Author: NARM

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    Transforming Trauma Episode 030

    Transforming Trauma Episode 030

    By NARM | December 9, 2020 | | 0 Comments

    Transforming Trauma Episode 030: Complex Trauma, Self-Sabotage, Diet Culture, and Eating Disorder Recovery with Iris McAlpin

    A podcast brought to you by the NARM® Training Institute

    In this episode of Transforming Trauma, our host Sarah Buino interviews NARM Practitioner and coach Iris McAlpin. Iris specializes in eating disorder recovery, complex trauma, and self-sabotage. Iris also hosts a podcast called Pure Curiosity which seeks to facilitate nuanced conversations about the human experience and de-stigmatize mental health challenges. Iris shares that NARM has changed her life in being able to notice the ways that she puts pressure on herself and the ways that she tells herself that she ‘should’ be showing up in the world. Her intention for this episode is for listeners to also notice and be able to soften around the pressure that they place on themselves. 

    Sarah and Iris dive into how Iris began her work in eating disorder recovery, which began with her own healing and recovery from bulimia. Iris found that as she progressed in her recovery and was able to get control of the behaviors of her eating disorder, she began to turn her attention to her unresolved trauma, which was mostly relational in nature, that was at the root of the behaviors. NARM helped her to see this theme in a new way, as she came to understand that not only binging and purging, but “many other behaviors that we… throw under the umbrella of self-sabotage are really just coping tools,” for unhealed relational and attachment traumas. Iris saw that eating disorder behaviors are “a very ‘effective’ way to manage the dysregulation and… intense feelings that come up as a result of complex trauma.”  Iris has been impacted by the emphasis in NARM not being on the behavior of a person, but rather on the inner-state that is underneath, driving the behavior. 

    To understand this more deeply, Iris takes the listeners through a deeper look at the trauma of diet culture, in which clients deal with intense self loathing and self hatred, shame of their bodies and body image, and obsessive thinking about food. Iris discusses the common understanding of eating disorders, and the misconception that they are driven by vanity. Iris sees this very differently, through the lens of complex trauma, and describes that “because we live in a culture with a lot of thin privilege and a lot of fatphobia, it has nothing to do with vanity… really it has to do with belonging.” She further specifies that even if there is a supportive community around the person struggling, the larger society still is not supportive. Iris shares that this desire for belonging is the key motivator for disordered eating, and until the client addresses this issue, the behaviors will continue.

    Iris has found that NARM helps the eating conversations fade into the background, as individuals begin to place the emphasis on their relationship with themselves. She has found that to be true in her own recovery, sharing that “Anytime I was sort of trying to do a ‘frontal assault’ on the eating disorder, like trying to really focus on and dismantle that, it was kind of a trap for me.” Instead, she finds that by “working on other areas of my life, and examining those attitudes and beliefs and behaviors, it felt safer.” NARM has given her the context for this “ripple effect,” as she calls it, giving her a deeper understanding how, by attending to those deeper layers, we often find the behaviors organically begin to improve. 

    Iris and Sarah go on to discuss the Autonomy survival style in NARM, and how this adaptive survival strategy results in a lot of self-sabotaging behaviors. “There's a lot of pressuring of the self. There's a lot of negative self-talk. There’s a lot of efforting and rebelliousness… not only rebelling against perceived authority, but also rebelling against our own internal goals and agendas, which is part of the formation of a lot of self-sabotage behaviors.” These self-sabotaging behaviors can cause a range of behaviors from food issues, to toxic relationship dynamics, to procrastination, to fear of success. Iris expresses that NARM has helped her to ground her work in the utility and intelligence of these behaviors, rather unconsciously shaming her clients (as they shame themselves) for having them. 

    Iris shares several ideas of changes that she would like to see in the field of treating eating disorders. The first that she names is this shift away from focusing on eating behaviors, and getting to the deeper causes of those behaviors. Next, she would love to see trauma-informed models such as the NeuroAffective Relational Model, used in treating eating disorders. Finally, she is hopeful and interested in the re-emerging field of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, and feels that this treatment can have profound effects in supporting clients to recover from eating disorders when administered in a safe and therapeutic setting. 

    The two discuss the pitfalls and trauma that is inherent in seeing progress — whether it be client progress, our own healing, or our cultural progress — as a one-way, linear process. NARM has given both Sarah and Iris a broader understanding of what progress means, and as Iris shares, allows her to see that our healing often happens through “hidden paths that we're not able to see until much later.” 

    The two end their conversation discussing one of the biggest learnings that Iris has gathered in her work with complex trauma; she acknowledges that doing this deeper level of work can feel really scary at times. She shares about her own experience of confronting her triggers, and how NARM has taught her to work with her fear by using curiosity to guide her. “I really see those triggers as an invitation to open.” This ability to see that nothing is ‘wrong’ with our survival styles, and instead look at our growing awareness of ourselves as an opportunity to learn and make different choices is central to the NARM process.

    Transforming Trauma Headshots (29)

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    About Iris:

    Iris McAlpin is a NARM Practitioner and coach specializing in eating disorder recovery, complex trauma and self-sabotage. She has both a private and group practice, and works with clients all over the world. Iris also has a podcast called Pure Curiosity, which seeks to facilitate nuanced conversations about the human experience and to destigmatize mental health challenges.

    Contact Iris:

    www.irismcalpin.com

    On Instagram and Twitter: @irismcalpin

    Transforming Trauma Episode 029

    By NARM | January 29, 2020 | | 0 Comments

    Transforming Trauma Episode 029: A Mother’s Journey into Finding Effulgence through the NARM Process of Resolving Grief with Heidi Winn

    A podcast brought to you by the NARM® Training Institute

    In this Episode of Transforming Trauma, our host Sarah Buino interviews NARM Therapist Heidi Winn. Heidi is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor with a private practice in Fairfield, Iowa, and learned about NARM as she was grieving the loss of her teenage son, Finn, to suicide. In sharing this deeply personal story of loss, Heidi hopes listeners will feel a sense of hope and connection with themselves in their learning process, and be able to “experience a sense of the effulgence; the richness that I have had from this learning.” 

    Heidi uses the words “then-daughter” to refer to her son before he transitioned to describe the evolution of identity that took place. Heidi’s journey with her then-daughter began roughly five years ago, when she began harming herself, and eventually attempted suicide four times in one year and spent over three months in a hospital for her own safety.

    Heidi describes her own pain and confusion as her child was suffering in such a profound way, saying “It was baffling to me why she wanted to die… She curled up to me in bed and snuggled and said, ‘I just feel like I'm on a mission to die.’” Heidi shares that it was during the hospital stay after the last suicide attempt that her then-daughter finally opened up both to himself as well as to his family about what was going on inside, and reported to Heidi, “I had a moment of clarity last night. I'm a boy inside and I want to be called Finn.” This clarity had a profound effect on his suicidality, which dropped overnight from a seven on the hospital assessment scale (the highest intentionality and suicidal thoughts) to zero. 

    Heidi did her best to support her son as he came out to himself and to his family, helping him to order boy clothes online, getting special permission to bring a friend to the hospital to give him a boy haircut, and fielding the transition to male identity with the faculty of their small school in Iowa that emphasized transcendental meditation. She admits, “I mean, to be honest with you… he could've come out as a pineapple and I would have accepted it. I had been through so much… and we had tried so hard to keep that child alive.” 

    As a NARM Therapist, Heidi reflects back on this time with insight and self-compassion, recognizing how she was at times misattuned to her son and the ways that she unconsciously saw her children as extensions of her own identity. What has been described as parental narcissism, NARM helped Heidi to understand these dynamics within their relationship, and most importantly, to have “compassion for who we are, and where we were, and what we did, and that we did the best [we could].”

    Heidi describes the ways that their family adapted and learned to support Finn in his transition, and the challenges that they faced with getting him the medical care he needed. To their devastation, Finn did commit suicide in his 8th grade year, while the family was dealing with financial barriers to purchasing the hormonal treatments that were helping him navigate his body’s maturation and menstrual cycle. Heidi shares the profound learning that she went through in grieving and integrating Finn’s death, including the ways that she has learned to navigate her grief through staying in touch with the complexity of her love and sadness. Heidi describes that when she would focus on the loss, and the story of “my child is dead,” she noticed that she felt overwhelmed with suffering and fear. She shares, “But when I allowed myself to feel the love that I had for that child, dead or alive, and I felt the sharp prongs of intense grief and loss, that pain. When I felt that–and it hurt–I felt connected to him. And thus, I felt connected to myself.” 

    This quote, and the ability to be with the complexity of her emotion and experience after losing Finn, is what is described in NARM as her psychobiological capacity to be with her own inner experience. With support from her community and family, Heidi describes the ways that she used her agency to direct her own experience and manage when she was overwhelmed by fear and despair. 

    The learning continued to unfold for Heidi, who shares the ways that her grieving has shaped her lived experience, in that she  “began to have more trust in a bigger picture, more… capacity to sit with the mystery of not knowing, instead of from the anxiety of trying to know… or be in control.” She eventually found her way to a NARM therapist for herself as a client, and then to the NARM Therapist Training. Here she began to learn more about the survival strategies that she used since childhood to manage various developmental and relational challenges. She also learned how in NARM these strategies are seen as gifts that we can use when needed, but that we don’t have to be controlled by any more. Heidi offers a beautiful metaphor for her understanding of NARM helping her to loosen the dirt of the hard packed earth around the weeds of her strategies. This is what she is hoping for listeners of the podcast today: instead of seeing our identities and strategies as fixed, to “experience that feeling of hope, that those things are not hard packed ground that can never be tilled. It's really effulgent. It's rich.”

    Heidi closes the podcast reflecting on the ways that her relationship to her living daughter has changed, in that she has let go of trying to know what her daughter’s truth is or control her in the same ways that she might have before. Not only has NARM helped Heidi to be with the complexity of her own inner experience, its influence has also supported her to continue to allow others to be complicated and unfolding in their lives as well. When she supports other parents of transgender people, she notices that she has a bigger capacity to “be with the not knowing,” of who they are and who they will become. This depth has brought big changes to her practice as a psychotherapist, as she gives more space to her clients to learn who they are and what they want for themselves. As Sarah so beautifully reflects, it’s “a spiritual experience to sit with somebody who is becoming fully themselves.”

    Transforming Trauma

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    About Heidi:

    Heidi Winn has a Master's Degree in Counseling and is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor with a private practice in Fairfield, Iowa. She has worked in the mental health field for over 30 years as a supervisor, team leader, clinical director and therapist, with a full range of client issues and profiles. She has an eclectic, relational, and intuitive style in which she incorporates modalities stemming from Psychodynamic approach with Jungian Depth psychology, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, and EMDR, and now NARM, as well as being influenced by non-traditional modalities such as Human Design, Byron Katie's The Work, Transcendental Meditation, and the Release Technique. Heidi is a trauma informed therapist, and is currently in the NARM Master's Training to continue to advance her comprehension and treatment for clients with Developmental and Complex Trauma. Heidi is committed to hold a sacred listening space and support people in uncovering barriers to fully experiencing their aliveness and truth.

    Contact Heidi:

    [email protected]

    Transforming Trauma Episode 029
    Transforming Trauma Episode 028

    Transforming Trauma Episode 028

    By NARM | January 28, 2020 | | 0 Comments

    Transforming Trauma Episode 028: Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation with Daniel Shaw

    A podcast brought to you by the NARM® Training Institute

    In this episode of Transforming Trauma, our host Sarah Buino is joined by therapist, social worker, and author Daniel Shaw to discuss his seminal book Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation. Daniel explores the theme of traumatic narcissism from a developmental and trauma-informed perspective. In his work, he connects the challenging symptoms and behaviors of clients diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder to the deeper understanding that they were raised in a highly traumatic environment by narcissistic caregivers. His underlying message for listeners is that, “It's important to understand what's going on in the mind of the narcissistic traumatizer in order to help patients free themselves from those relationships, in order for therapists to help the patient, and in order for the patients to help themselves.”

    Daniel began his research in social work after leaving a religious group that he participated in for thirteen years, and which he later came to identify as a cult. In this group, Daniel experienced traumatic abuse through the cult leader, who “needed to inflate their own narcissism by controlling others.” This dynamic is exactly what he came to see represented in the relational system of the traumatizing narcissist, which he identified as a “system of subjugation.”

    Unlike perspectives that can ostracize or vilify narcissistic tendencies, Daniel’s perspective on narcissism is very similar to that of the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM). Narcissism is understood to be a common trait that all personalities experience to some degree. While Daniel acknowledges that this trait can be quite harmless, for example “sometimes people are just a little more self centered”, his work focuses on the narcissistic person who is predatory in their behavior, and who seeks to establish relational dynamics in which they can control others “through belittling and intimidating and humiliating.” Daniel describes these individuals as highly seductive at first, and then after their initial phase of seduction others become subjugated to the narcissist. “So that person actually … comes to believe that they are bad and the narcissist is good. And the reason the narcissist is cruel to them is because of their badness.” He goes on to explain that the victim of traumatic narcissism is so affected by this relational system, that it is incredibly difficult to stop blaming themselves or feeling alienated from themselves. 

    In a healthy parent-child relationship, the parent honors and understands a child’s natural dependency, and allows them to gradually grow more independent over time through healthy individuation. This healthy individuation celebrates the child’s growing independence, while also allowing the child to come back and check in to re-establish safety as they slowly venture farther and farther into the world. Daniel and Sarah come together with Daniel’s statement that “We are born completely dependent and there's… no reason on earth why a child should grow up ashamed of that dependency.” However, the narcissist is not brought up in this healthy environment. Narcissistic parents resent the child’s dependency, shame them for it, and create a traumatizing environment in which the child’s dependency on their parent becomes the source of pain and suffering. These children often grow up with one of two outcomes: to become profoundly depressed with low self-esteem, or to take on aspects of this narcissism themselves and recreate relationships with this relational system of power-over and control through humiliation. As Daniel states, the traumatized child can then become the narcissist, who begins “disavowing and denying any kind of dependency, any kind of need, and associating [need] with shame. And then the person that they choose to relate to has to carry that neediness and that shame for them.”

    Sarah and Daniel discuss the common thread in Daniel’s work and NARM. Much like in NARM, in which the therapists support clients to reconnect with their own agency, Daniel’s intention in working with people that have experienced narcissistic abuse is to help them “retrieve a faith in themselves that has been taken from them by the narcissistic abuser.” In both NARM and Daniel’s work, the therapist supports the client to raise their awareness of what has become internalized from their childhood abuse, including the vicious ways that these clients often degenerate and belittle themselves throughout their lives. This is a  “powerful moment” in the therapeutic process, as the client begins to recognize that they themselves have taken on the role of their abuser through their own self-objectification. 

    Sarah then turns the conversation to the complexity of narcissism in a family system. Oftentimes, there is not only the traumatic narcissist who is creating relationships of subjectation, but there is also the covert narcissist, who is often the one that is standing by and watching what is unfolding, and not protecting the children from the abuse that is taking place. This person is essentially sacrificing the child to the relationship, which is a form of narcissistic abuse. Though there are common gender dynamics in these family configurations, both Sarah and Daniel are careful to note that these forms of narcissistic abuse are truly ‘gender blind,’ and can happen in any family system. 

    Daniel describes the healing from these forms of traumatic narcissism he sees when the client is able to look at themselves without judgment, and with compassion for their own experience. This form of self-inquiry is about re-discovering their own relationship to themselves through compassionate understanding. Sarah and Daniel close by discussing the role of the therapist, and how therapists can support the client in this process of self-reflection through being fully attuned and letting them know that we are “in their corner.” If the therapist is able to do this, the therapeutic relationship then becomes a place where the client can begin to feel this unconditional, fully present relationship from another, so that they can begin to feel it for themselves. 

    A much more in-depth look at the NARM perspective on narcissism is available through the NARM Masters Training on working with Personality Disorders.

    Transforming Trauma Headshots (4)

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    Learn more about The NARM Training Institute: http://www.narmtraining.com

    Sign up for a free preview of The NARM Inner Circle Online Membership Program: http://www.narmtraining.com/freetrial

    About Daniel:

    Daniel Shaw is the author of Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation. He is faculty and supervisor in New York City at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies. He maintains his private psychotherapy practice In New York City and in Nyack, NY.

    Contact Daniel: 

    Website: www.danielshawlcsw.com

    Facebook: www.facebook.com/DanielShawLCSW

    Twitter: @NyackDanShaw

    Transforming Trauma Episode 027: NARM and the Role of Consent in Trauma-Informed Yoga with Colleen Millen

    By NARM | January 27, 2020 | | 0 Comments

    Transforming Trauma Episode 027: NARM and the Role of Consent in Trauma-Informed Yoga with Colleen Millen

    A podcast brought to you by the NARM® Training Institute

    In this episode of Transforming Trauma, our host Sarah Buino welcomes NARM Therapist and Accessible Yoga instructor Colleen Millen to dive into and discuss the theme of consent. Throughout the episode, Colleen shares how her understanding of what consent means has deepened through her relationship with yoga and through her ongoing study of the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM). 

    Each episode of Transforming Trauma begins with our host Sarah asking, “What would you like listeners to get out of our conversations today?” This is inspired by the NeuroAffective Relational Model, as NARM sessions always begin with asking: What are you wanting for yourself out of this time? Colleen and Sarah unpack the ways that consent is embodied by these questions. They place the client in the role of deciding where to go and what will be discussed, allowing them to guide the session rather than be prescribed what they need to work on. Colleen was drawn to NARM by this focus on consent, and it has become the value around which she organizes both her therapeutic and yoga practices.

    Colleen shares honestly that at first she was reticent to join the NARM training because of a traumatic experience that she had in a previous training community. She shares that she had been part of a yoga healing community where consent was not represented, and where “there were some cultic dynamics that created power differentials that were very, very difficult and abusive.” She left that yoga community and continued to work as a therapist while she continued to heal from the experience of betrayal. After decades of dedicated yoga practice, she began asking herself “Do I want to teach yoga at all?” 

    Through this process of self-referencing and self-healing, she discovered the deeper aspects of yoga that continued to call to her, which led her toward trauma-informed yoga, and a new branch of yoga called Accessible Yoga. She describes that Accessible Yoga is specifically designed to place the student at the center of their own relationship with their practice. Colleen shares the deep resonance that she found in Accessible Yoga. “[It gets] back to the roots of yoga [and is] what yoga, in my opinion, is supposed to be about. Which is… our community liberation. We can't have liberation without the people and systems around us being liberated.” In this way, Colleen re-discovered her relationship with yoga by placing the emphasis on trusting the participants to decide, using a language of choice, and supporting the agency of students.  

    It was from this place of rediscovery and renegotiation that Colleen discovered NARM. She described that she felt terrified, due to the betrayal and abuse of her previous yoga community, while at the same time a deep desire to learn and connect at the NARM training.  Her experience of volunteering to do a NARM demonstration in front of the class was what transformed her understanding of what consent is, and how it functions in healing from complex trauma. She felt what it was to have her consent truly respected by the therapist/trainer. She reports, “Consent was honored throughout the process… [the therapist/trainer] really heard the essential wounding I had there. And he gave me a choice.” From that time on, this has become the reflection around which Colleen has oriented her work as a therapist and as a yoga instructor: “How do I offer consent? How do I ask for it? How do I orient myself to that in the world?”

    The embodiment of these questions is exactly the learning that Colleen was looking for in a professional training, and that NARM has integrated into every level. From the initial question, to changing course in the middle of a session, to the mentorship and coaching available to students throughout the training, consent has always been central to her learning in the NARM process. And as a Yoga Instructor, she now practices through a lens that encourages self-referencing and choice. 

    Sarah and Colleen close their conversation by connecting around the respectful and caring relationship that is created with clients through honoring their consent and their agency, and how this quality creates such essential healing with people who have experienced complex trauma. As they reflect on their conversation, another element of NARM emerged for them – by bringing awareness to consent, an individual’s relationship to it will naturally deepen.

    Transforming Trauma Headshots (3)

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    Learn more about The NARM Training Institute: http://www.narmtraining.com

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    About Colleen:

    Colleen works with complex trauma and regulation at Discovery Counseling Center in Danville, CA, a community mental health center. Accessibility and consent are core values and interests of her work. Colleen is also an Accessible Yoga Ambassador and trauma-informed yoga teacher and trainer.

    Contact Colleen: 

    Website: www.discoveryctr.net 

    Phone: 925-837-0505 x418

    Email: [email protected]

    Colleen’s Accessible Yoga classes: https://www.tworiversyoga.com/

    Transforming Trauma Episode 027: NARM and the Role of Consent in Trauma-Informed Yoga with Colleen Millen
    Transforming Trauma Episode 026: Cultural Traumatization and Collective Awakening with Dr. Laurence Heller and Thomas Hübl

    Transforming Trauma Episode 026: Cultural Traumatization and Collective Awakening with Dr. Laurence Heller and Thomas Hübl

    By NARM | January 26, 2020 | | 0 Comments

    Transforming Trauma Episode 026: Cultural Traumatization and Collective Awakening with Dr. Laurence Heller and Thomas Hübl

    A podcast brought to you by the NARM® Training Institute

    “Our global future of healing… is in these kind of collaborative fields that we will bring these powers together and learn from each other — help each other to see the things that we are still not seeing ourselves and be a kind of a global healing force.” ~Thomas Hübl

    In this episode of Transforming Trauma, Dr. Laurence Heller, the Creator of the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM) is joined by Thomas Hubl, a teacher, author, and founder of the Academy of Inner Science and the Pocket Project. Thomas’ work combines somatic awareness practices, advanced meditative practices, and transformational processes that address both individual and collective trauma. Larry and Thomas discuss the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the similarities between individual and collective trauma responses, and how their work overlaps in seeking to transform complex trauma through therapeutic, collective, and spiritual pathways. 

    Thomas begins the conversation by sharing his own experience of quarantine, how it has affected him personally and in the work that he does. He discusses the shock and fear that were stirred by this need to adapt quickly, and the importance of supporting self-regulation, co-regulation, and group coherence in these transitions. Thomas’ organization found new ways to support his team in co-regulation by offering a space to discuss the difficulties of living in social isolation. Similarly, the NARM Training Institute adapted by moving online and launched the first NARM Online Basics Training, allowing over 130 students to connect to NARM teachings. 

    The two agree that it’s very important to understand on both individual and community scales the way trauma impacts us all.  This brings the conversation to the ways that individual trauma responses take place within the larger context, or network, of the collective experience. Thomas discusses the cultural fragmentation that is happening in our collective experience through emerging themes of polarization and racism, and how this mirrors the individual psyche’s fragmentation in response to trauma. The two reflect on how though this polarization has always been there, it is also being exposed in a new way. Dr. Heller reinforces that though there is something “peeling back,” right now on a collective level that is exposing painful beliefs and polarization, there is also widespread, international interest in learning about trauma. Both Dr. Heller and Thomas have experienced a growing feeling that there is a “global community interest in healing.”

    Thomas touches on the themes in his upcoming book on healing collective trauma, and his desire to create a deeper dialogue between what he calls the ‘scientific approach’ to healing trauma and a more mystical approach. His work supports the healing of European communities that were involved in WWII and the Holocaust, and focuses on “how the individual healing happens in a wider collective container.” This wider container is the focus of his work, and similar to the NARM perspective, he seeks to understand the root of the trauma rather than the symptoms (which can take the form of racism, political differences, economics, etc) on the surface of the collective experience. 

    Both Dr. Heller and Thomas have worked with groups of people that come with “big scars,” or profound forms of collective trauma, such as the Palestinians and Israelis, Protestants and Catholics in Ireland, and the decedents of both Holocaust survivors and Nazi officers. They discuss the energy that forms in the larger container of these experiences, something that Thomas calls the “collective field,” and Dr. Heller names as a “heart space,” that opens up and supports the healing of everyone in the room. Dr. Heller’s NARM approach focuses more on individual healing while taking in and acknowledging the larger context, while Thomas’ work focuses on the collective experience but acknowledges and works toward individual healing as well. 

    The two teachers uncover their mutual interests in the energetic fields of communities that have been through traumatic experiences, such as war or exploitation, and in exploring the “cultural architecture” in communities that can store trauma and unconscious collective material. Again and again, they uncover the mirroring between the way that individuals store and deal with trauma and the ways that communities do. This mirroring includes the numbness/denial of painful experiences, patterns of tension and collapse, fragmentation, and movements of the whole system toward healing or toward maladaptive ways of surviving. They both agree that though there is something really connecting about working within one’s own culture, it can also be difficult to have a true broader perspective. They share with each other their experiences of the impact and value of what unfolds when working together across cultures. Together they come to the vision that “That’s going to be our global future of healing, that… we will bring these powers together and learn from each other, help each other, to see the things that we are still not seeing ourselves.”

    This episode concludes with Dr. Heller’s thoughts on the ways that a spiritual or mystical perspective can help us to understand narcissism, proposing the idea that narcissism begins the moment we begin to perceive our disconnection from the larger source (what some may call God or the universe, etc). Thomas reflects back this idea that we are always, on the deepest level, connected, but that we forget, or bury, the connection, and start to believe in an egoic sense that we have to get something from the environment. Larry and Thomas end by sharing their experiences of giving and receiving becoming the same thing through their teaching, and the circular way in which their hearts are both offered and filled by connection with themselves and others.  

    Transforming Trauma Headshots (25)

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    Learn more about The NARM Training Institute: http://www.narmtraining.com

    Sign up for a free preview of The NARM Inner Circle Online Membership Program: http://www.narmtraining.com/freetrial

    About Thomas Hübl:

    Thomas Hübl is a teacher, author and founder of the Academy of Inner Science. Thomas’ work combines somatic awareness practices, advanced meditative practices, and transformational processes that address both individual and collective trauma, opening the potential for growth and healing. Thomas has worked with tens of thousands of people worldwide through workshops, multi-year training programs and online courses. 

    He is also the founder of the nonprofit Pocket Project, which aims to increase awareness and understanding of collective trauma and reduce its effects. Thomas’ forthcoming book on healing collective trauma will be published in 2020.

    Transforming Trauma Episode 025: How NARM Supports Treating the Whole Person with Naturopath, Dr. Mazen Atassi

    By NARM | January 25, 2020 | | 0 Comments

    Transforming Trauma Episode 025: How NARM Supports Treating the Whole Person with Naturopath, Dr. Mazen Atassi

    A podcast brought to you by the NARM® Training Institute

    “The relational dynamics that NARM is speaking to are so rooted in our biology and our relationships and our everything, our connection to the sacred; everything is informed by these principles.” ~Dr. Mazen Atassi

    In this episode, Transforming Trauma host Sarah Buino speaks with Mazen Atassi, naturopath and NARM Practitioner, about how he uses NARM principles to support psychobiological healing in his medical practice. Throughout the episode, Sarah and Mazen explore the idea that NARM is for everyone and they take a closer look at how Mazen has applied NARM in the naturopathic realm. 

    Mazen is passionate about the relationship between mental and physical wellbeing, a critical link that he says traditional mechanistic traditions often overlook in their response to illness. In his search for additional supportive modalities with which to treat clients, Mazen discovered the NeuroAffective Relational Model, NARM. For Mazen, the NARM model honors the somatic, bottom-up processing of the body, and also brings a needed top-down element that focuses on a crucial component: the relationship to self. The model’s approach to addressing complex trauma and re-establishing self-compassion align with Mazen’s healing philosophy. He shares his experience utilizing the tools the NARM model provided him and how the tools support two key naturopathic principles: Tolle Totem, treating the whole person, and Tolle Causam, address the root cause of disease. 

    Mazen shares how the internal chaos from complex trauma can lead to a range of psychological and physiological symptoms, from anxiety, depression, and addiction, to digestion issues, migraines, auto-immune disorders, and more. In his practice with his clients, he has used NARM, in addition to his other tools, to intentionally bring organization to the order of therapeutic interventions. He has found it most effective to start with counseling to explore the client’s relationship to themself and their self-worth, and then move into other direct interventions that address their symptoms. Mazen credits the NARM model for supporting his clients in reconnecting to their self-compassion and resilience. This reconnection to the self can serve as a pathway to reclaiming optimal physical health.

    Throughout the episode, Sarah and Mazen also discuss the stigma surrounding mental health in the Muslim community, of which Mazen is part. The pair share that within practiced religion, there can often be cultural dynamics, generational trauma, and spiritual bypassing that can fragment a person’s relationship to self within these systems. Mazen shares how he’s been able to employ his NARM skills and shared religious heritage to breach barriers with some of his Muslim patients. The resulting intimacy allows communication to flow freely and liberates clients who might not otherwise seek help. “If we open ourselves up to that, it's not even that we're doing anything. It's like we are sharing in this gift of life and this healing, you know? And it's such a beautiful thing. It's like a springtime in every session. It's like this rebirth.”

    Mazen shares with listeners his hope for how NARM can touch more than just those in the clinical space. “I hope [NARM principles] can be underlined and emphasized to the greater population as a way of creating a conscious culture of a healthy civilization…These principles are crucial, and they’re not just for the clinical space.” The episode concludes with Mazen sharing moving stories from both his practice and his own NARM training experience.

    Transforming Trauma Headshots (1)

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    ABOUT DR. MAZEN ATASSI: 

    Mazen Atassi is a Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine and the founder of Forward To Health, a holistic wellness clinic and educational initiative. Dr. Mazen practices vitalistic natural medicine, weaving together homeopathy, botanical medicine, hydrotherapy, and nutrition with a specialty in somatic trauma therapy (NARM). He has patients and students across the world. He lives in Chicago with his wife and daughter.

    CONNECT WITH DR. MAZEN ATASSI:

    Forward to Health

    Transforming Trauma Episode 025: How NARM Supports Treating the Whole Person with Naturopath, Dr. Mazen Atassi
    Episode 024: Dismantling Anti-Semitism and the Complex Trauma of Colonialism with Dani Ishai Behan

    Episode 024: Dismantling Anti-Semitism and the Complex Trauma of Colonialism with Dani Ishai Behan

    By NARM | January 24, 2020 | | 0 Comments

    Transforming Trauma Episode 024: Dismantling Anti-Semitism and the Complex Trauma of Colonialism with Dani Ishai Behan

    A podcast brought to you by the NARM® Training Institute

    “I think the only thing we can do is to keep pushing back against these narratives because they're not going to go away…We have to challenge them. We need to do so more visibly and more consistently and more forcefully.” ~Dani Ishai Behan

    In this next Jewish “High Holiday” episode, NARM Training Director Brad Kammer welcomes author Dani Ishai Behan to Transforming Trauma to discuss the nuances of the Jewish experience in Diaspora, and specifically the challenges around years of ethnic oppression, anti-Semitism and intergenerational trauma.

    Dani, a writer for the Times of Israel focuses his writing on the post-colonial traumas and anti-Semitism faced by Jews, and has become an advocate for reclaiming Jewish identity, as he advocates for the inclusion of Jews as an indigenous population of the Middle East (specifically, the Judean region, now referred to as Israel by the Jewish people). 

    This isn’t solely a religious or political aim for Dani, but a deeply personal one.  As a child, Dani was largely disconnected from his Jewish identity, associating it through the traumatic retelling of Ashkenazi Jews who recounted the horrors of anti-Semitism in Europe in the 1800 and 1900s, as his ancestors were forced to live in squalid conditions, alienated from the mainstream society, and constantly endured individual and state-organized attacks (“pogroms”) which culminated in the Holocaust where 1/3 of the world Jewish population was murdered.  In his earlier life, Dani was involved in the Punk Rock community and was surrounded by people that were fervently anti-Zionist, the level to which made him question that specific hatred toward one group of people. The unease prompted Dani to look inward to his own relationship to being Jewish, and he started asking questions like: Why did my Jewish family look different from other “white” families? Why did the neighbors treat my Jewish family differently from other “white” families? He realized that something about his “being Jewish” had always nagged at him on a cellular level and he began to seek answers.

    One answer was about the experience of whiteness in America, something that Dani had always wondered about with the Jewish side of his family.  They were dark-skinned with curly hair and other Middle Eastern features, and were often taken to be other ethnicities. Dani and Brad reflect on the errors of lumping Jews in as being White. Dani says, “There's a difference between white-passing and actually being white,” and goes on to painfully describe the many different ways Jews have attempted to pass as White in Europe and the US through various skin-lightening creams, straightening their hair, attempting to reverse their circumcision and use plastic surgery to change their Middle Eastern features, in addition to changing their names, running from their religious and ethnic practices and working hard to assimilate into the mainstream. But no matter how much Jews attempted to assimilate, it never allowed them to escape the constant threats toward their annihilation.

    Through research and in-depth discussions, Dani began to put together pieces of the Jewish experience being expelled out of their native land of Judea and having to flee into countries around the world (the “Diaspora”). While he had always assumed that his Jewish Ashkenazi family was from Europe, and White, “we're not actually from Europe or from Morocco or from North America or wherever. We’re indigenous to the land of Israel.” Dani began to understand that his family, and the Jewish lineage, were actually Middle Easterners who had been exiled to European countries in order to flee persecution from colonial invaders. 

    This brings the conversation back to the current day in the United States and elsewhere where there is a strong movement to support and empower BIPOC (Black and Indigenous People of Color) who are fighting for a more equitable future. However, while these efforts to dismantle supremacist policies and systemic obstacles have been accepted on college campuses, within the social justice movement, and in many political groups, one ethnic group is often omitted from conversations centered on these complex traumas: the Jews. In fact, Jews are being labeled the colonizers of a native people (the Palestinians), which according to Dani’s research, is white-washing Jewish lineage and identity. And, yet another form of cultural trauma toward the Jews. While groups are working fervently against anti-Zionism, they are dismissing the right of an indigenous group to their native land and their collective right to self-determination.

    While this could lead into a larger political discussion of the dynamics between the Palestinians and Israelis, Brad differentiates between the “political and the psychological”, and both Dani and Brad reflect on how these complex cultural and intergenerational traumas have and continue to impact them. And, they share the pain of the constant attack on their Jewish identity and the need for intergenerational trauma healing as a people.

    Transforming Trauma Headshots (16)

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    ABOUT DANI ISHAI BEHAN: 

    Dani Ishai Behan is an East Coast-based writer, researcher, and musician. Of Irish and Judean heritage, Dani's writing focuses on the unique antisemitic constructs, post-colonial traumas, and disadvantages faced by Ashkenazi Jews. His main goals are to dismantle these structures, challenge popular antisemitic myths about Ashkenazi Jews, and to advocate for their inclusion as an indigenous population of the Middle East.

    CONNECT WITH DANI ISHAI BEHAN:

    The Times of Israel

    Episode 023: Exploring Historical and Intergenerational Trauma in the Jewish Experience with Rabbi Lynn Feinberg

    By NARM | January 23, 2020 | | 0 Comments

    Transforming Trauma Episode 023: Exploring Historical and Intergenerational Trauma in the Jewish Experience with Rabbi Lynn Feinberg

    A podcast brought to you by the NARM® Training Institute

    “It's about really getting into that experience of compassion for myself, my people, for our journey, for what it means to adjust within… all those different layers.” ~ Lynn Feinberg

    In this special “High Holidays” episode of Transforming Trauma, host Sarah Buino welcomes guest Rabbi Lynn Feinberg, the first female Jewish Rabbi in Norway, as well as NARM Practitioner, to reflect on her research into intergenerational trauma for second and third generation Holocaust survivors in Europe.  One of the tenets of NARM training is the idea that a practitioner must first attend to their own trauma before employing the model in practice with clients. For many, that means an exploration of patterns left-over from unresolved early trauma, including any cultural, historical or intergenerational themes. 

    Lynn, who is the daughter of a Norweigan Holocaust survivor, certainly has been on this journey. While she is a Norweigan citizen and lives in Oslo, she has spent time living abroad in Israel, Denmark and the US, and has focused professionally on advanced degrees in Judaism, psychology and feminist spirituality. 

    One of her main areas of focus is on belonging. As the only Jew in her school and friend groups growing up, from early in her life Lynn reflected on the differences being Jewish and the unique challenges she faced due fitting in. Similarly, due to her father being a Holocaust survivor, her family’s relationship to their Jewish identity was complex. So while she officially belonged to the larger Norweigan culture, she says that it “was not quite mine.”  As she got older she came to the realization that there was a whole other culture, her Jewish identity, in which she had no accurate mirror from anyone around her.  Her current research is “really getting into that experience of compassion for myself, my people, for our journey, for what it means to adjust within [to] all those different layers.”

    Lynn quickly began to realize that there were invisible forces that were impacting people like her, second and third generation Holocaust survivors that no one was talking about.  Growing up in the shadow of the Holocaust (“Shoah” in Hebrew), she recognized an initiation, a journey of liberation in facing and resolving the intergenerational and cultural trauma.  “Trauma integration also has an aspect of initiation in it…A trauma that’s not healed can be likened to an initiation that never was fulfilled.” Lynn reflects that she has been on this journey of “grounding myself in my own story and…owning myself in a larger perspective and from a more historical perspective…to this collective trauma story.”  

    In NARM terms, Lynn says she had a “big aha” recognizing that this journey is about “disidentifying” from her historical trauma story.  As she is currently writing her PhD thesis, she states “it’s also about bringing in a larger story so that your story can be held in a larger story. And the more you can contain that larger story, the more you can also relax in your own story.”

    One of the challenges for Jews living for thousands of years in diaspora has always been the conflict between adaptation to modern ways versus adherence to traditional ways. Having lived and studied in the United States has allowed Lynn to compare and contrast how Jews in Europe and Jews in America have adapted differently to life post-Holocaust amidst undercurrents of antisemitic policy. Sarah and Lynn connect the collective Jewish experience of historical and intergenerational trauma with those suffered by Black Americans and other Indigenous cultures living within the confines of colonial/Western structures. Woven into these collective experiences are personal stories of survival and assimilation in the face of structural othering and gaslighting. But as Lynn points out, Post-Traumatic Growth is disrupted when marginalized groups continue to experience ongoing trauma and the dominant culture refuses to address the wounds. 

    The episode concludes with Lynn comparing a cyclical view of intrapersonal and intergenerational healing against the Western notion of a singular, linear fix. “I think that's what's so brilliant with the NARM process,” she says, “is this seeing the hardship for what it is and recognizing the depth of it.” Lynn has found NARM to be an ideal platform with which to explore deeper into her historical and intergenerational trauma and begin to “disidentify” from the unresolved trauma patterns, thereby reclaiming deeper authenticity within herself.

    Transforming Trauma Headshots

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    ABOUT LYNN CLAIRE FEINBERG: 

    I am a historian of Religion and Rabbi presently working on a PhD at the University of Oslo.

    In my thesis, I explore post-traumatic growth and trauma integration in children and grandchildren of Norwegian Holocaust survivors. During the course of my studies, I have completed the NARM training and apply some of the concepts learned through NARM in my approach to my interviews and analysis.

    I am the daughter of a Norwegian survivor of Auschwitz, (my father) and grew up belonging to the very small post-Holocaust Jewish community of Oslo. This background has brought me on a life-long journey of exploring and seeking healing for my own C-PTSD. I have, therefore, chosen to include autoethnographic perspectives in my PhD work. I work as a Spiritual Director and include a NARM perspective in my work with clients.

    Episode 023: Exploring Historical and Intergenerational Trauma in the Jewish Experience with Rabbi Lynn Feinberg
    Episode 022: Intergenerational Trauma and Decolonizing Jewish Identity with Brad Kammer

    Episode 022: Intergenerational Trauma and Decolonizing Jewish Identity with Brad Kammer

    By NARM | January 22, 2020 | | 0 Comments

    Transforming Trauma Episode 022: Intergenerational Trauma and Decolonizing Jewish Identity with Brad Kammer

    A podcast brought to you by the NARM® Training Institute

    “It's been really confusing. It's been painful.  And trying to sort this all out for myself is my own work in…really helping me become a better therapist and working with people that are dealing with racial, historical trauma, and cultural trauma, and also just trying to make sense of where we are and where we're going in our society.”
    ~ Brad Kammer, Senior Faculty and Training Director of the NARM Training Institute

    This special bonus episode of Transforming Trauma welcomes Brad Kammer, NARM Training Institute Senior Faculty and Training Director, to introduce listeners to a series of “High Holiday” episodes featuring two different Jewish leaders advocating for healing of cultural and intergenerational trauma for the Jewish people.  Brad begins by framing the next two episodes that will focus on the psychological journey and struggle for the Jewish people, as well as sharing about his experience coming to terms with his own Jewish identity through the healing of intergenerational and complex trauma.

    Transforming Trauma host Sarah Buino asks Brad to start off by sharing about his own personal experience, something Brad likens to a “coming out”.  Brad recognizes that his career in working with complex trauma has been shaped by his own personal journey in healing from cultural and intergenerational trauma, and through this process, he feels he has been reclaiming his identity. Brad reflects, “I’ve spent my life hiding in many different ways and it's come at a cost. And I guess this is part of my wanting to personally proclaim that I'm ready to address these issues…and not continue to pass it down.” 

    This process has required him to face the realities of othering, objectifying, unwelcoming, scapegoating and existential threats. In his career as a teacher, for example, he says, “I walk into a room, I show up as a teacher and I'm immediately objectified and I'm put into a group that is usually considered “white male”.  That is not only NOT the group I identify with, but that has been the oppressor for my people for many, many centuries. Part of the trauma that Jews have suffered is having our identity taken from us and it being defined outside. And so when someone does that to me, it's just a trigger for me.” At the same time, Brad acknowledges that he has used this “privilege” to get by in America. “Jews have tried over the years to act like they fit into the mainstream dominant culture, even though we never have. So me coming out when I'm afforded a certain kind of privilege…it feels scary.”  

    No matter how much Jews have tried to fit in to the countries they have been forced to live in exile (the “Diaspora”), no matter where they went – Europe, Africa, Americas or elsewhere in the Middle East – Jews have long been objectified, vilified and attacked by the dominant culture. Part of the unresolved trauma for Jews, who have never been safe anywhere they have lived, is feeling that at any point they will be attacked and/or pushed out. Brad reflects, “There are people actively today that want to annihilate me and my family and my people, my children…And like, how do I reclaim that? How do we reclaim that without it being a strategy of fighting, which is what Jews are doing right now in Israel, or submitting, which didn't go well for Jews…[with] one third of our population wiped out when we couldn't fight back. And so we're in a really difficult territory as an oppressed people who have suffered oppression for over 2,000 years now.”

    The challenge Brad has faced as an American Jew is that while “right wing” groups have never been safe for Jews, and still aren’t, “left wing” groups have become increasingly unsafe for Jews as well.  Brad has been involved in social justice work for many years and is concerned by this recent turn toward Anti-Zionism, which is often inseparable from Anti-Semitism. Many “progressive” social justice groups are now identifying Jews as European, white colonizers, which is another attempt at eradicating the Jewish identity. 

    Brad differentiates between the psychological and the political, by introducing us to the idea that while Zionism has become associated with the Israeli government, military and illegal activities against the Palestinian people, Zionism at its roots is not a political movement, but a collective psychological attempt of the Jewish people at self-determination. It’s an expression of the right for the Jewish people to exist. Brad speaks of it as an indigenous liberation movement, no different than the Tibetans wanting to return to their homeland after exile by the Chinese occupation. No matter where the Jews have lived during the Diaspora, they have spent many, many years now praying for return to their native, sacred land.  For Brad, this dislocation trauma, and the ensuing efforts at annihilating Jews wherever they went for several thousands of years, has left Jews with a heavy burden of intergenerational trauma.

    Brad laments that the focus on politics and violence in the Israel/Palestine conflict furthers the problem, that it is too complex to solve simply through politics, and that we need to be looking underneath the political to the psychological, or what’s driving the never-ending conflict and violence. Understanding intergenerational trauma, and how this leads to objectification or self and other, is a place we start in NARM. “We’re not a behaviorally-oriented model because what we focus on is the internal experience that's shaping the behaviors…And I think until we're able to really grapple with the wounds in unresolved trauma on all sides, we're not going to get anywhere.”

    Healing complex trauma can be a vehicle for personal and collective transformation. Brad speaks to his process of reclaiming, contextualizing and decolonizing his own Jewish identity, using the NARM concept of “disidentification”.  This process of transforming his trauma-based identity has not been easy, but it has been affirming, healing and an opportunity for self-compassion and love. Brad also hopes that this can be an opportunity for increasing connection to the humanity within and between us all, despite all our differences.

    Transforming Trauma Headshots (14)

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    About Brad Kammer:

    Brad Kammer, LMFT, LPCC, SEP, NMT is the NARM Training Institute Training Director and Senior Faculty.  Brad is trained as a Somatic Psychotherapist and has studied under and taught for nearly 20 years with his mentor Dr. Laurence Heller, creator of the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM). Brad is a NARM Master Therapist, Consultant, and Trainer, teaching internationally on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and Complex Trauma (C-PTSD). Brad is also a Somatic Experiencing (SE) Practitioner, Consultant and Trainer, and has been involved in bringing SE to various communities around the world. Brad began his career as a Humanitarian Aid Worker in Asia which introduced him to personal and collective trauma. He became passionate about supporting individuals and communities in the transformation of trauma. Brad has since focused his work on the integration of Somatic Psychology, Interpersonal Neurobiology, and wisdom from Spiritual Traditions and Traditional Cultures. Brad lives in a small town in Northern California with his family where he is a Licensed Psychotherapist, College Professor, Trauma Consultant, and Community Educator.

    Transforming Trauma: Episode 021

    By NARM | January 21, 2020 | | 0 Comments

    Transforming Trauma Episode 021: Internal Family Systems (IFS) and NARM with Richard Schwartz and Laurence Heller

    A podcast brought to you by the NARM® Training Institute

    “We can safely say that that Self in its undamaged state is in everybody.” ~ Dr. Richard Schwartz, Founder of Internal Family Systems

    “There's a part of us that always remains undamaged.” ~ Dr. Laurence Heller, Founder of NeuroAffective Relational Model

    Transforming Trauma host Sarah Buino facilitates a ground-breaking discussion between Richard Schwartz, PhD, founder of the Internal Family Systems model (IFS) and Laurence Heller, PhD, founder of the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM).  Pioneers in the mental health and trauma fields, Drs. Schwartz and Heller discuss each other’s work and reflect on the intersections of the IFS and NARM models.

    While many think of IFS and NARM as being models for trauma, Drs. Schwartz and Heller acknowledge that the similar focus of both IFS and NARM is truly on the Self, that internal place within us all that provides the foundation for our lives despite the complexity of wounding and traumas that one has experienced. Although aspects of ourselves can become damaged and distorted by trauma, Drs. Schwartz and Heller both agree with a non-Western perspective that the Self “in its undamaged state is in everybody” (Schwartz) and “always remains undamaged.” (Heller).  Dr. Heller says, “I talk about the spontaneous movement and all of us is towards healing connection…Our role as therapist is to support an organic coming back to the source, going back to the deeper connection. And so the NARM work explores what gets in the way of that kind of integration.”  Both IFS and NARM are oriented around supporting the organic process of individuals returning to their authentic selves; in this way, they are also models for healing complex trauma.

    Dr. Heller shares with Dr. Schwartz that throughout the years of teaching NARM, many people have remarked on the similarities between the IFS and NARM models. This feedback fueled the intention for bringing Drs. Schwartz onto the Transforming Trauma podcast to give an opportunity for the two to reflect on these important therapeutic models. As they get further into their discussion, they find agreement on many areas and recognize that while they use different language, they are often referring to similar concepts.  Within the frame of each model, they explore the role of the body and somatics, attachment theory, psychopathology, family systems work, the therapeutic relationship, spirituality, and more.

    One interesting area they discuss is about parts work. While IFS is a parts-based model, focused on the three main parts of exiles, managers and firefighters, NARM uses a more general perspective referring to the two different aspects of self, child consciousness and embodied adult consciousness. As Dr. Heller says, “we disconnect certain important elements of who we are from our consciousness. And generally then later those foreclosed aspects of ourselves return in the form of various kinds of symptoms…which are artifacts of the child consciousness. [NARM] teaches people how to support the development of the embodied adult consciousness.”  Speaking to the 3 main parts in IFS, Dr. Schwartz talks about the firefighters and managers, two forms of protection which protect against old wounding (the exiles). “Firefighters are trying to fight the exiles’ pain and they do it in contrast to the managers…They take you out of control. They are very impulsive and they don’t care about the collateral damage that you do to your body or your relationships. They just know they’ve got to get you out somehow. So most symptom patterns in the DSM [Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders], I could give you this alternative explanation for, in terms of which protectors are clustered.”

    One area where Drs. Schwartz and Heller strongly agree is the importance of the embodied state of the therapist as an essential component to supporting the healing of complex trauma. From the IFS lens Dr. Schwartz shares, “Clients’ protective parts can immediately sense the confidence and the safety [of the therapist] and it starts to resonate with the client.” From the NARM lens Dr. Heller shares, “the level of integration that the [therapist] experiences has so much impact then on the therapeutic relationship.” Both express concern over some of the mostly widely used psychotherapeutic models like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Exposure Therapy and EMDR, and the need for more embodied, relational models – like IFS and NARM –  that focus on the role of the therapist-client dynamic in addressing complex trauma.

    This engaging discussion reinforces what many students have said to Dr. Heller over the years that there are many similarities between IFS and NARM, despite Drs. Schwartz and Heller never meeting until this podcast recording. There is a feeling of an important coming together as these two pioneers in their field reflect on their 40+ year careers, find common ground and mutual appreciation. At the end of their discussion, Dr. Schwartz shares: “It’s great for me to find kindred spirits. There aren’t that many of us that think this way.”  

    As their engaging discussion concludes, the sense is that this could be the beginning of a meaningful, powerful relationship between two very important therapeutic models. What might the future hold for IFS and NARM working together for bringing healing to our world?

     

    RESOURCES MENTIONED:

    Ron Kurtz / The Hakomi Institute

    The Gestalt Institute Of The Rockies 

    Alexander Lowen / The Alexander Lowen Foundation

    Conversations with Alanis Morissette – Episode 9

    Transforming Trauma Headshots (13)

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    About Richard Schwartz:

    Richard Schwartz began his career as a family therapist and an academic at the University of Illinois at Chicago. There he discovered that family therapy alone did not achieve full symptom relief and in asking patients why, he learned that they were plagued by what they called “parts.” These patients became his teachers as they described how their parts formed networks of inner relationship that resembled the families he had been working with. He also found that as they focused on and, thereby, separated from their parts, they would shift into a state characterized by qualities like curiosity, calm, confidence and compassion. He called that inner essence the Self and was amazed to find it even in severely diagnosed and traumatized patients. From these explorations the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model was born in the early 1980s. 

    IFS is now evidence-based and has become a widely-used form of psychotherapy, particularly with trauma. It provides a non-pathologizing, optimistic, and empowering perspective and a practical and effective set of techniques for working with individuals, couples, families, and more recently, corporations and classrooms. 

    In 2013 Schwartz left the Chicago area and now lives in Brookline, MA where is on the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

     

    CONNECT WITH IFS:

     

    Transforming Trauma: Episode 021