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For years, DNRS was the foundation of my healing, and in many ways it carried me out of some of the darkest periods of my life. It gave me a sense of direction when I had none, and the repetition helped me interrupt cycles that once felt automatic and uncontrollable. I saw genuine improvements, sometimes dramatic ones, and I helped me heal from chronic health issues. But after a long stretch of progress, something began shifting in a way I didn’t expect, because even though I thought I had moved past certain patterns, I started feeling as if I had hit an invisible wall that kept me from going any further.
What I didn’t understand at the time was that I had reached the layer of healing that cannot be overridden. DNRS teaches redirection, and while it is powerful, it can unintentionally train you to override sensations that actually need attention. I didn’t realize how deeply I was pushing past trauma; I simply thought I was “retraining.” Eventually, though, your body stops letting you push through, and mine started speaking louder than the tools I was trying to use to quiet it.
Little signs began appearing first: my mouth would suddenly want to open as if to scream, my neck started jerking in ways I couldn’t control, and my body would twist into these protective shapes that felt instinctual and ancient. At first, I thought I was regressing or doing something incorrectly, but what was actually happening was that my body had become safe enough to show me the real trauma that I had unknowingly bypassed for years. DNRS had helped me move forward, but it didn’t teach me how to finish a trauma response, and that was the missing piece that started rising to the surface.
I started experimenting with the body by studying TRE by David Berceli. Trauma release exercises teaches a set of exercises that allow the body to shake on its own to release survival energy. Our bodies get stuck in the energy of “what didn’t get to happen” in traumatic events. And as I studied I practiced this model to help my body release these patterns. During one session I realized my hands wanted to punch, they began closing lifting and pushing outwards. In another session my head began jerking outward and I felt the desire to scream. And in another my body would twist on it’s own. It was then that I knew I needed more than just shaking. I needed guidance on listening to what my body wanted to so.
When I began Somatic Experiencing, everything about these reactions started making sense. SE gave me language and context for what I had been feeling, because all those movements — the jerk in my neck, the impulse to scream, the instinct to twist away or reach out — were incomplete survival responses that had been trapped in my system for decades. In SE sessions, these patterns finally had space to move, and my body would shake, cry, brace, or punch outward as if it were trying to complete something it never got to finish earlier in my life. I often felt relief afterward, sometimes profound relief, yet the neck tick persisted, and the instinct to scream or protect myself continued rising in the middle of DNRS sessions.
That persistence told me something important: my system was trying, with everything it had, to resolve trauma, but it simply didn’t have the capacity to finish the job. My body kept getting halfway through the survival response and then hitting the same wall, again and again. Often there would be a completion of a traumatic event, but there was also a lot of repetition. My neck jutting forward became spontaneous at different points during the day, and the impulse to scream came with it. It was as if my system was stuck in this survival response. That is the exact moment I realized I needed something more — not to replace the work I was doing, but to support it. That’s why I decided to add Spravato. Spravato is approved for treatment resistant depression, but as a “side effect” helped reduce other sensations in my body and allow for my system to learn new things.
I didn’t choose Spravato because DNRS stopped working or because Somatic Experiencing failed. I chose it because my nervous system was clearly attempting to release something that had been frozen for years, and it needed a wider window of tolerance in order to complete the process. Spravato gave me exactly that: a deeper sense of internal space, a reduction in the background sense of threat, and a level of neuroplasticity that allowed the other modalities to work with my system instead of against its limits.
Spravato, which is esketamine administered through a monitored nasal spray, works on the brain’s glutamate system rather than the serotonin-based pathways targeted by traditional antidepressants. This distinction matters because glutamate is heavily involved in neuroplasticity, learning, memory, and the reorganization of old neural patterns. When Spravato opens this system, the brain becomes temporarily more flexible and less rigidly locked into defensive circuitry, allowing old trauma patterns to loosen. It widens the window of tolerance and reduces the background alarm that so many trauma survivors live with without even realizing it, and it increases capacity in a way that feels organic rather than suppressive. This shift doesn’t numb the system; it makes it more available for healing. It is not a drug one takes for long periods, but monitored in a doctors office to help reset the system, creat neuroplasticity to use while doing the work needed to change.
For someone dealing with trauma-based limbic patterns rather than simple depression, this openness changes everything. It allows Somatic Experiencing to reach deeper layers without overwhelming the system, and it makes DNRS more effective because the brain isn’t fighting against a chronic threat response that keeps hijacking attempts to rewire. People with straightforward depression often experience relief with Spravato alone, but people with trauma physiology — sensitivity patterns, survival loops, and frozen responses — usually need a combination of modalities. That is because ketamine can open the door, but it cannot walk you through the trauma; DNRS and SE do that part.
Looking back, I can see now that the wall I hit wasn’t a sign of failure; it was actually the point at which the deepest layers of trauma were finally ready to surface. Walls appear not because we’re doing something wrong, but because we’ve reached the part of the healing path that demands more support. The nervous system refuses to be overridden at that level, and it requires a gentler, more spacious approach — one that Spravato made possible for me.
Once I combined Spravato, DNRS, and SE, the changes became more cohesive and less chaotic. My neck tick began to decrease, the protective reflexes started to complete rather than loop, and my body was able to move through those unfinished trauma responses in a way that actually felt resolving rather than endlessly repetitive. DNRS started working again, but this time it wasn’t from a place of override; it was from genuine capacity. I started to use DNRS strategically. Rather than always overriding symptoms, I listened to them, observed them and allowed my body to move in somatic experiencing sessions. But of course I couldn’t always have spontaneous movements, so when out and feeling a “flare” of symptoms I tried to use the visualizations to calm my body. I also used them after SE sessions to help my body pedulate into joy after a deep completion experience. You can read about that here.
My SE deepened naturally because my system had enough room to tolerate what emerged instead of shutting down. My sensitivities — which had once dictated every environment I could enter — slowly began losing their power because the underlying threat was finally diminishing.
Healing is not linear and takes intuition to know what may help next. For example, unless I worked with DNRS and open my awareness to my body, I may not have known what modality could be supportive next. The calming of my body in DNRS was fundamental to developing a relationship with it and knowing that now it was time for bottom up approaches.
I can feel a fundamental shift in the way my body processes experience now. I’m no longer overriding or forcing myself through strategies that my system doesn’t have the capacity to sustain. Instead, I’m healing in a way that feels authentic, integrated, and deeply embodied. Spravato opened the door, Somatic Experiencing allowed the trauma to complete, and DNRS helped my brain rewire the pathways that trauma had shaped. Together, they allowed me to reach places within myself that I could never access before.
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