Queer Somatic Healing — grace allerdice

Somatic trauma therapist Andrea Glik explains why it isn’t helpful to pathologize everything about us, but it’s more importance to increase our capacity for pleasure and presence. In this episode, Andrea walks us through attachment styles, the relationship between pain and pleasure and how lessons from kink can help us relate to more healthy sex.

We discuss

How to identify the resources and tools you already have
Using the breath as a neutral tool for somatic experience
Where to start when “be here now” feels unsafe
How it is unhelpful to over pathologize and over diagnose experiences
The relationship between pain and pleasure
How our capacity for pleasure can signify healing
Working through shame around pleasure, which can also be about worthiness
Looking at attachment styles and how they affect relationships
How to cultivate your capacity and consciousness around pleasure in your life
What kink has to teach us about communication, consent, play and body awareness
How the earth holds so much pleasure for us

About Andrea

I started doing this healing work 12 years ago and began as a crisis counselor at a peer-led, grassroots organization. Andrea went on to serve at many organizations and non-profits that provide therapeutic services for women & LGBTQ folks. I have been able to serve my LGBTQ+, feminist, sex worker, and survivor community as a trauma therapist, sex educator, facilitator, intake coordinator, and community organizer, and more recently, career coach.

I received my LMSW in 2017 and went on to be trained in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy by the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute. Then, getting my LCSW in 2020. In 2021, I began my training to become EMDR certified.

I specialize in treating trauma and PTSD/c-PTSD for women and queer & trans folks, using parts work, Polyvagal theory, and feminist therapy practices to help clients come home to themselves.

I am proud to be an out queer and survivor therapist. I currently live and practice on occupied Osage, Sioux, Kaskaskia and Kickapoo land, at the confluence of the Missouri, Mississippi, and Illinois Rivers. I see clients online and in so called St. Louis, MO.