The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma Quotes

“PTSD focuses on experiences of safety, related to life-and-death threat, and the symptoms associated with physiological dysregulation. C-PTSD focuses on experiences of inner security, related to the threat of the Self, and the symptoms associated with psychobiological disorganization.”
― Laurence Heller, The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma: Using the NeuroAffective Relational Model to Address Adverse Childhood Experiences and Resolve Complex Trauma

“Complex trauma results from chronic, long-term exposure to relational and emotional trauma in which an individual has little or no control—in other words, experiences no self-agency—and from which there is little or no hope of escape—in other words, experiences helplessness. Relational and emotional trauma lead to profound changes in neurological development and functioning, which causes significant problems in a person’s life in such areas as family, relationships, education, and occupation.”
― Laurence Heller, The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma: Using the NeuroAffective Relational Model to Address Adverse Childhood Experiences and Resolve Complex Trauma

“Understanding the shame-based sense of Self that emerges out of early trauma may provide a new way of understanding the profound internal conflict that leads people to act against their best interests and damage their lives.”
― Laurence Heller, The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma: Using the NeuroAffective Relational Model to Address Adverse Childhood Experiences and Resolve Complex Trauma

“When a child experiences early trauma, their developing sense of Self becomes embedded in shame. Whether consciously or unconsciously, so many of our clients do not feel that they deserve good things.”
― Laurence Heller, The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma: Using the NeuroAffective Relational Model to Address Adverse Childhood Experiences and Resolve Complex Trauma

“ACEs: Adverse Childhood Experiences The human brain is a social organ that is shaped by experience, and that is shaped in order to respond to the experience that you’re having. So particularly earlier in life, if you’re in a constant state of terror; your brain is shaped to be on alert for danger, and to try to make those terrible feelings go away. In a healthy developmental environment, your brain gets to feel a sense of pleasure, engagement, and exploration. Your brain opens up to learn, to see things, to accumulate information, to form friendships. But if … you’re not touched or seen, whole parts of your brain barely develop; and so you become an adult who is out of it, who cannot connect with other people, who cannot feel a sense of self, a sense of pleasure. If you run into nothing but danger and fear, your brain gets stuck on just protecting itself from danger and fear. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, “Childhood Trauma Leads to Brains Wired for Fear” (interview), Side Effects Public Media”
― Laurence Heller, The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma: Using the NeuroAffective Relational Model to Address Adverse Childhood Experiences and Resolve Complex Trauma

“The NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM) is one of the first therapeutic models that provides a framework and clinical guidelines specifically designed for the treatment of complex trauma, or as it is now officially referred to as Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD).3 While other therapeutic models are adapting their treatment protocols to address adverse childhood experiences and complex trauma, NARM was specifically designed to address the long-term impacts of ACEs and C-PTSD.”
― Laurence Heller, The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma: Using the NeuroAffective Relational Model to Address Adverse Childhood Experiences and Resolve Complex Trauma

“The spontaneous movement in all of us is toward connection, health, and aliveness. No matter how withdrawn and isolated we have become, or how serious the trauma we have experienced, on the deepest level, just as a plant spontaneously moves toward sunlight, there is in each of us an impulse moving toward connection and healing. This organismic impulse is the fuel of the NARM approach.”
― Laurence Heller, The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma: Using the NeuroAffective Relational Model to Address Adverse Childhood Experiences and Resolve Complex Trauma

“The R in NARM is about the therapeutic relationship, which includes both client and therapist. NARM is an approach based in intersubjectivity. This process invites the possibility of deepening connection to Self and others. As we teach in NARM—and will detail throughout this book—connection is both our deepest desire and greatest fear.”
― Laurence Heller, The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma: Using the NeuroAffective Relational Model to Address Adverse Childhood Experiences and Resolve Complex Trauma

“Relational trauma also emerges out of the oppression of communities, cultures, and nations. These relational systems of oppression and subjugation create and perpetuate complex trauma. We cannot separate a person’s developmental process from the society in which they are raised. There is a growing movement within mental health that speaks to these larger concerns and seeks to expand inclusion of more culturally informed perspectives and models. Within the trauma field, it is important to identify the historical legacy of brutality, oppression, and generations of complex trauma that has deeply impacted, and continues to impact, vulnerable individuals and cultures.”
― Laurence Heller, The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma: Using the NeuroAffective Relational Model to Address Adverse Childhood Experiences and Resolve Complex Trauma

“the trauma field is still early in the process of clearly differentiating between post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD). A distinguishing factor of C-PTSD is the focus on self-organization, which refers to a neurodevelopmental and psychobiological process of shaping one’s personality and life experience. C-PTSD focuses on three areas of disturbances in self-organization: emotional regulation, self-concept, and relationships.”
― Laurence Heller, The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma: Using the NeuroAffective Relational Model to Address Adverse Childhood Experiences and Resolve Complex Trauma

“The work of “soul retrieval” is to bring these fragmented parts of the soul back together. By reconnecting fragmented inner states—physical sensations, emotions, impulses, behaviors, and thoughts—NARM reinforces a deepened experience of one’s subjectivity. When these aspects of the Self are invited back into awareness, they create something greater than the sum of its parts. In this way, NARM is not just about post-traumatic healing, but about transformation of the Self.”
― Laurence Heller, The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma: Using the NeuroAffective Relational Model to Address Adverse Childhood Experiences and Resolve Complex Trauma

“NARM Clinical Approach Is Not NARM Clinical Approach Is Primarily historically focused Primarily present-moment focused Focused on trauma stories (content-driven) Focused on the adaptations to trauma (process-driven) Regressive (child consciousness focused) Grounded in here and now (adult consciousness focused) Cathartic Containment oriented Pathologically oriented Resource oriented Goal driven Inquiry driven Strategically based Curiosity based Behaviorally focused Internal-state focused Focused on symptom reduction Focused on shifting underlying patterns that are driving the symptoms Practitioner driven, with client following their lead Client driven, with practitioner providing new opportunities for exploration”
― Laurence Heller, The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma: Using the NeuroAffective Relational Model to Address Adverse Childhood Experiences and Resolve Complex Trauma

“Adaptive Survival Style Shame-Based Identification Connection Feel shame at existing, feeling, and connecting Attunement Feel shame when experiencing and communicating their needs Trust Feel shame when feeling dependent, vulnerable, or weak Autonomy Feel shame at their impulses toward self-determination, autonomy, and independence Love/Sexuality Feel shame about sharing their heart and relational intimacy”
― Laurence Heller, The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma: Using the NeuroAffective Relational Model to Address Adverse Childhood Experiences and Resolve Complex Trauma

“Toxic shame begins as an adaptation to adverse childhood experiences. Shame is the mechanism of disconnecting from and attacking the Self. Shame becomes a survival strategy to protect against attachment loss and environmental failure, which are experienced as loss of love in the universe. When shame occurs early in a child’s development, their sense of Self becomes associated with shame.”
― Laurence Heller, The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma: Using the NeuroAffective Relational Model to Address Adverse Childhood Experiences and Resolve Complex Trauma

“When people experience relational trauma, they are generally not responding to a mortal threat. Instead, they are responding to a threat to the security of one’s sense of Self. This has profound impact on the neurodevelopment of children and self-organization. For young children, their sense of Self is dependent on their early environment. They are 100 percent dependent on their caregivers for their survival and well-being. A young child who experiences environmental failure has the lived experience that they themself won’t exist without connection and love.”
― Laurence Heller, The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma: Using the NeuroAffective Relational Model to Address Adverse Childhood Experiences and Resolve Complex Trauma