by Liz Long Rottman & Aiya Staller
Ayia Staller’s Therapy Practice: True Essence Therapy
Introduction
In this conversation, Aiya Staller and I explore the parallels between people living with medically unexplained symptoms and chronic illness, neurodiverse individuals, and the LGBTQ+ community. These groups often share a common thread: being misattuned to, misunderstood, or dismissed by dominant systems. We discuss how Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (SP)—a somatic, attachment-based, trauma-informed approach—can help restore trust, self-connection, and embodied wholeness for those navigating life at the margins of understanding. The following is a “cleaned up” version of our interview. you can find the raw transcript below.
Liz:
Hi everyone! Today we’re exploring the parallels between people living with medically unexplained symptoms and chronic illness, the neurodiverse community, and LGBTQ+ folks—and how Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (SP) supports each of these populations.
I’m Liz Long Rottman, owner of Prosopon Therapy, where I specialize in working with people navigating chronic illness and medically unexplained symptoms.
I’m joined by Aiya Staller (she/they), founder of True Essence, whose practice focuses on supporting LGBTQ+ and neurodiverse clients. Aiya, want to say a bit more about your work?
Aiya:
Sure! My practice is a space for creative, unique, out-of-the-box people—what I like to call the “funky folks.” I love working with clients who don’t quite fit the mold and are ready to embrace their individuality in a healing way.
What Is Sensorimotor Psychotherapy?
Liz:
Both of us are certified in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, a somatic, attachment-based, trauma-informed modality. It blends neurobiological understanding with body awareness—similar to Somatic Experiencing or Hakomi—but with its own distinct structure. SP is deeply grounded in science, embodiment, and attunement.
Aiya:
Exactly. It helps us work not only with trauma but also with misattunement—those moments in life when someone isn’t truly seen or accurately reflected. That’s something many neurodivergent and LGBTQ+ people experience often. When you’re misunderstood or misread repeatedly, your sense of self can feel scrambled. You might start to mistrust your instincts or internalize a sense of “wrongness.”
SP helps rebuild trust, confidence, and inner coherence after those experiences.
The Shared Experience of Dismissal and Misattunement
Liz:
What you just described mirrors what many people with chronic illness or medically unexplained symptoms face in the medical system. Even the most well-meaning practitioners often can’t fit these experiences into the mainstream paradigm. Patients get told it’s “all in their head,” or that if they’d just think positively, they’d be fine.
That invalidation leads to masking—trying to appear “normal,” being the “good patient,” or working extra hard to do things right—all while feeling unseen and disbelieved.
SP helps by validating not just the surface experience but the entire person: their sensations, emotions, thoughts, and the dissonance of living in systems that chronically misattune to them.
Attunement, Contact, and Deep Listening
Aiya:
In SP, we use something called contact statements, which go beyond simple validation. It’s not just “I hear you.” It’s tuning in at every level—body, nervous system, emotions, thoughts—and reflecting what’s actually happening there. That kind of deep listening helps people feel truly heard, often for the first time.
Liz:
Yes. And SP therapists are trained to do this because we’ve gone through it ourselves. We’ve had to turn over every stone, get feedback, and face correction with openness. That process cultivates flexibility, curiosity, and humility—qualities that clients immediately feel.
Sadly, not all therapy experiences are like that. Many clients report feeling judged or met with defensiveness. SP therapists are different: we’re taught to stay open, to repair ruptures quickly, and to view mistakes as opportunities for reconnection.
Non-Defensiveness and Repair
Aiya:
Exactly. When something is misattuned, we just repair it. There’s no shame, no power struggle—just curiosity. That models something powerful for clients: that relationships can hold honesty and flexibility.
Liz:
Clients can feel that, even nonverbally. Research shows most communication is nonverbal, and marginalized clients—especially neurodiverse folks—tend to be especially attuned to what’s happening beneath the surface. That’s why it’s so crucial for therapists to cultivate real spaciousness and fluidity rather than hiding behind defensiveness.
The Role of the Therapist: Spaciousness, Curiosity, and Humility
Aiya:
When a therapist isn’t reacting defensively, that gives clients room to breathe. It also restores their trust in their own perceptions. Sometimes I’ll notice a small impulse—a smile, a shift in posture, a subtle body movement—and bring curiosity to it. Those little moments often hold a client’s true self emerging, sometimes for the first time in years.
Liz:
Yes. The first encounter with the true self can feel like a whisper—subtle and easy to miss. SP helps us turn that whisper into something recognizable by working with what we call the core organizers: thinking, feeling, movement impulses, and the images or memories that accompany them.
As we explore these together, the client’s experience of self becomes more vivid and embodied. They begin to feel themselves again.
Aiya:
Exactly. It’s like giving someone the right conditions to grow—mirroring the reflection they’ve needed all along. The healing comes from within them; we’re just helping remove what’s in the way.
Liz:
That’s a beautiful way to put it. Sensorimotor Psychotherapy provides the structure for that growth—an attuned, non-defensive, embodied relationship that allows people to encounter who they truly are.
Thanks for being here, Aiya.
Aiya:
Thanks, Liz. Always a joy.
Liz:
And thank you all for joining us.
— Transcript adapted for clarity and flow from an interview between Liz Long Rottman and Aiya Staller.
RAW TRANSCRIPT
Liz Rottman:
Hello. Today we’re going to talk about the similarities between people living with medically unexplained symptoms and chronic illness as well as the LGBTQ community — and how we use Sensorimotor Psychotherapy to — oh, and also the neurodiverse community — and how we use Sensorimotor Psychotherapy to address these similar issues and experiences that each of these populations have.
So I’m going to go ahead and introduce us. I’m Liz Long Rottman. I own Prosopon Therapy, and my practice focuses a lot on people with chronic illness and medically unexplained symptoms. And this is Aiya Staller — she/they pronouns — and her practice is called True Essence, and they focus on the LGBTQ and neurodiverse population. Is there anything else you want to say about your practice?
Aiya Staller:
Um, yeah, I mean it’s a sweet team. I love them, and I sometimes joke and just call us, like, people who are interested in the creative, unique, out-of-the-box, funky folks, you know — who are like me and us, you know. So we just enjoy supporting other creatives and, um, yeah, quirky folks.
Liz Rottman:
Quirky folks.
Aiya Staller:
Yeah, it’s a place where quirky folks can be themselves and get some really, really good healing.
Liz Rottman:
So yeah, let’s just talk a little bit about what Sensorimotor Psychotherapy is. Aiya and I are both certified in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, which means we went through a really long process to learn a somatic, attunement- and attachment-based modality. It combines trauma therapy perspectives with somatic therapy — a lot like Somatic Experiencing but dovetails in a streamlined way — as well as an approach that looks a lot like Hakomi. We incorporate a lot of neurobiology, and it’s very science-backed.
So why would populations like people with medically unexplained symptoms, chronic illness, LGBTQ, and neurodiversity be supported by a modality such as this one?
Aiya Staller:
Yeah, and we were talking a little bit earlier — I mean, there’s many layers to this. Trauma can be one layer. I think pretty many people have experienced maybe being more sensitive or having traumatic factors that contribute to perhaps chronic illness and these different things.
But there’s also this layer we were talking about — attunement, or being mis-attuned to. So thinking of LGBTQ folk, neurodivergent folk — when there’s a difference and people aren’t being reflected accurately or are being misunderstood, a person’s sense of self can feel kind of scrambled. It can be difficult to know themselves, know who they are. They can also turn that into feeling wrong or bad and just not trust their instincts again.
So we were talking about this process of how therapy can support repairing or building confidence or finding health within, you know, after experiences such as that.
Liz Rottman:
Absolutely. And a lot of the things that Aiya is highlighting about the LGBTQ and neurodiverse experience are also what chronic illness and medically unexplained symptoms people experience in traditional Western medicine. As much as traditional Western medicine practitioners and even some alternative practitioners deeply, deeply, deeply want to help, since their experience doesn’t fit into a mainstream paradigm, they are often dismissed — told they are wrong, told that what they’re experiencing is all in their head, that if they just think happy thoughts, they would no longer be sick.
And so they start working really, really hard to mask while also simultaneously trying to receive medical care and trying to do it right — trying to conform, trying to maybe be the good patient, be the good client, operate in the world the way people are telling them they need to, or why they’re wrong.
Aiya Staller:
That’s right. There’s a lot of work that winds up happening to appear “normal,” I put in quotes — because not only are they dealing with something unique, but they’re also chronically being rejected in a variety of ways for their uniqueness.
Liz Rottman:
So when we apply Sensorimotor Psychotherapy — which I feel works to not just validate the surface experience of the person — it works to validate the person at every single level that they are experiencing their true selves, but also the wounding and dissonance that they’ve experienced throughout their lifespan, especially in mainstream settings.
Aiya Staller:
Yeah, makes me think of just like reflecting, or even something we call a contact statement, which might sound very much like validation — emotional validation. You know, you’re here, you’re in front, you talk, and then they get you, like they reflect your story. That feels really good, right? You can kind of find yourself or feel validated in that.
But now add therapy with contact statements — it’s like we’re validating people or reflecting — not necessarily validating, but it can be that too — it’s at every level. How can I deeply see you — what’s happening in your body, your nervous system, your emotions, your thoughts? How do I really tune in and listen so that someone can actually — first of all, just feel prepared or heard perhaps for the first time — which, that in itself is huge.
Liz Rottman:
Huge. Both of these — all of these populations.
Aiya Staller:
Yeah. And then perhaps be able to explore and develop further, build confidence from there.
Liz Rottman:
That’s right. And something I love about Sensorimotor Psychotherapists in general is that since we have gone through these processes ourselves so many times, there’s a way in which we’re able to show up in a very spacious, open, curious, non-defensive manner.
And you might ask yourself, well, hey, shouldn’t all therapists show up that way? I’m teaching at Naropa University this semester, and unfortunately, that is not the case — and that’s not what I hear from a lot of my clients either. My students are reporting this about therapeutic experiences they’ve had; my clients are reporting this about their experiences — that they can encounter a lot of defensiveness or shock with some of the material they bring to therapists.
So one of the emergent properties I see in the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy community is that Sensorimotor Psychotherapists are able to show up in the therapeutic relationship with a lot of space, openness, flexibility. You don’t really go through the program without having turned over every stone.
Aiya Staller:
Yeah. And getting a lot of opportunity to be corrected. We were talking about that defensiveness — how do I actually just bring curiosity and let that be part of it, and not take it personally?
And it can be challenging when people — maybe as clients or patients coming in — feel very frustrated or missed and have a lot of defenses, understandably. That can be one part, which we really honor and understand in a way and reflect and attend to.
And also the practice of being like we are — yeah, we’ve experienced it too. I know what it’s like to just feel like there’s just an ease, I guess — if you reflect something and miss me, but then it’s not a big deal, I just tell you, and then you repair. That rupture-repair process is so powerful, and I think sometimes therapists forget that. They know it intellectually but maybe forget how to enact it in session.
And so Sensorimotor provides this framework that is so fluid and playful — there’s just a way of dancing with whatever comes in. The therapist is not the expert here; we’re really following and attuning to the client.
Liz Rottman:
That’s right. And since we can be so open, it’s very de-shaming. I hear feedback from clients and students all the time — all kinds of ways of saying, “I feel so much less shame when I’m in the presence of a Sensorimotor Psychotherapist.” Because there is that fluidity.
Since we get the chance to work through our own shame going through the program, it just doesn’t come up so much when we’re working with clients — and clients can tell. They can tell if you’re reacting to what’s coming up. They may not always be able to say it, but I think the statistic is probably up to 95% at this point — they say that nonverbal communication is 75%, 95%… I don’t know, but it’s most of it, right? They know. We know. Everyone knows.
Aiya Staller:
Obviously. Unconsciously.
Liz Rottman:
That’s right. And especially when you think about the neurodiverse population — because of those sensory sensitivities — but any of these marginalized populations who’ve been rejected or misunderstood or forced into a box so many times, they know more than somebody who’s had a mainstream experience.
So it’s even more imperative that we can show up in this flexible, fluid, attuned way.
Aiya Staller:
Which I’m hearing you say — that gives the opportunity to be… it’s not about being right or wrong. I can be wrong, because that doesn’t matter — I get to say, “Oh, that wasn’t right. I don’t know this.” I get to reflect and follow and try again and let’s keep exploring together.
Liz Rottman:
That’s great. Because it doesn’t feel like we need to be right — that’s not my goal. My goal is to really deeply understand whoever is sitting across from me. That’s what I care about. So if that’s what I care about, then I’m not thinking about being right at all.
Aiya Staller:
Yeah. And it’s really freeing for the therapist. And I’m hearing kind of maybe within Sensorimotor — I forget what the principle is actually — I know there’s organicity, but it’s this whole thing about the health within a system and within a person. So kind of shifting that view — the therapist isn’t treating somebody. It’s that the wisdom and healing come from the client themselves, and that’s why I think we can provide that trust and reflect — we’re reflecting the innate health and organicity in that person.
Liz Rottman:
That’s right. And it’s lovely because it is directive — it’s not just this, like, I love Carl Rogers, but it’s not just this super-spacious experience. There are guardrails and ways that we can get in there non-violently. Non-violence is not non-action — we can non-violently nudge the client’s process so that they are more likely to encounter the self.
And so maybe we should shift our topic over just a little bit, as we wrap up here, to how the therapist being in this attitude draws forth the true self of the client. What has your experience been there?
Aiya Staller:
Yeah, I think there’s a — I mean, first of all, of course, if we’re not reacting and being defensive, that provides space there. And then tuning and allowing permission.
But it’s like kind of looking for — we can have markers of maybe there’s adaptive strategies or masking as one way of being, and that’s also a healthy response to systems — and honoring that. How do I start to notice the impulses in a client — the little smiles, the little shifts, the little body movements — and bring curiosity to something that maybe has been unconscious or minimized, or celebrate them? Like, “Wow, you tuned into that — how did you do that? Tell me more.” Let’s explore the layers of that to help them repair that trust in themselves too.
Liz Rottman:
Absolutely, yes. The self-trust repair is huge. And also, as I was pointing out, highlighting that something just happened — the first time someone starts to encounter their true self, it can be like a whisper. It can be really subtle. It’s something hard for them to apprehend.
But then as we flesh out the core organizers — thinking, feeling, movement impulses, images, and memories that go with how the person is experiencing themselves — it makes that whisper louder. It increases the volume so that somebody can actually start to grow into the sensation of themselves.
Aiya Staller:
Yeah, yeah. Which just feels like that means any experience where I’m tuning to this client, giving them the environment and reflection they needed to thrive — they’re growing and doing it themselves, but nothing’s in the way anymore. And I’m affirming what I’m seeing here.
Liz Rottman:
That’s absolutely right.
Aiya Staller:
Yeah. Great. So that’s it — a little taste of what we’re about individually and how we’re connected. Thanks for joining us. Bye for now.
