Introductory workshop to the NARM® method

What is NARM®?

The NeuroAffective Relational Model™ (NARM®) is a contemporary psychotherapeutic approach to working with developmental trauma, complex trauma, and their long-term effects on identity, emotions, the body, and relationships.

From the NARM® perspective, many of the difficulties we face as adults—chronic shame, self-criticism, detachment, difficulty setting boundaries, acquiescence, inner emptiness, or problems with intimacy—are not weaknesses or defects. They are often intelligent adaptations formed early in life when connection, nurturing, and support were not enough.

Rather than asking, “What’s wrong with this person?” NARM® directs attention to other questions:

How is he or she experiencing the present?

What strategies have they developed to survive?

And what about him or her remains alive, healthy, and capable of connecting?

One of the innovative aspects of the method is that NARM® combines bottom-up and top-down work. This means that the approach pays attention not only to the thoughts, stories and identifications that organize our experience, but also to how trauma affects the nervous system, the body, emotional regulation and the sense of vitality.

That is why NARM® does not work only by understanding and talking, but also by more finely tracking what is happening in the body here and now. This opens up the possibility for more self-regulation, more connectedness and deeper internal change.

It is a non-regressive, non-pathologizing and resource-oriented method that combines work with the nervous system, identity, emotions and relationships. The approach is both precise and deeply respectful of the person.

In this introductory workshop we will examine the following questions and topics:

What is developmental trauma and how adaptive survival strategies are formed;

the connection between early adjustment dissonance, nervous system dysregulation, and identity distortions;

the five core adaptive themes in NARM®;

how NARM® works in the present moment without fixing the person in their history;

the four pillars of the NARM® process;

how this approach supports more connectedness, agency, inner resilience, and vitality.

Presenter: Stefan Niederwieser

Stephan is a NARM® faculty member and an assistant trainer in the NARM Post-Masters Fellow Certificate Program. As a member of the NARM® faculty, he trains and supervises therapists in many countries around the world.

When: July 4, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m., with a 1-hour lunch break

Where: on the ZOOM platform