Love and the Nervous System: How Somatic Work Deepens Connection in Couples Therapy
Love is often seen as a feeling—a rush of warmth, a deep affection, or a sense of being seen. But in couples therapy, especially in queer-affirming, trauma-informed work, love is more than emotion. It is also a physiological state—a dance of the nervous system. When we talk about connection, rupture, repair, intimacy, and miscommunication, we’re also talking about what’s happening inside the body. And that’s where somatic work enters the picture.
In this blog, we’ll explore how understanding the nervous system through a somatic lens can transform relationships. Drawing from the wisdom of Dan Siegel, Peter Levine, Sue Johnson, and Stan Tatkin, we’ll examine how somatic work helps couples move beyond patterns of reactivity and into more regulated, embodied connection.
The Nervous System Is in the Room with You
Every couple brings their stories, their hopes, their conflicts—and also their nervous systems. While we often try to solve communication problems with words alone, many relational challenges are actually rooted in our physiology.
When you feel rejected, shut down, or criticized by your partner, your body often reacts before your brain can make sense of what’s happening. Your heart races. Your chest tightens. You might withdraw, go numb, or lash out. These are autonomic nervous system responses—fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. And they shape how we relate, often without us realizing it.
Dr. Dan Siegel calls this the "window of tolerance": the range in which we can think clearly, connect with others, and stay grounded. When we’re outside of that window—too activated or too shut down—we can’t show up as our best selves, no matter how much we love each other.
Trauma, Safety, and the Body’s Alarm System
Many of us, especially those who are queer, trans, or have survived trauma, live with a nervous system that has learned to be on high alert. This is not a failure or a flaw. It’s a survival strategy. But it can make intimacy feel confusing, overwhelming, or even unsafe.
Peter Levine, the founder of Somatic Experiencing, reminds us that trauma is not in the event—it’s in the body’s response. Two people may live through the same experience, but one may carry it in their nervous system long after, especially if they didn’t have the support to process it.
So when couples struggle to connect, it’s not always about the present moment. Sometimes, the body is reacting to echoes of the past—abandonment, rejection, control, or danger. Somatic work helps couples slow down, notice these patterns, and rewire them with care.
Case Example: When “I Need Space” and “Don’t Leave Me” Collide
Take the example of Jordan and Micah, a queer couple who came to therapy because of what they called “communication breakdowns.” Jordan would shut down during conflict, needing space to think. Micah would feel abandoned and panic, sending more texts, trying to reconnect.
At first glance, this looked like a simple mismatch in communication styles. But underneath, it was their nervous systems trying to protect them. Jordan’s freeze response had roots in a childhood where arguments escalated into violence—shutting down felt safer than speaking. Micah’s anxious attachment and fight/flight activation stemmed from early abandonment—disconnection felt life-threatening.
Somatic work helped them understand these responses not as personal attacks, but as body-based strategies for survival. Through gentle practices like grounding, breathwork, and co-regulation exercises, they learned to pause during conflict, name what was happening in their bodies, and stay connected while staying regulated.
This didn’t erase all conflict, but it created safety. And from safety, intimacy could grow.
Love as Regulation: How Co-Regulation Strengthens Bonding
Sue Johnson, the founder of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), describes love as an attachment bond that helps regulate emotion and nervous system states. When partners are attuned and responsive to each other, they create what Johnson calls a “secure base.” This allows each person to feel safe enough to explore, take risks, and return to connection after rupture.
Stan Tatkin, creator of the Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy (PACT), similarly emphasizes that couples are “nervous system managers” for each other. In healthy relationships, we soothe one another’s distress—not by fixing it, but by staying present through it.
This is called co-regulation: the ability to calm each other through voice tone, touch, presence, and empathy. In somatic couples therapy, we don’t just teach communication skills—we teach nervous system awareness. We help couples build rituals of connection that ground them when stress hits.
Practical Somatic Tools for Couples
You don’t need to be a therapist to begin working with your nervous system. Somatic practices are about returning to your body—your breath, your sensations, your rhythms. And when done with intention and care, these practices can shift how you connect with your partner, especially during stress or disconnection. Here are several powerful somatic tools that couples can explore together—both in therapy and at home:
1. Body Check-Ins
Start simple: pause and ask, “What’s happening in your body right now?” This is different from asking how someone feels emotionally. A body check-in invites awareness of physical sensations—tightness in the chest, warmth in the belly, clenched fists, shallow breathing. The goal isn’t to fix anything, but to build a shared language for sensation.
You might try doing this at the start or end of the day, or when you notice tension rising. One partner can model vulnerability by saying, “My shoulders are tense, and my stomach feels fluttery. I think I’m anxious about our upcoming conversation.” This gives the other person a chance to meet them with curiosity instead of defensiveness.
As Dr. Dan Siegel explains, naming our internal experience helps move us back into our “window of tolerance.” It re-engages the prefrontal cortex, where empathy and reasoning live, and reduces the grip of reactivity.
2. Grounding Together
When stress escalates, grounding can be a lifeline. Grounding techniques are sensory-based practices that help bring the nervous system back into the present moment. Doing them together strengthens co-regulation.
Try this: Sit side by side and press your feet into the floor. Name five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you hear, two things you smell, and one thing you taste. This “5-4-3-2-1” method is simple, but powerful. It reorients your awareness from the storm of emotion to the here-and-now.
Another technique: synchronized breathing. Sit facing each other and match the rhythm of your breath for a few minutes. You don’t have to say anything. Just breathe. This small act of presence can send powerful safety cues via the vagus nerve, calming both bodies at once.
Dr. Peter Levine, the founder of Somatic Experiencing, emphasizes that regulation happens not just through what we do, but how slowly and gently we do it. Slowness tells the body, “We’re not in danger. We can stay here.”
3. Mindful Touch and Physical Co-Regulation
Touch is one of the most primal forms of connection. But for couples who have experienced trauma or relational injury, even safe touch can feel confusing or triggering. Somatic work encourages touch that is slow, consent-based, and attuned.
Try starting with small, intentional gestures: holding hands while watching a show, placing a hand on each other’s back for a few breaths, or sitting back-to-back and noticing the support. These simple acts can build trust and connection over time.
For some, it may help to create “yes/no/maybe” lists about physical affection. What kind of touch feels safe, soothing, or activating? Knowing your partner’s responses can build a map of what helps soothe each other's nervous system.
Stan Tatkin notes that secure-functioning couples become experts in each other's regulation systems. Over time, you learn how to help one another come back from shutdown or escalation—not through force, but through presence, rhythm, and attunement.
4. Pause and Repair Rituals
Conflict isn’t the problem—lack of repair is. In the heat of an argument, our bodies often move faster than our words. A fight-or-flight response may take over, and before we know it, we’re stuck in reactivity. Somatic repair rituals help couples slow the cycle and return to safety.
You can create a shared signal—a hand on the heart, a phrase like “time out,” or a gentle tap that means “I’m reaching my limit.” This isn't about escaping accountability, but creating a buffer before things get too activated. As the nervous system calms, the repair can begin.
After a pause, practice a somatic repair: sit close, breathe together, or share a grounding practice. Then, move into words. “What happened in your body during that moment?” is often a more helpful question than “Why did you say that?” It keeps the conversation rooted in self-awareness rather than blame.
Sue Johnson writes that love isn’t about never rupturing—it’s about knowing you can find your way back to connection after disconnection. Repair rituals embody this truth. They create relational memory: “Even when we fall out of sync, we know how to return.”
5. Shared Somatic Rituals for Joy and Play
Healing isn’t just about calming the nervous system after conflict. It’s also about expanding your capacity for joy, pleasure, and play. Dan Siegel calls this the “window of resilience”—the ability to hold both pain and pleasure without becoming overwhelmed.
Couples can create rituals that celebrate embodiment in lighthearted, nourishing ways. Examples might include:
Taking a dance break during chores
Giving each other foot massages after work
Doing a yoga or movement practice together
Creating a “body joy playlist” with songs that help you move and connect
Setting aside time to cuddle or rest in silence, without distraction
These moments aren’t frivolous. They teach the body that love can be safe, grounding, and fun. For queer couples, especially, reclaiming joy in the body is a powerful act of resistance—an antidote to years of shame or silence.
Why This Matters for Queer Couples
For LGBTQIA+ folks, the nervous system often holds layers of historical and cultural trauma, experiences of being misunderstood, targeted, erased, or invalidated. Even when the present relationship is loving, the body may carry fear from the past.
For instance, coming out stories often involve moments of intense vulnerability, which may have been met with rejection. This teaches the body to brace during vulnerable connection, even if the mind knows the partner is safe. Somatic work helps unlearn these protective reflexes by offering new experiences of safety in relationships.
Moreover, queer couples may have faced medical trauma, discrimination, or religious harm that shapes how the body responds to intimacy. Somatic couples therapy creates space to name those experiences and heal through new forms of embodied trust.
Case Example: Rebuilding Intimacy After Religious Trauma
Alex and Ray had been together for seven years. Both were raised in conservative religious environments that framed queerness as sinful. While they were now out and affirming, they struggled with physical intimacy. “We love each other, but our bodies don’t feel safe,” Alex said in one session.
Somatic work helped them realize that their hesitance wasn’t about desire—it was about nervous system imprinting. Their bodies had learned that touch meant danger, shame, or punishment. Through slow, affirming exercises like guided breath, eye contact, and non-sexual nurturing touch, they began to rebuild a sense of safety in their own skin and in each other’s presence.
They also created rituals that connected them to joy and agency—dancing, warm baths, affirming affirmations whispered into each other’s ears. Their nervous systems, over time, began to associate intimacy not with fear, but with presence, safety, and belonging.
The Couples Therapist’s Role: Holding the Body with Compassion
In couples therapy that includes somatic work, the couples therapist becomes more than a mediator—they become a guide for nervous system attunement. They track body cues, voice shifts, and patterns of activation or collapse. They help partners slow down when things speed up, and stay grounded when the past starts leaking into the present.
Dan Siegel’s concept of “mindsight”—the ability to see the mind and body states of oneself and others—guides this work. A therapist with mindsight helps each partner develop greater awareness and empathy for what’s happening beneath the surface. They also model regulated presence, offering a nervous system that can help anchor the room when things feel overwhelming.
This isn’t about perfection. It’s about co-creating safety, where both partners can bring their full selves—bodies, histories, fears, and hopes—into the room and know they won’t be shamed or abandoned.
Somatic Reconnection Isn’t a Quick Fix—But It’s a Lasting One
Somatic work can feel slow at first. It may seem subtle. But this is the terrain of transformation. Because when couples learn to track their own nervous systems, they gain a new form of communication—one that doesn’t rely on words alone.
They begin to notice when their partner’s shoulders tighten or voice shakes. They learn that a shutdown isn’t a rejection, but a cue that the body needs gentleness. They discover that their own reactions are not failures, but invitations to slow down and attend with care.
In a world that often tells us to “just talk it out,” somatic couples therapy invites us to listen to the body’s wisdom. And in doing so, it helps love feel less like a battlefield and more like a shared rhythm—a place where both nervous systems can rest.
Closing Reflections: Love That Can Breathe
Love isn’t just a mental decision. It’s not just a set of shared values or chemistry. It’s a nervous system state—a feeling of home in the body when we’re with someone. And like any home, it needs tending. For couples—especially those navigating trauma, marginalization, or simply the vulnerability of being human—somatic work offers tools for that tending. It helps us move from reactivity to regulation, from fear to presence, from disconnection to co-regulation.
In the words of Stan Tatkin: “Secure functioning isn’t about avoiding conflict. It’s about knowing that we’re in this together, and we’re not going anywhere.” Somatic couples therapy is a path toward that knowledge. A path where love becomes more than a feeling, it becomes an embodied practice. One breath, one touch, one moment of nervous system safety at a time.
Is It Time to Reconnect? Start Couples Therapy in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Across Minnesota
You don’t have to carry it all alone—or keep pretending everything’s fine when it’s not. AtNobleTree Therapy, we offer queer-affirming, trauma-informed couples therapy in Minneapolis MN, St. Paul, and across Minnesota that honors the complexity of your relationship—not just the challenges, but the love that’s trying to survive beneath them. Whether you’re navigating rupture, distance, or the quiet ache of feeling unseen, we’re here to hold space for all of it.
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Other Therapy Services at NobleTree Therapy in Minnesota
At NobleTree Therapy, we hold space not just for what hurts—but for what still hopes. Our work centers queer, neurodivergent, and spiritually impacted individuals across Minneapolis, St. Paul, and throughout Minnesota who are carrying both tenderness and grit. Whether you’re processing identity, unraveling patterns shaped by high-control environments, or trying to soften the armor that helped you survive, we walk alongside you without judgment.
In addition to couples therapy, we offer LGBTQIA+ affirming individual therapy, support for religious trauma, and identity exploration that doesn’t demand explanation. We also work with folks navigating grief, burnout, disconnection, and chronic self-abandonment—offering space to slow down, regulate, and rebuild trust with your inner self.
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About the Author
Kendra Snyder, MA, LMFT, NCC (she/her) is the founder of NobleTree Therapy and a licensed trauma therapist serving clients in Minnesota and Colorado. With over a decade of experience, she supports individuals and couples through the tender terrain of relational rupture, nervous system overwhelm, and the everyday work of showing up for love with more intention and care. Her approach weaves together depth-oriented, somatic, and attachment-focused therapy that honors both your inner story and your embodied experience.
Kendra specializes in working with queer clients, adoptees, creatives, and those untangling the lasting impact of religious trauma and high-control systems. As both a therapist and a survivor, she offers grounded presence in moments that feel uncertain or raw. She believes healing happens not in perfection, but in the choice to stay present—to ourselves and to each other—even when it’s hard.