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This “well-organized, valuable” guide draws from somatic-based psychotherapy and neuroscience to offer “clear guidance” for coping with childhood trauma (Peter Levine, author of Waking the Tiger and In an Unspoken Voice).
Although it may seem that people suffer from an endless number of emotional problems and challenges, Laurence Heller and Aline LaPierre maintain that most of these can be traced to five biologically based organizing principles: the need for connection, attunement, trust, autonomy, and love-sexuality. They describe how early trauma impairs the capacity for connection to self and others and how the ensuing diminished aliveness is the hidden dimension that underlies most psychological and many physiological problems.
Heller and LaPierre introduce the NeuroAffective Relational Model® (NARM), a method that integrates bottom-up and top-down approaches to regulate the nervous system and resolve distortions of identity such as low self-esteem, shame, and chronic self-judgment that are the outcome of developmental and relational trauma. While not ignoring a person’s past, NARM emphasizes working in the present moment to focus on clients’ strengths, resources, and resiliency in order to integrate the experience of connection that sustains our physiology, psychology, and capacity for relationship.

4 reviews for Healing Developmental Trauma: How Early Trauma Affects Self-Regulation, Self-Image, and the Capacity for Relationship

  1. Alyssa Olson
    August 20, 2023
    5.0 out of 5 stars Everyone should know about this book
    Very important information! The book has helped me understand the various types of trauma that people can have and has helped me identify my own to re...More
    Very important information! The book has helped me understand the various types of trauma that people can have and has helped me identify my own to recognize and release.
    Helpful? 0 0
    WildSky
    June 7, 2023
    5.0 out of 5 stars Balanced, broad, and deep
    There is much wisdom these days on trauma and this book is near the tipy-top of the peak of most skillful approaches and views.
    Helpful? 0 0
    G. Blakey
    January 21, 2023
    5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic book about a great new form of therapy.
    I finally found a book that clearly addresses the right approach to work with people who have been negatively affected by Developmental Trauma, rather...More
    I finally found a book that clearly addresses the right approach to work with people who have been negatively affected by Developmental Trauma, rather than shock trauma. It is written with a focus of helping therapists learn about this new approach, but in a way that those who have experienced this form of trauma can learn about how the adverse experiences in childhood lead to psychological problems in later life, and how there is an approach that can help them with their problems. There are a couple of examples of how a session with a NARM (NeuroAffective Relational Model) therapist works with a patient, so one can understand the significantly different approach this new therapeutic technique works. It is wonderful to read this, and feel so appreciative that someone has figured out how developmental traumas need to be addressed in a different way from the way violent or sexual traumas need to be treated.
    Helpful? 6 0
    Kathryn Neale
    March 3, 2015
    5.0 out of 5 stars our society has been happy to legislate mandatory resuscitation for fetuses showing any sign ...
    As a parent and professional dealing with children and adults suffering from the morbidities of developmental and shock trauma, I am encouraged that H...More
    As a parent and professional dealing with children and adults suffering from the morbidities of developmental and shock trauma, I am encouraged that Heller and LaPierre have published this book broadly, rather than solely academically, to disseminate their Neuro-Affective Relational Model (N.A.R.M) of therapy which identifies five core capacities and their respective adaptive survival strategies compromised by developmental and shock trauma. This is very important work. While not exclusively about the sequelae of prematurity, our society has been happy to legislate mandatory resuscitation for fetuses showing any sign of life (BAIPA) and employ medical technology to save "miracle" babies during their birthing process and neonatal course, but slow to recognize and even slower to address the impact and life long suffering caused by the multi-factorial and chronic neuro-biological health issues which accompany developmental and shock trauma. It seems that someone finally "groks" that neither the cognitive/dialectical top down approach nor the somatic/bioenergetic bottom up approach can work alone, but rather must needs be sensitively and carefully, on a moment-to-moment basis, pendulated" and "titrated" depending on the state of being of the specific client. We can now honor those young adults and children whom we, as a society, have legislated into life by providing a realistic and pragmatic therapeutic intervention which has been cogently identified and described...both the dilemma involved with currently available therapies and the neccessity for a new model/approach targeted at this growing population...to begin to heal the neuro-affective relational deficits and the neuro-biological disease processes which accompany developmental and shock trauma.
    Helpful? 10 0
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