NARM™: The Neuro Affective Relational Model™.
NARM was developed by the therapist Dr Laurence Heller.
He had been studying various embodiment trauma therapy processes such as the Somatic Experiencing work of Peter Levine. He was aware that many of these models focused on shock trauma, usually experienced as an adult.
Shock trauma is a response to something that happened that was an isolated incident. Examples include, war, rape, accidents, etc (Shock trauma is usually experienced as an adult not in the developing years). Heller noticed that a lot of adult trauma often had roots in childhood. (i.e. when a person had a bad shock trauma, often the individual had previously experienced challenges earlier in life ).
He created NARM as a model to address developmental trauma. This is trauma that happened to a person as they were growing up. It is caused by some kind of environmental failure and usually happens over a period of time; it is not a one-off incident like shock trauma. Examples of developmental trauma include ongoing abuse by a family member, neglect, family member chronic health issues, among others.
A child’s sense of self is still developing as he or she grows. A child is totally dependent on his or her parents or caregivers for their very survival. At some level, a child knows that they will not survive on their own. Sadly, some caregivers simply do not have the skills needed to bring up a child well. This is often because they did not have the care that they would have needed when they themselves were growing up. In other cases the caregivers may be dealing with issues such as substance abuse or violence. Other children have to grow up during a war in their country or are refugees. Others may be living through some other kind of environmental failure, such as living next to a polluted area or during a pandemic etc. In short, many, many people have experienced some kind of developmental trauma that is still affecting them today. NARM can be used to help address these issues.
As children are dependent on their caregivers for survival, when something goes wrong , they tend to believe it’s their fault. From the perspective of the child it makes more sense to believe that, than to believe that their caregiver is not capable of looking after them properly. For example when a child is hit by a caregiver, they tend to believe that they must have done something wrong. From the simplistic view of a child, they are wrong, and therefore they are bad. Shame ensues and shame has many facets…. From the NARM perspective, habits such as: people-pleasing, perfectionism, procrastination, impostor syndrome and others are habits that are created in response to this kind of shame.
The NARM framework helps us unpick all of this. Once a person understands that they created a habit as a healthy response to a challenging situation, it is easier to have more compassion for themselves. For example: Consider a child who was always praised when they did something that the parent liked and was rewarded for it. If that were the case, it would be easy to imagine the child could have a tendency to do what the parent wanted – regardless of their own wishes.
Fast forward 20 years and they might have become a ‘people pleaser’. They like it when other people like what they do. But maybe, they are not listening to themselves and not doing what they actually want to be doing. Often there is a mix of emotion involved in learning to understand ourselves in this way. There might be a feeling of loyalty to the parent , or of anger or another emotion. NARM is a body-mind framework and connects to the felt sense. Once the emotion is acknowledged and experienced there is often a completion process, and more freedom arises. Those challenging habits tend to diminish. This is an embodied process, meaning that it’s felt on the inside. The emotion may, or may not, be externally expressed through tears or aggression.
NARM is often used in therapy. As its framing is forward focused, it can also be used in coaching. In NARM, the helping professional does not take sides. The client may have a pattern or behaviour that they wish to change. And it is there for lots of healthy reasons, that once served the person and may be serving them still. Both of these have a place. Often there are unconscious beliefs that keep the old behaviour in place. Working with NARM helps to bring these patterns into consciousness so that there is more choice about when to use them.
NARM is an embodied approach and works both with the felt sense and as a cognitive approach. It is important to understand ourselves and to have compassion for ourselves. When we are being hard on ourselves for having a behaviour, it is usually much harder to move on. As the old saying goes ‘What we resist, persists.’
More information about NARM can be found here:
Case Study
Margaret was a new graduate and had started work during the pandemic, and like everyone else she worked from home. Once she had to go to the office with its bright lights and ‘coffee chats’ she started to struggle and fell into periods of ill health and burn-out. It was harder to handle her ADHD symptoms, but she didn’t want to tell anyone about them She knew there was something else going on. That was when she contacted me.
As we worked together, she shared that she had had some serious operations in childhood. These had left her feeling uncomfortable with bright lights. In addition, her parents had divorced early in her childhood, and she was left feeling unwanted and a burden to her family. In our work together, through NARM, she was able to process some of the emotions that had stemmed from the difficult situations she had experienced, and as a child she had been powerless. In the session she was able to connect with some of the stored away emotions and process them.
Our work helped her to realise that whilst her reactions to situations in the present were understandable, she was not powerless now. In our last session she shared that she was thinking about what she wanted to do going forwards. The company had offered her a different role that was more suited to her. She was also thinking about starting out as an entrepreneur making soap which was passion of hers. We had a total of nine sessions over four months.
