About NARM

The NeuroAffective Relational Model(NARM) developed by Dr Laurence Heller, is an advanced clinical training for mental health professionals who work with complex trauma. NARM is a cutting-edge model for addressing attachment, relational and developmental trauma, by working with the attachment patterns that cause life-long psychobiological symptoms and interpersonal difficulties. These early, unconscious patterns of disconnection deeply affect our identity, emotions, physiology, behaviour and relationships. Learning how to work simultaneously with these diverse elements is a radical shift that has profound clinical implications for healing complex trauma. As such, NARM is positioned to become an invaluable treatment option for the Trauma-Informed Care movement as we gain a greater understanding of the nature of adverse childhood experience (ACEs).

This developmentally-oriented, neuroscientifically-informed model, as outlined in Dr. Laurence Heller’s book Healing Developmental Trauma, emerged  out of earlier psychotherapeutic orientations including Psychodynamic  Psychotherapy, Attachment Theory, Cognitive Therapy, Gestalt Therapy,  and Somatic Experiencing®, and bridges traditional psychotherapy with  somatic approaches within a context of relational practice. NARM is a  mindfulness-based clinical treatment, as its method is grounded in a  phenomenological approach to addressing identity and consciousness of  self – who we truly are beneath these patterned ways of relating to  ourselves and the world. Seen in this way, healing complex trauma is a vehicle for transformation on a personal and collective level.