NARM™ – Working with developmental trauma
I work in the NARM™ (Neuro Affective Relational Model) approach, developed by Dr. Laurence Heller. This is a process-, resource- and body-oriented non-regressive model for working with developmental trauma. Non-regressive means that we work with the strategies, inner experiences and beliefs that still get us in the way in the present connecting with our needs, feelings and sensations. And that we had to develop in the past in order to be able to endure our psychological suffering. In doing so, the past and causes of our psychological suffering can emerge organically.
Process orientation is an expression of the attitude that we do not have to make an effort or work hard to achieve a strategic goal through behavioral changes. Strategies often express the very early internalized experience of “I have to make an effort/be different in order to get better/healed/symptom-free”. Rather, we explore with curiosity, mindfulness and compassion the parts and movements that we particularly reject and where we judge ourselves.
Starting from an intention that is based on a connection with oneself and a state of being (“heart’s desire”), we explore together with the client what relationship they have with themselves, their experiences, the world and how they organize their own inner reality and world.
As NARM™ practitioners, we offer presence, attunement, curiosity and mindfulness for somatic processes. In this way, we support clients in re-connecting with themselves, sensations and feelings and gradually re-regulating the nervous system through containment. And we support them in dissolving identity distortions such as low self-esteem, shame and chronic self-judgment. The focus is on supporting clients in getting in touch with those parts of themselves that are organized and functioning, thereby experiencing agency again.
Working with prenatal trauma
My support is also nurtured on my knowledge and work on prenatal trauma. This approach is based on the finding of prenatal research that a child‘s consciousness and experience begins in the womb with our conception. These first experiences are the matrix for our experience of the world and of ourselves. They shape our development. Prenatal trauma can lead to adaptation strategies and symptoms that affect and limit us in the present as adults.
We can be traumatized during conception, pregnancy, during and after birth. These traumatizing experiences can also be embedded in a long history of transgenerational and collective trauma. It can cause permanent stress to which the fetus or baby is defenselessly exposed. The only options it has to ensure its survival are contraction, withdrawal, and freezing.
These experiences have serious effects on our body, our nervous system, and our mind. They form a unstable foundation on which our further development is built. We cannot explicitly remember this earliest period of life, conception, pregnancy, birth, and infancy. They are not accessible to our cognitive memory because they come from a time before our linguistic and cognitive development. They are implicitly stored in our body and nervous system.