland to Seattle." But let's be real: not everyone lives in a big city with a coffee shop on every corner, and we're not interested in pretending the Pacific Northwest begins and ends at I-5. Whether you're in a major metro, a small town, or way out where your nearest neighbor is a herd of cows, you're equally welcome here. As long as you're physically located in Oregon or Washington during your session, telehealth means we can meet you where you are — literally.

No! Soma Roots Therapy offers telehealth therapy to folks anywhere in Oregon and Washington — or as we sometimes (jokingly) say, "Portland to Seattle." But let's be real: not everyone lives in a big city with a coffee shop on every corner, and we're not interested in pretending the Pacific Northwest begins and ends at I-5. Whether you're in a major metro, a small town, or way out where your nearest neighbor is a herd of cows, you're equally welcome here. As long as you're physically located in Oregon or Washington during your session, telehealth means we can meet you where you are — literally.

Somatic therapy can be helpful for trauma, chronic stress, anxiety, nervous system dysregulation, identity-related stress, and the toll of living in systems that were never built with your wellbeing in mind. If you've ever thought "I understand why I do this, I just... still do it" — that's usually a sign that insight alone isn't going to get you all the way there, and that's where the body comes in. Because Soma Roots Therapy centers trauma-informed, body-aware care, this approach can be especially supportive if you've done the talk-therapy thing, can recite your patterns like a TED Talk, and are ready for something that actually shifts how your nervous system responds — not just how well you can explain it.

Yes — emphatically, and not as an afterthought. Soma Roots Therapy explicitly serves trans, nonbinary, and queer clients, and that's not a footnote on our website, it's the foundation of how we practice. Our work is grounded in affirmation, radical acceptance, and decolonial practice — which, translated out of clinical-speak, means: your identity isn't something we're "working with," it's something we're working from. No explaining, no convincing, no bonus points for being "easy" to work with. Just therapy, with someone who already gets it.

Yes — neurodivergent clients aren't an "also welcome," they're explicitly named as part of who we serve. That means no masking required, no apologizing for stimming, infodumping, needing things in writing, or showing up in whatever way your brain and body actually function that day (yes, even if that's "vertical but barely"). We're not interested in pathologizing the way you exist — we're interested in working with it.

Soma Roots Therapy offers a free 20-minute consultation — think of it less like an audition and more like a "let's see if this feels right" conversation, because honestly, it should feel right (therapy is hard enough without also wondering if your therapist secretly hates your vibe). This is your chance to ask questions, get a feel for how we work, and share anything that matters to you — accessibility needs, identity-specific stuff, "I have three cats and they will absolutely be on camera," whatever's relevant. Every inquiry is handled with warmth, privacy, and respect, no exceptions and no asterisks.

Standard sessions are 55 minutes, scheduled weekly — the classic "therapy hour," which is actually 55 minutes because somewhere along the way someone decided therapists also deserve a brief break between clients (we don't make the rules).

Yes! Soma Roots Therapy works with insurance and also offers private pay options, because we know "figuring out healthcare costs" is its own special flavor of stressful and we'd rather not add to it. For the most up-to-date list of accepted insurance plans and payment options (since these things have a way of changing), head to the Insurance & Payment page under the About dropdown at the top of the site — that way you're always looking at current info, not whatever was true when this FAQ was written.

Start by heading to the Reach Out page — that's where you can request a consultation or just ask whatever questions are rattling around in your head (scheduling, fit, accessibility needs, "is this even the right kind of therapy for me," all of it). No need to have it all figured out before you reach out; that's kind of the point of reaching out. We typically respond by the next business day, because we believe in both timely communication and not being glued to our inbox 24/7 (work-life balance: we practice what we preach).

Soma Roots Therapy invites you to tell us what helps you feel safe and heard — whether that's processing time, captions, written follow-ups, breaks, a fidget in hand, sessions where you need to stand or lay down, or anything else that makes this work for your brain and body. We'll do our best to support and normalize accessibility needs whenever possible, because "accommodations" shouldn't feel like a special request you have to justify — they're just part of how good care works. If something doesn't fit the way you first imagined, we'll problem-solve it together rather than just shrugging and saying "that's how it is."

Yes! Soma Roots Therapy offers clinical supervision for Oregon Professional Counselor Associates and Washington Mental Health Counselor Associates — for those early-career years where you're simultaneously building competence and wondering if you're secretly terrible at this (you're not, that's just what being a new clinician feels like). Supervision here is developmentally supportive and affirming, which means we're invested in your growth as a whole clinician — including the parts of you that are queer, trans, neurodivergent, or otherwise outside the "default" mold most training programs were built around.