How is NARM different?
NARM is an active process of inquiry into the obstacles standing in the way of your authentic self. Rather than simply affirming how hard it is to feel stuck or dissatisfied in life, in NARM therapy we build on your capacities and support you in experiencing agency in the difficulties of your current life.
A NARM therapist is aware of the distinction between what was then and what is now. We avoid the trap of making the past more important than the present, given that NOW is when you can do something differently.
The focus in NARM therapy is less on why you are the way you are and more on how your adaptations to trauma distort your experience and your life right now in the present. In reorganizing these distortions the self comes forward moving existence from anxious, depressed and repressed to states of joy and authentic expression.
Unresolved childhood and relational trauma can lead to the following in adulthood:
- Feeling lonely and isolated with strong self-judgments about your ability to sustain close relationships
- Difficulties identifying your emotions or bodily experience
- Chronic fear and anxiety
- Feeling helpless/hopeless and noticing freeze/collapse responses
- Self-hatred and self-punishment
- Depression
- Believing that having anger towards others is “bad” or acting out aggression
- Hard time setting healthy boundaries
- Physical symptoms such as gut/stomach problems, environmental sensitivities, chronic pain, etc.
- Perpetuation of the original environmental failures you experienced as a child into your body, identity, and behaviors
- Sleep disorders, feeling restless, problem concentrating
- Burnout
Core Needs
NARM asserts that there are 5 biologically-based core needs that are essential to our physical and emotional well-being.
Connection
Capacity to be in touch with our body and our emotions; capacity to be in connection with others
Attunement
Capacity to be aware and attend to our needs and emotions; capacity to recognize, reach out for, and take in physical and emotional nourishment
Trust
Capacity for healthy dependence and interdependence in relationships
Autonomy
Capacity to set appropriate boundaries; capacity to say ‘no’ and set limits; capacity to speak our mind without guilt or fear
Love-Sexuality
Capacity to live with an open heart; Capacity to integrate a loving relationship with a vital sexuality
When these needs are not met in our developmental years, our ability to self-regulate, our identity, and our self-esteem become compromised and both psychological and physiological symptoms arise. Children who do not get their needs met are unable to recognize what they need, struggle to express their needs, and often believe they are undeserving of having their needs met. These concerns then perpetuate into adulthood.
Adaptive Survival Styles
The five adaptive survival strategies correlate with the core needs and the missing or compromised core capacities. These adaptations learned in childhood initially helped up survive but over the years become rigid beliefs about who we are and what the world is like. What we grow to understand as being our identity is better described as the shame- and pride-based identifications of our survival styles. Every identification—the fixed beliefs we assume as our true selves—separates us from the fluidity of our core nature.
Connection
Develops around the need for contact and the fear of it
- Shame-based identifications: Shame at existing; feeling like a burden; feeling of not belonging
- Pride-based identifications: Pride in being a loner; pride in not needing others; pride in not being emotional
Attunement
Develops around the conflict between having personal needs and the rejection of them
- Shame-based identifications: needy; unfulfilled; empty; undeserving
- Pride-based identifications: caretaker; pride in being the shoulder everyone cries on; make yourself indispensable by being needed; pride in not having needs
Trust
Develops around both the longing for and the fear of healthy trust and interdependence
- Shame-based identifications: small; powerless; used; betrayed
- Pride-based identifications: strong and in control; successful; larger than life; user/betrayer
Autonomy
Develops around both the desire for and the fear of setting limits and expressing independence
- Shame-based identifications: angry; resentful of authority; rebellious; enjoys disappointing others
- Pride-based identifications: nice; sweet; compliant; good boy/girl; fear of disappointing others
Love-Sexuality
Develops around wanting to love and be loved and the fear of vulnerability; also develops around the splitting of love and sexuality
- Shame-based identifications: hurt; rejected; physically flawed; unloved and unlovable
- Pride-based identifications: rejects first; perfect; does not allow for mistakes; has everything together
“Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful part of us.”
– David Richo
Yet, to the degree that core needs are met early in life, we develop core capacities that allow us to identify and attend to these needs as adults. This results in being connected to our deepest resources and vitality in adulthood.
A central tenet of NARM therapy is supporting the healthy development of these core capacities—what wasn’t provided to you in childhood, can be developed now and forever available to you.
In NARM therapy, we will focus on what you truly desire for yourself NOW, free from the limitations of the fixed identities of the adaptive survival styles and orient towards your personal strengths so that you can have a greater capacity for self-regulation, connection, and aliveness.
NARM therapy can help you
Learn how you have internalized and continue to reenact early environmental failures through understanding your survival styles that have outlived their usefulness and:
- Establish or reestablish the ability to self-regulate
- Express yourself
- Integrate rage and anger
- Develop the capacity for separation/individuation and have healthy interdependence in relationships
- Set appropriate boundaries
- Creatively face challenges as an adult
- Healthily grieve early wounding and heartbreak
- Feel present and a greater sense of connection to yourself and others
- Resolve distortions of the identity
- Move towards more vitality and a greater sense of aliveness
- Gain personal agency in your life
Creative Advertising
Course Description
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.
Repellat perspiciatis cum! Doloremque ea viverra eu doloremque tellus aliqua gravida fuga dolorum augue, donec beatae. Class urna et doloremque facilisis autem risus fuga nullam quibusdam, tortor deleniti, accumsan dolorem? Posuere hac? Tellus maiores ullam ullamcorper, nostrud lacinia veniam torquent?
Consequuntur a lobortis magnam mollis ac, explicabo nobis, pretium omnis, adipisci placerat, nostrum reiciendis? Illo natoque provident potenti ullamcorper quis hymenaeos lectus nobis nobis dui.Posuere hac? Tellus maiores ullam ullamcorper, nostrud lacinia veniam torquent?
Key Concepts
User Testimonial
- Improve Your Stamina
- Get Better Health
- Achieve Peace of Mind
- Look Young & Beautiful
- Achieve more in Life
Jessica Simon
I have been following this routine and became healthier by doing lorem ipsum proin gravida nibh vel velit auctor aliquet aenean.
