Helping You Reclaim Safety, Agency, and Connection – Interview with Kate Alderman

Kate Alderman is a trauma-informed somatic therapist, somatic sexologist, nervous-system recovery coach, and founder of the You’re A Strong Woman Foundation, whose work emerged from lived inquiry. After a near-death motorcycle accident in 2011, Alderman began a long apprenticeship with the body and with spirit, through meditation, yoga, plant medicines, shamanic arts, martial arts, and somatic therapy, all of which pointed her back to the same place: the nervous system as a compass for truth.

Following a later period in which she was subjected to intimate partner violence, that inquiry deepened. While regulating and expanding her own nervous-system capacity through the aftermath of violence and abuse, from inside both dominating relational dynamics and the institutional systems that govern us, she experienced not only the cost these “power-over” systems place on our bodies, relationships, and lives, but also their wider global impact. Through that lived experience, she came to fully realise the prevailing “power-over” model as fundamentally unsustainable, and to articulate an alternative: a “power-with” way of living that begins in the body.

Today, as an Executive Contributor for Brainz Magazine, Alderman’s voice is equal parts clinician, activist, and systems thinker. She works at the intersection of nervous-system regulation, embodied awareness, sexual empowerment, and relational integrity. Her focus is not on crisis or pathology, but on helping people expand their internal capacity to sense truth, trust their bodies, set clear boundaries, and enjoy “power-with” relationships and lives grounded in safety, agency, mutuality, and embodied integrity.

She is not trying to save the world. She is helping people come home to themselves, and that changes everything.

Kate Alderman, Somatic Sexologist

Who is Kate Alderman? Introduce yourself, your hobbies, your favourites, who you are at home and in business, and tell us something interesting about yourself.

At home, I’m embodied and creatively grounded. I value slow mornings, movement, time with the ocean, hiking in the mountains, and quality time with friends, family, and community. Music is a big part of my life, I DJ and curate sets as a form of creative expression and nervous-system regulation.

In my professional life, I’m deeply present, relational, and precise. I value integrity, clarity, and clean boundaries, and I’m curious about how power moves internally and between people. I work best with individuals and couples who are self-led, or ready to step into greater self-leadership, and who want to refine their capacity for aliveness, connection, and intimacy rather than outsource their authority. I don’t rush processes, and I don’t override the body. I trust pacing, attunement, and what emerges when the nervous system feels safe.

I learn by listening to the body, to nature, and to lived experience, while remaining grounded beyond borrowed opinions or rigid frameworks. Through somatic work, sexology, meditation, yoga, martial arts, and time in the Peruvian Amazon, I’ve learned to trust inner guidance over theory. This has shaped my understanding of the nervous system as an intelligent compass toward clarity, self-trust, harmony, and peace, where gentleness and refined empathy coexist with discernment, protection, and grounded power.

What led you to specialise in nervous-system–led, trauma-informed somatic work?

I didn’t choose trauma-informed somatic work as a specialty, it began with my own embodied healing and evolved into the most honest way I know to work with the body, power, and human experience.

For many years, my body was signalling that something was off. Intimacy felt difficult, my relationship with pleasure was strained, and my reproductive health had been compromised. What became clear was that insight alone wasn’t enough. No amount of understanding could override the patterns my nervous system was holding. Healing required embodied learning through somatic experience, discovering how to work with the nervous system rather than pushing through it.

As I moved into conscious relating and sexology, I began to see how common these experiences are, how many people struggle with intimacy, arousal, stress, or shutdown because their nervous systems are overloaded, unresourced, and shaped by patterns of adaptation.

This inquiry deepened further through the experience of intimate partner violence and abuse, sharpening my empathic precision and understanding of abusive dynamics. It also revealed how even highly capable people can lose access to clarity, discernment, and inner authority under sustained relational, cultural, and systemic pressure, and why embodied, nervous-system-led therapy is essential.

My work is nervous-system-led and trauma-informed through professional training, lived experience, and clinical integrity, not as a trend. It supports people in building capacity, restoring agency, and relating with clarity, so health, aliveness, and intimacy can return naturally, rather than being performed or forced.

I’ve always been drawn to the places where culture carries shame, silence, or confusion, because those are often the very places where liberation, self-trust, and empowerment are waiting.

How would you describe your work and approach so your ideal client immediately understands?

At its core, my work is about helping people feel at home in their bodies again, so they can trust themselves, relate honestly, and experience more peace, pleasure, and vitality in their lives and relationships.

Most people I work with are outwardly functioning, yet internally they feel tense, disconnected, exhausted, unsure of themselves, or stuck in patterns that don’t reflect who they truly are. They may struggle with intimacy, boundaries, stress, or self-trust, even if they’ve done personal development work and understand themselves intellectually.

My approach is practical, body-based, and relational. Rather than analysing people or diagnosing problems, I help them develop embodied resources and explore the patterns shaping their relationships with themselves and others. Through guided practices, we identify what’s actually working, what isn’t, and what new pathways become available when the nervous system feels supported. This naturally improves communication, decision-making, emotional intelligence, pleasure, and connection.

Clients consistently describe the work as liberating, deeply supportive and empowering. It doesn’t make them dependent on me, it strengthens their relationship with themselves.

What are the most common challenges individuals or couples come to you for support with?

The most common challenges people bring to me centre on feeling disconnected from themselves and from meaningful connections in their lives.

Individuals often arrive feeling anxious, overwhelmed, chronically tense, exhausted, or unsure of their own instincts. Many understand their patterns intellectually, yet still struggle to embody change. They may have difficulty speaking their truth, trusting themselves, setting boundaries, or feeling at ease in their bodies. Others seek support because intimacy, arousal, pleasure, or emotional connection feels blocked or inconsistent. Some are also navigating heightened sensitivity, different ways of processing, or recovery from trauma, burnout, or neurological injury, which can impact confidence and self-trust.

Couples commonly seek support around communication breakdowns, loss of intimacy, mismatched desire, or emotional distance. Often, one or both partners desire connection, however, nervous systems can become caught in cycles of defence, withdrawal, misunderstanding, or power imbalance, shaped by personal history and wider cultural expectations around gender, performance, and control.

Across both individuals and couples, a consistent theme is nervous-system overload. High demands, relational pressure, and systemic stress without adequate safety or recovery time can lead to shutdown, reactivity, burnout, shifts in libido, or loss of joy.

What brings people to my work is usually a desire to move beyond coping and into real coherence, to feel calmer, clearer, more connected, and more alive. My role is to help them rebuild that capacity from the inside out.

Why is nervous system regulation such a key foundation for healing, intimacy, and healthy relationships?

The nervous system shapes how we perceive, respond, connect, and relate, within ourselves, with others, and within the wider systems we live inside.

When the nervous system feels safe and regulated, we have access to clarity, empathy, curiosity, and choice. We can listen without becoming defensive, express ourselves without collapsing or attacking, and stay present during intimacy rather than disconnecting, performing, or shutting down. Pleasure, trust, and genuine connection become naturally available.

When the nervous system is overloaded or in survival mode, the opposite happens. People become reactive, withdrawn, hyper-vigilant, or disconnected. Boundaries blur, communication breaks down, desire drops, and small moments quickly escalate into conflict or shutdown. This isn’t failure, it’s physiology under pressure.

Because of this, no amount of insight or relationship tools can fully land if the body doesn’t feel safe enough to receive it. Regulation creates the conditions for everything else to work.

When people learn to support their own nervous systems and each other’s, relationships become calmer, more authentic, and more resilient. Healing isn’t forced, it emerges when the body feels safe enough to open.

How does somatic work differ from traditional talk therapy, especially for trauma recovery?

Traditional talk therapy focuses on making sense of experiences through language, insight, and reflection. That is valuable. I integrate cognitive understanding into my work to support informed discernment and choice.

Somatic therapy works directly with the body and nervous system. Before we meet, I review each client’s concerns, curiosities, patterns, and history through a detailed intake process. From there, I offer carefully chosen practice options that help the nervous system reveal how a pattern is held physically and relationally. Rather than analysing or directing an outcome, we listen to what the body is communicating in real time. The work is guided by consent and their nervous system, not by a preset technique or agenda. I help clients distinguish between healthy discomfort, which supports growth, and genuine threat to safety, which signals the need to pause, listen inwardly, and express boundaries.

A core foundation of my approach is embodied consent. Clients learn how to recognise and trust their authentic “yes” and “no”, ensuring that any exploration remains aligned and chosen. This strengthens boundaries, agency, self-trust, and embodied leadership.

This is what makes the work trauma-informed in practice. Nothing is imposed or rushed. Clients remain in choice and in relationship with their bodies, moving at a pace that feels safe and sustainable.

Somatic therapy creates pathways for integrating what the body discovers into daily life. It works directly with the nervous system, so insight becomes embodied and lived, not just understood.

When people feel safe enough to trust their internal signals, healing becomes sustainable, empowering, and relational. It’s not about outsourcing authority, it’s about helping people reclaim it within themselves.

What shifts do clients often experience when they start reconnecting with their bodies?

The first shift people usually notice is a sense of coming home to themselves. They feel more present, grounded, and at ease in their bodies. What once felt overwhelming or confusing becomes clearer and more coherent.

As this connection deepens, people regain access to their emotional signals and instincts. They become better at recognising what feels right, what doesn’t, and what they need in the moment. This cultivates clear decision-making, stronger boundaries, and a deeper sense of self-trust and inner security.

In relationships and intimacy, this often shows up as more authenticity and less performance. Conflict becomes less threatening, communication becomes less reactive, and people feel safer expressing truth, limits, desires, and vulnerability. They move out of patterns of emotional guarding and into more secure, steady ways of relating, where pleasure, sensitivity, and connection can return.

On a nervous-system level, clients often notice reduced anxiety, better sleep, more stable energy, and a greater ability to recover from stress. Their vitality, creativity, and empowerment begin to return.

Most importantly, people stop overriding themselves. They begin relating to their inner experience with compassion and respect. With practice, their lives become more grounded, aligned, and genuinely satisfying.

How do you support couples in rebuilding safety, connection, and intimacy?

I begin by assessing and establishing safety, within each person and within the dynamic itself. Without that foundation, communication and intimacy tend to become pressured, performative, or defensive.

In many cases, one person reaches out first while their partner is curious but hesitant. When I work with one person, the practices we explore usually include their partner through home integration. This allows both people to benefit and often leads the other partner to feel more open to joining sessions. Change doesn’t have to be simultaneous to be relational. Where safety is compromised, clarity and appropriate boundaries take precedence over reconciliation.

A central part of my work is developing embodied communication. People don’t just want to be heard, they want to feel genuinely met. Many couples get stuck because they’ve tried to express themselves repeatedly without the skills to listen and respond in ways that build safety. We work with practical tools that support honest expression and receptive listening, grounded in curiosity rather than defence.

I also offer structured practices that help couples move beyond habitual ways of relating, touching, and connecting. This includes boundaries, agreements, and forms of intimacy that support nervous-system regulation, hormonal balance, embodied arousal, and emotional closeness ,without a loaded agenda. When pressure is removed, misunderstanding and conflict naturally begin to soften.

Partners learn more about their own desires, needs, and arousal patterns. They learn how to express them with clarity and respect. This brings playfulness, innocence, and curiosity back into the relationship, replacing seriousness, expectation, and performance.

For parents in particular, this work has a generational impact, modelling secure relating, sovereign interdependence, empowerment, and self-trust.

Many clients tell me they wish they had learned these skills earlier in life. Most of us grew up with fear-based or incomplete education around intimacy and pleasure. My work helps fill those gaps in a grounded, respectful, and practical way.

Ultimately, rebuilding safety, connection, and intimacy is not about techniques. It’s about restoring curiosity, agency, and trust, so couples can create relationships that feel alive, resilient, and deeply aligned.

What makes your work unique compared to other therapists or coaches in this space?

What makes my work unique is the way embodiment, consent, intimacy, and systems awareness are woven together into a coherent, lived practice. My role is less of a central figure and more of a stabilising reference point within a wider ecosystem of growth and connection.

My work is guided by the nervous system rather than rigid protocols or predefined outcomes. Each person’s body leads the process, making every session responsive, precise, and deeply individual. I consistently centre agency, choice, and self-trust, creating safety, integrity, and empowerment, not dependence.

I don’t pathologise coping strategies. I understand them as intelligent adaptations that helped people survive and function until something more supportive became possible. This perspective allows clients to meet themselves with compassion rather than shame, which is essential for real change.

I integrate somatic therapy, sexology, nervous system recovery, and relational work as interconnected aspects of wellbeing. Rather than treating regulation, intimacy, communication, and empowerment as separate domains, I work at their intersection.

Through lived experience and nearly two decades of working closely with clients and their nervous systems, I’ve developed the capacity to see multiple perspectives at once, including the ways biology, conditioning, and nervous-system patterns interact in relationships. This allows me to reassure, validate, and bridge gaps in understanding within individuals and between people.

Clients value the safe, welcoming, judgment-free space where they can be fully authentic without fear of being misunderstood.

I emphasise integration. The work translates into daily life, into how people communicate, experience pleasure, set boundaries, relate, and lead. Ultimately, my work helps people cultivate self-trust, discernment, and embodied sovereignty. When those capacities are in place, healing, intimacy, and empowerment emerge naturally.

Can you share a moment or a breakthrough that reflects the kind of transformation your clients experience?

A moment that stays with me involved a couple who came to see me feeling emotionally distant and unsure whether they could rebuild intimacy. They cared deeply about each other, yet every attempt to talk about intimacy ended in defensiveness or withdrawal. Both felt unheard and emotionally unsafe, even though neither wanted conflict.

We slowed everything down and began with embodied communication, helping them stay present without escalation or avoidance. In one session, the partner who usually withdrew remained connected while expressing vulnerability, and the other listened and validated without defending. There was a quiet moment when they both realised they were finally meeting each other in truth and innocence, rather than through past wounds or assumptions. From there, their connection softened, opening into something more relaxed and playful.

Another example involved an individual client experiencing burnout, CPTSD, and deep avoidance of intimacy. They were insightful, high-achieving, and highly functional in their head, yet felt chronically disconnected from their body and unsafe in close relationships.

Through paced, consent-led somatic work, they learned to regulate their nervous system, recognise their needs, and trust their internal signals. They began honouring and expressing what was true in their bodies, opening to connection without fear, and resting without guilt. Soon into our work together, they shared that they were experiencing a reawakening of libido, and affection for the first time without bracing, disappearing or performing.

What these moments have in common is that the transformation shows up in small, embodied shifts: speaking honestly, staying in integrity with the body, receiving care, and choosing self-respect and connection over self-protection. These changes reflect a nervous system no longer living in survival mode, and they form the foundation for lasting change.

Who is your work best suited for, and how do you work with clients individually, as couples, or in groups?

My work is best suited for people who are self-led or who genuinely desire to become self-led. They are reflective, curious, and interested in understanding themselves not only intellectually, but through their bodies and relationships.

Most of the individuals and couples I work with sense that something isn’t fully aligned. They may be navigating stress, burnout, challenges with intimacy, loss of confidence, or repeating relational patterns. They have a willingness to take responsibility for their inner world and develop greater clarity, agency, emotional intelligence and relational maturity.

With individuals, the work focuses on strengthening self-trust, embodiment, discernment, self-respecting limits, and the capacity for presence, pleasure, and empowerment. Sessions centre on nervous-system regulation, embodied awareness, and translating insight into everyday life.

With couples, the focus is on rebuilding emotional and nervous system safety, communication, and intimacy through regulation, mutual attunement, relational integrity, and practice skill-building. We support clearer listening, honest expression, and reconnection in ways that feel respectful and alive.

I also work with groups, where people learn these skills in a supportive, relational environment. Group work offers powerful opportunities for shared learning and normalising human experience, while still honouring individual pace and autonomy.

Across all formats, individual, couples, and groups, my approach remains consent-led, body-based, and focused on nervous system integration. The aim is to support people in developing the internal capacity to relate to themselves and others with clarity, confidence, and care, so the learning continues long after our work together.

For someone feeling disconnected, overwhelmed, or stuck, what is the first step you recommend they take?

The first step I’d recommend is to slow down and reconnect with what your body is actually experiencing, rather than trying to think your way out of how you feel.

When people feel disconnected, overwhelmed, or stuck, their nervous systems are usually in some form of survival mode. In that state, clarity, motivation, and confidence are difficult to access because the body doesn’t yet feel safe enough.

So I invite people to begin with something simple: pausing throughout the day to notice their breath, posture, and physical sensations. Even brief moments of gentle awareness can start to shift the system out of urgency and back into presence.

From there, practise listening inwardly. Ask yourself: What do I actually need right now? Rest? Support? Boundaries? Movement? Feeling and validating an emotion? Honest expression?

Learning to recognise and respond to these signals is the foundation of self-trust and empowerment.

I also encourage people to seek support that respects their pace and autonomy. Healing and growth don’t happen through pressure or self-criticism, they unfold in environments where safety, choice, and curiosity are prioritised.

When you relate to yourself with presence and respect, your system reorganises around clarity, future vision, direction and momentum. This is how people reclaim authorship of their lives, from the inside out.

If something in this conversation has resonated, you’re welcome to explore my writing on Brainz Magazine, connect with my work online, or reach out for an initial conversation via the contact form on my website. People tend to arrive at this work when their nervous systems are ready for it.

Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info!

Read more from Kate Alderman