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Worksheet: When your body feels too much.
- Apr 20
- 4 min read
A hybrid NAMES + Somatic Experiencing worksheet.
A grounded way to work with overwhelm using Somatic Experiencing and NAMES
There are moments when something in us takes over.
Your chest tightens. Your thoughts speed up. A feeling rises so quickly that it feels like it fills the entire room.
And almost immediately, another part of you responds:
“Make this stop.”
So you try.
You think your way out of it. You distract yourself. You push the feeling down. You tell yourself to calm down, to be rational, to move on.
But the more you try to get rid of it, the more it seems to stay.
This is not a failure of willpower.
It’s not a lack of insight.
It’s something much more fundamental:
Your nervous system is activated.
Why insight isn’t enough
Most of us were taught to deal with distress cognitively, logically, rationally.
Understand the thought. Challenge the belief. Reframe the situation.
And sometimes, that helps.
But when your body is in a state of threat—tight chest, shallow breath, racing heart—you are no longer just dealing with thoughts.
You are dealing with a physiological state.
And physiology doesn’t respond well to argument.
You can’t think your way out of a body that feels unsafe.
This is where approaches like Somatic Experiencing come in.
What Somatic Experiencing understands
Developed by Peter A. Levine, Somatic Experiencing starts from a simple idea:
When the body experiences overwhelm, it doesn’t just need insight. It needs help regulating and completing its response.
Instead of focusing only on thoughts, it brings attention to:
sensations in the body
the nervous system’s state (activation or shutdown)
the body’s natural ability to settle—when supported correctly
A few core principles matter here:
1. Sensation over story
Rather than analysing why you feel this way,you begin by noticing how it feels in the body.
Because the body is often where the activation lives.
2. Titration (going slowly)
You don’t dive fully into the intensity.
You approach it in small, manageable doses.
Just enough to notice.Not enough to overwhelm.
3. Pendulation
You gently move between:
activation (the difficult sensation)
and safety (something neutral or grounding)
This helps the nervous system learn:
“I can feel this… and I can come back.”
4. Orientation and safety
Before going deep, the system needs to know:
“Am I safe right now?”
Because without that, everything feels like threat.
Somatic work is not about forcing calm.
It’s about creating the conditions where the body can settle on its own.
But there’s another layer: the “part” of you
At the same time, many people notice something else:
It doesn’t just feel like a sensation.
It feels like a part of me.
A part that:
Worries
Anticipates
Criticises
Tries to protect
This is where frameworks like Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, popularised by Russ Harris, and Internal Family Systems become useful.
What NAMES is doing
The NAMES process is a structured way of relating to internal experience:
Notice what is happening
Acknowledge and understand it
Make room for it instead of fighting it
Expand awareness beyond it
Safety — orient back to the present
It helps shift you from:
“I am overwhelmed”
to
“I’m noticing overwhelm, and I can relate to it differently.”
But on its own, NAMES can sometimes stay cognitive.
And Somatic Experiencing on its own can sometimes feel too unstructured for people who need guidance.
Why I combine them?
Well I guess overwhelm is rarely just one thing.
It is:
A body state (activation, tension, shutdown)
And a psychological experience (fear, meaning, parts trying to help)
This hybrid approach brings both together:
Somatic Experiencing regulates the nervous system
NAMES organizes how you relate to what you’re feeling and your parts
So instead of:
trying to think your way out or diving into sensation without direction
We try a guided pathway that does both.
What this practice actually helps with
Over time, this combined approach builds something subtle but powerful:
1. You stop fighting your experience
The struggle reduces—even if the feeling is still there.
2. Your body learns it can settle
Not because you forced it to,but because you created the right conditions.
3. You develop flexibility
You’re no longer stuck in:
avoidance
or overwhelm
You can move between states.
4. You stay with yourself
Even when things feel intense.
And that might be the most important shift of all.
What this worksheet is (and isn’t)
This worksheet is not:
A quick fix
A way to eliminate difficult feelings
Something to “complete perfectly”
It is:
A guided way to meet yourself when something inside feels like too much.
Essentially the big shift that we are going for is your system learning:
I don't need to be so scared of my feelings
I am not threatened by my own lack of control
I can be in control of what's happening right now
That is not small.
That is your system learning:
“I'm not in danger. I am safe and can survive this.”
Two worksheets below.
One with a deeper script that you can read through out loud (or to your clients).
One more as a handout I made for my own clients.
Let's go :)
Hernping
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