DEVELOPMENTAL TRAUMA

The NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM®) is a process-oriented, body-based psychotherapy for the treatment of developmental trauma. The approach comprises a psychodynamic, resource-oriented model that is focused on experience in the here and now.

By bringing adaptive survival strategies into awareness and through targeted somatic exploration, chronic patterns of guilt and shame are recognised and gradually resolved. The model shows how the regulation of our nervous system is inextricably linked to our sense of identity and to our assumptions about the world and ourselves.

Shock Trauma and Developmental Trauma

Shock trauma refers to a single event that was experienced as too early, too fast or too intense to be processed. Developmental trauma, by contrast, describes repeated experiences of misattunement, neglect or abuse by our caregivers in childhood.

Both shock trauma and developmental trauma impair our capacity for affect regulation and self-soothing.

Unlike work with shock trauma, however, working with developmental trauma is not only about “resolving and processing the intensity”. The primary focus is on the internalised messages from our environment that still shape our self-image and our sense of identity today. It is not the past event that needs treatment, but the way we still look at ourselves and relate to the world today.

Distressing states of high arousal or mood swings are therefore not “triggered by the past”, but by the way we respond to our inner experience in the here and now. NARM works precisely at this point – our relationship with ourselves – and helps to recognise and resolve rigid self-images and hidden self-rejection.

Neuroaffektive Beziehungsmodell (NARM®) | Tobias Konermann

FOR THERAPISTS

Alongside approaches such as IFS® and SE®, NARM® currently appears to be one of the most sought-after process-oriented therapeutic methods. In treatment, NARM addresses the central organising principles of identity distortions and somatic dysregulation. Beyond this, NARM introduces a new paradigm for understanding therapeutic change. It professionalises the humanistic stance within the broader context of psychodynamics and the nervous system.

 

“The price of freedom is
eternal mindfulness”

Laurence Heller

FOR CLIENTS

Symptoms and inner stressors cannot, at their core, be resolved through behavioural change and willpower. They are side effects, or rather consequences, of deeper tensions that arise around our core needs. If these needs were not met and nurtured during our development, we lack important inner capacities as adults.

The good news: what is decisive for our psychological well-being is how freely we can restore access to these capacities.

 

Survival strategies that were vital in childhood get in the way of a self-determined, fulfilling life in adulthood. It is not past events, but the adaptations we made to them – which are still active today – that lie at the root of symptoms.

Each survival strategy develops around a core need that we require for a healthy, fulfilling life. And each of these core needs in turn represents a stage in the development of our personality. Where these stages were unable to flourish, we lack inner capacities as adults. In the areas where capacities could not develop, we carry shame-laden, rejecting images of ourselves inside (e.g. “My neediness is too much for any partner”).

This overview illustrates the core themes of each developmental stage as well as the main distortions of self-image at each stage:

Neuroaffektive Beziehungsmodell (NARM®) | Tobias Konermann

Overview of all survival strategies.

Neuroaffektive Beziehungsmodell (NARM®) | Tobias Konermann