Trauma Therapy Tip: Developing the Felt Sense

By: Kerry Mecusker 

In January, people often share a goal, word, or phrase that they are holding for the new year. I’ll share mine for 2026: the felt sense. This phrase hasn’t yet trickled down into pop therapy culture yet but I hope it eventually does. It’s a beautiful, complicated concept that can help in a multitude of ways - making experiences richer, guiding the healing of trauma, increasing creativity, spiritual connection, self-understanding, and even protecting the self from a predator through discernment - be it a destructive relationship, political or religious belief, job, or negative complex. What is a more worthy consideration?

The felt sense is hard to describe. In his book, “Waking the Tiger, Healing Trauma”, Peter Levine, founder of Somatic Experiencing trauma therapy uses the illustration of an image on a television. We are seeing a vast array of pixels and can focus on any one of these dots. The process of connecting the dots creates a shift in focus- now we see the totality of the image as an integrated picture- Oh! That’s Julia Roberts! The felt sense is the shift of perspective to the big picture.

In terms of our work in therapy, we often focus on the thoughts, emotions, physiological sensations, images, and spontaneous movements that arise in session- these are the pixels on the television screen. As we explore, we connect them together, resulting in a perspective shift or energetic change- the stuff of trauma therapy! We’re working together for that overall felt sense to emerge that says, “That is what all this is! I know more of myself. And though knowing my inner responding, I know that which I am responding to. Therein is fullness, totality, completion.” 

Other words for the felt sense are “gut instinct”, “inner aura”, “discernment”, or “knowing”. We can have a discernment without much awareness at all of the individual pixels that went into creating it. Maybe you have had an experience where you had a sense of danger when you had no real evidence yet for it. Or a sense of goodness without any reasons yet to point to. I encourage you to learn to identify and work with the felt sense in a trauma therapy setting as it can help you deepen, receive more, and determine how to proceed through life in practical ways. It is one of our greatest gifts.

If you are interested in cultivating the felt sense with me or another Currents therapist, please reach out; or, if you’re an existing client, bring up this topic in session!