This month we’re celebrating a huge milestone — 50 episodes of Punk Therapy! To mark the moment, we’re bringing back one of our most loved conversations from 2023: our interview with the extraordinary Dr. Sharon Stanley.
Sharon’s work has been a significant influence on both of us over the years. Her somatic, relational, deeply human approach to healing has shaped so much of how we think about therapy — and continues to infuse the way we show up with our clients, our students, and our community. Revisiting this episode felt like the perfect way to honour where we’ve come from and where we’re heading.
And in some beautiful timing… this episode coincides with the release of a completed PhD from one of your hosts — a project exploring the meeting place of interpersonal neurobiology, somatics, and psychedelic-assisted therapy. It’s work that has been simmering behind the scenes for years, and it’s finally ready to be shared.
If you’re curious to read it or want to dive deeper into the ideas that quietly underpin many of our conversations, you’re warmly invited to reach out:
- Email us at: [email protected]
We’ll happily send you a copy.
It feels special to celebrate 50 episodes by revisiting a conversation that has meant so much to us — and to pair it with the release of work that’s been part of this podcast’s DNA from the beginning.
Thank you for being with us on this journey. Here’s to many more episodes, many more conversations, and many more ways of exploring what it means to heal — together.
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CW: Physical assault, trauma, and suicide
Dr. T and the Truth Fairy welcome Dr. Sharon Stanley - renowned psychotherapist, author, and developer of the psychotherapeutic model of somatic transformation - to the show. They have a searching and revealing conversation with Dr. Stanley about her career and the decades of work she has done with humans and trauma.
Sharon Stanley describes her work as “relational to the core” and explains how her somatic work uses relationship to at times discern a particular technique. She shares the personal story of how she first became interested in trauma and how her study moved into the idea of somatic transformation from there. Dr. Stanley also names many foundational figures whom she has drawn insight from along the way.
The discussion Dr. T and the Truth Fairy have with Sharon Stanley involve how Sharon keeps boundaries in the relationship formed through trauma bonding, what the intersubjective field is, and the six steps of somatic transformation. Sharon describes what ‘meaning making’ encompasses and she invites Dr. T and Truth Fairy into a brief thematic reflection. This episode sheds light on how much Truth Fairy has learned from Dr. Stanley and why she has been mentioned so frequently on PUNK Therapy. It gives insight into her intentions and careful trauma healing methods.
“When we do have an experience of going through something together, we can have an experience called trauma bonding. And the trauma bonding is a kind of an enmeshment where I feel what you feel, you feel what I feel. And we don't have clear boundaries. And that kind of leads me a little bit further into your question that working professionally with trauma, it's relational, but the boundaries are very clear. And how to make sure [in] those boundaries that there's a time, there's a place, there's a way we will, it's almost like a ritual that we will follow.” - Dr. Sharon Stanley
About Sharon Stanley, PhD:
Over the past 17 years Sharon Stanley has developed and taught an emerging curriculum for healing trauma to thousands of mental health practitioners. The educational experience of ST actively engages psychotherapists in exploring emerging research and practices in their own professional and personal lives. Sharon then applies their findings to the ongoing development of Somatic Transformation.
As an instructor for Somatic Transformation, Sharon has had the privilege of teaching psychotherapists from Canada, United States, Middle East and Europe. Her doctoral studies at the University of Victoria involved research into the development of empathy in caregivers working with traumatized children and identifies the transformative effects of ST as an amplification of empathic connection. Sharon has been engaged in a small study group with Dr. Allan Schore, a well-known neuroscientist, for 18 years. She lives and practices psychotherapy on Bainbridge Island, just outside of Seattle. Her book, Relational and Body-Centered Practices for Healing Trauma: Lifting the Burdens of the Past was published by Routledge in 2016 and is used by psychotherapists interested in a humanistic, developmental, body-centered, relational approach to healing trauma.
Resources discussed in this episode:
- “Relational and Body-Centered Practices for Healing Trauma” by Sharon Stanley, PhD
- Judith Herman
- Edith Stein
- John O’Donohue
- Matryoshka dolls
- Max van Manen
- Suicide Hotlines and Prevention Resources Around the World
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Punk Therapy: website |email
Dr. Sharon Stanley: somatic transformation website | email
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