New Frontiers in Somatic Interventions: Where Cuddlists Go That Somatic Therapy Can’t (And What Your Clients Might Need You To Know)
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby is a licensed psychologist, licensed marriage and family therapist, board-certified coach, AAMFT clinical supervisor, host of the Love, Happiness, and Success Podcast and founder of Growing Self.
There is often a painful gap between what clients understand and what they can actually do when old patterns take over, and this conversation about somatic therapy for trauma goes right to the center of that gap.
A client can name the trigger. They can explain the attachment wound. They can see the people-pleasing pattern, understand the family-of-origin story, and tell you exactly where the boundary belongs. And yet, when the moment comes to speak up, receive care, or stay present in closeness, their body does something else entirely.
That tension is what made this episode so compelling to me.
In this conversation, I’m talking with Keeley Shoup and Michelle Renee about a provocative clinical question: what do we do when our clients need experiences we ethically cannot provide? If that question feels familiar, it probably overlaps with themes I’ve written about in Why Therapy Clients Get Stuck (and What to Do About It) and Help! My Client Says ‘Therapy Isn’t Working’—Now What?. Sometimes the issue is not resistance, lack of motivation, or even lack of insight. Sometimes the issue is that the body has not yet had a different experience.
What Is Somatic Therapy When Insight Is Not Enough?
When therapists ask, what is somatic therapy, the answer often begins with a simple but important shift: the body is not just where symptoms show up. The body is part of how trauma is stored, organized, and repeated. As van der Kolk (2014) explains in The Body Keeps the Score, trauma has physiological dimensions, which means healing often needs to include more than cognitive understanding.
That is one reason somatic therapy has become such an important part of contemporary trauma treatment. It helps clients notice nervous system responses, track sensation, and build more awareness of how stress, fear, attachment injuries, and survival patterns live in the body. At the same time, somatic therapy for trauma raises a deeper question: what happens when the healing experience a client needs is not only internal awareness, but also a different relational experience with another person?
That is where this episode stretches the conversation in an important way.
Somatic Therapy for Trauma and the Limits of Talk Therapy
Many clients in somatic therapy for trauma are not just trying to understand what happened to them. They are trying to change what their body expects from closeness, support, and contact. For clients with histories of childhood sexual abuse, chronic boundary violations, grief, loneliness, relational trauma, or intense discomfort receiving care, the problem is often not that they cannot talk about it. The problem is that their body still organizes itself around danger.
That reality is one reason this conversation feels so clinically relevant. Even when therapy is helping, there are moments when we hit the edge of what can happen inside a traditional therapy relationship. As I’ve written before in Why Therapists Can’t Do the Work for Clients, our role is powerful, but it is not limitless. A client still has to live the experience, practice the skill, and tolerate the feeling in real time.
That is also why experiential therapy matters so much. According to Kazantzis et al. (2018), insight alone often is not enough; behavioral and experiential interventions matter because change tends to happen when people do something different, not only when they understand it differently. Similarly, Greenberg (2011) makes a strong case that corrective emotional experiences and experiential work are central to meaningful change.
In other words, there are times when a client does not need another perfect interpretation. They need a new experience.
Experiential Therapy and the Space Between Knowing and Doing
One of the strongest ideas in this episode is that some clients do not only need insight. They need practice.
They need to practice receiving care without managing someone else’s feelings.
They need to practice saying no without losing the relationship.
They need to practice asking for what feels okay and stopping when it does not.
They need to practice noticing what their body is telling them before they override it.
That is part of what makes experiential therapy so valuable. It gives clients a chance to move from abstract understanding into embodied learning. And when that happens inside a boundaried, consent-based, well-structured setting, the nervous system gets a chance to register something new.
This is not a minor point. As Norcross and Lambert (2018) argue in Psychotherapy Relationships That Work, the therapeutic relationship is one of the strongest predictors of outcome. Likewise, Porges (2011) offers a framework for understanding how safety, co-regulation, and nervous system cues shape whether people can stay present enough to heal.
That is part of what Keeley and Michelle are talking about in this episode. They are not describing psychotherapy. They are not describing massage. And they are certainly not describing sexual touch. Instead, they are describing a client-led, consent-based relational practice where clients can notice their responses, name preferences, test boundaries, and experience another person responding with steadiness and respect.For therapists, this raises an important question that also connects with Be a Better Therapist: How to Tell if Therapy is Working for Your Clients,Secrets to Therapy Client Engagement, and The Essential Role of Ongoing Assessment in Therapy: how do we tell the difference between a client who needs more time, a client who needs a different intervention, and a client who may need an experience outside the therapy room that supports the work we are already doing?
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Why Even a Boundaries Therapist Aid Has Limits
Therapists teach boundaries every day. We talk about them, model them, script them, and process the guilt that often comes with them. We give clients language, reflection tools, and frameworks. All of that can help.
Still, even the best boundaries therapist aid can only take a client so far if their body still equates self-advocacy with danger.
A client may know that “no” is a complete sentence and still go blank when they try to say it. A client may understand bodily autonomy and still freeze when someone moves closer. A client may genuinely want intimacy and still feel panic when care becomes real.
That is why I found this part of the episode so powerful. Keeley and Michelle describe sessions where the most meaningful moment is not the hug. Sometimes it is the pause. Sometimes it is the recognition that discomfort has arrived. Sometimes it is the client deciding not to continue and learning, perhaps for the first time, that the relationship stays safe anyway.
That kind of learning lands differently.
It also shines a brighter light on issues I’ve explored in Therapeutic Boundaries for Therapists: Why Your Therapy Clients Think You’re Weird and Setting Boundaries as a Therapist. Once you move into any space involving power, trust, vulnerability, and embodied experience, boundaries stop being a background issue. They become part of the intervention itself.
Somatic Therapy, Power, and Ethical Discernment
One reason I appreciated this conversation is that it is open-minded without becoming naive. The healing potential in this modality is part of the story. The ethical risk is part of the story too.
That is especially important when we are talking about vulnerable clients, physical closeness, trauma histories, and professions that are still evolving. Questions like these are exactly why Power Dynamics Can Ruin Therapy: Avoid These Pitfalls! and Therapist Survival Guide: How to Dodge Ethical Landmines and Keep Your License Safe matter so much. Good intentions do not erase power. Warmth does not replace structure. And novelty does not exempt anyone from ethical responsibility.
This is also where the conversation connects to a larger professional shift. In Is It Time to Rethink the Medical Model in Therapy?, I wrote about the limitations of overly narrow ways of understanding healing. This episode lives in that same broader territory. It asks us to stay clinically grounded while also being willing to consider forms of healing that may not fit neatly into traditional categories.
At the same time, discernment matters. It matters for therapists. It matters for clients. And it matters even more in emerging spaces where the stakes can be high.
Somatic Therapy for Trauma, Isolation, and the Need for Safe Connection
Another important thread in this episode is loneliness. Keeley and Michelle talk about clients who are not only traumatized but also deeply isolated. That is not a small thing. According to Holt-Lunstad et al. (2015), social isolation has meaningful mental and physical health consequences. So when we talk about somatic therapy for trauma, we are not just talking about symptom reduction. We are also talking about whether a person can feel safe enough in connection to receive care, tolerate closeness, and stay present in relationship.
That lens makes the episode feel bigger than a conversation about one unusual modality. It becomes a conversation about what human beings need in order to heal.
Meet the Guests
Keeley Shoup
Keeley Shoup has practiced as a full-time Cuddle Therapist since 2015, supporting clients in both individual and group settings. She is a certified Cuddle Party facilitator and has taken every training program that exists for professional cuddlers. She continues her education in IFS, EFT, somatic experiencing, embodiment practices, the Wheel of Consent, and racial equity. In 2017, she became the Director of CuddleXpo, the first-ever professional cuddlers convention.
Michelle Renee
Michelle Renee has been a pioneering force in the field of professional cuddling since joining Cuddlist as a Cuddle Therapist at its inception in late 2015. She is a certified Cuddle Party facilitator and trained surrogate partner, bringing a wealth of expertise to the intersection of relational touch and therapeutic practices. From 2016 to 2020, Michelle served as Cuddlist’s Director of Operations. In 2023, she returned to Cuddlist leadership as the Director of Training and officially became a co-owner in early 2025.
Why This Episode Matters in the Bigger Future of Therapy
This conversation also belongs inside a much larger professional discussion. Therapists are already rethinking what clients want, what healing looks like, and why some people are looking outside traditional therapy for support. You can hear echoes of that shift in The Future of Therapy in the Age of AI, Are Mental Health Coaches Replacing Therapists?, and Why Therapy Clients Are Hiring Coaches (And Leaving Therapy Behind). In a different but related way, Attachment Style Therapy Reinvented: Dr. Dan Siegel’s Latest Breakthrough also reflects the field’s ongoing effort to think more deeply about relational healing, integration, and embodied change.
Taken together, these conversations point toward a central question: how do we stay ethical, grounded, and clinically rigorous while also staying open to the fact that healing is often bigger than the models we were first taught?
That is the question I hear underneath this entire episode.
Ready for the Right Kind of Support?
If this conversation stirred something in you, either professionally or personally, I want to offer you a gentle next step. Sometimes the most meaningful shift begins when you stop trying to sort it all out alone.
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Resources:
Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score. Viking. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/313336/the-body-keeps-the-score-by-bessel-van-der-kolk-md/
Norcross, J. C., & Lambert, M. J. (2018). Psychotherapy Relationships That Work. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/med-psych/9780190843960.001.0001
Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory. Norton. https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393707007
Greenberg, L. S. (2011). Emotion-Focused Therapy. APA.https://doi.org/10.1037/12348-000
Kazantzis, N., et al. (2018). Cognitive and Behavioral Practice.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cbpra.2018.03.001
Holt-Lunstad, J., et al. (2015). Perspectives on Psychological Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691614568352
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