‘We are all in this together’: Coping with stress during uncertain times through somatic experiencing

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on all countries and induced excessive stress and anxiety among many who are dealing with this invisible danger. Stress and anxiety originate from a threat, and chronic exposure to stressors results in feeling overwhelmed. When the coping strategies are not effective in a certain situation, the person might demonstrate conditioned reactions like fight, flight, or freeze. Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a resiliency-based approach that focuses on these conditioned responses of the nervous system to support the innate regulatory capacity of the body through interoceptive awareness and bodily sensations. This study aims to increase resiliency factors through a SE-based group counselling process. Two groups, an intervention and control group, each consisting of nine individuals, attended a group process for eight weeks. In addition to these groups, a waitlist control group was formed consisting of 31 people. In addition to pre-and-post individual interviews, The COPE-Revised and the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale were administered to both experiment groups and the waitlist control group. An ANCOVA analysis found that the group process was statistically significant for both reducing stress and developing coping strategies. Furthermore, as a result of the qualitative content analysis of the interviews, five themes emerged: hope, universality, cohesiveness, insight, and interpersonal output (new behaviour).