“NARM is not a protocol, it's a relational model, and the reason why that's important to know is because humans are designed to heal in relationship.” ~ Jenny Winkel

In this episode of Transforming Trauma, our host Sarah Buino is joined by Jenny Winkel, MA, LMT, SEP, and NARM Practitioner based in Salt Lake City, Utah. Within her private practice, Jenny works with many forms of Complex Trauma (C-PTSD), with a particular interest in religious trauma. 

Throughout the episode, they discuss how the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM) can lead to a greater understanding of the complexities of religious trauma, a form of trauma that is often misunderstood, minimized, or dismissed. Jenny shares that NARM is so well-suited for healing religious trauma because of how well the model holds complexity.  Jenny breaks down and defines religious trauma syndrome and religious abuse, specifically in the context of fundamentalist communities. 

Jenny shares her experience of being trained early in her career in models that address post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). As she integrated these models that address shock and event traumas and into her hands-on approach as a massage therapist, she began to see the limitations of approaching religious and other forms of complex trauma through the lens of PTSD. She then sought to find a therapeutic modality that would address the complexities she was seeing with the clients coming to work with her, particularly those that had suffered religious trauma. During a consultation with a NARM Therapist, she began to recognize the limitations of how she had been trained and the way in which she was working, and joined the NARM Practitioner Training. 

“[NARM] just filled in all the gaps with my complex trauma clients, and not just with my clients, Sarah, but honestly, [with] myself,” Jenny shares. As she developed a deeper understanding of complex and religious trauma, she experienced a significant life trauma that led to her own spiritual crisis. This challenged her belief system in a life-altering way and she came to recognize her own religious trauma growing up within a fundamentalist family system and community. Her affinity for the NARM approach came out of her journey to heal her own complex and religious trauma.

Sarah and Jenny discuss what fundamentalist religion looks like, and the impacts it often has on individuals.  Through her own experiences, as well as her clients, Jenny shares how she has come to understand that fundamentalist communities and families can be sources of comfort, refuge, and love, while also being sources of terror and trauma.  Jenny shares her perspective on how religion can be a healthy, rewarding, and deeply meaningful experience. However, followers who are disconnected from their autonomy through guilt, shame, and even threat, often experience complex trauma. When a person is born into a fundamentalist community and raised by caregivers and community members who don’t support a child’s developing autonomy and sense of agency and choice, this can result in a child experiencing significant developmental trauma.  

Jenny champions NARM for its ability to restore autonomy, agency, and reestablish the foundational relationship to Self. “When you work with a wise and seasoned [NARM] therapist or practitioner, you can feel that… they're not taking sides,” she says. “They're helping you navigate that interiority.” The episode concludes with a story from Jenny's practice, a beautiful example of the mind-body connection and the healing power of NARM in addressing complex attachment wounds.

In this episode of Transforming Trauma, our host Sarah Buino is joined by Fritzi Horstman, Founder and Executive Director of the Compassion Prison Project. Through her work, Fritzi aims to bring trauma-informed care to a population in high need of trauma healing and not likely to receive it: men and women in prison. 

Sarah and Fritzi discuss Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), how childhood trauma impacts people who are incarcerated, and how trauma awareness can support prison reform. Throughout their conversation, they talk about how both the Compassion Prison Project and the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM) work to dismantle shame, humanize individuals, and heal complex trauma.

“In our society, we don’t talk about trauma,” Fritzi shares. It wasn’t until she read Dr. Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score that she awoke to her own strategies she had developed in childhood to cope with unresolved trauma. Sarah describes “survival strategies” in NARM as the ways children learn to adapt to relational, developmental and environmental trauma. 

For many people that are incarcerated, it is their survival strategies that can create the behaviors that lead them to becoming incarcerated. Fritzi herself acknowledges the behaviors she used as an adolescent and young adult that could have easily led her into the criminal justice system. It was as she was becoming aware of her own trauma, and the way it affected her life, that she started working with people who are incarcerated. Since working with individuals in prison, she sees them all as traumatized human beings. This was the spark that led Fritzi to found the Compassion Prison Project. 

The Compassion Prison Project’s important mission is to “bring compassion, childhood trauma awareness, and creative inspiration to the men and women living behind bars”. Earlier this year, they released a documentary, “Step Inside The Circle”, which depicts what Fritzi calls the Compassion Trauma Circle. 235 incarcerated men at a maximum security prison in Lancaster, CA form a circle and for each Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) read aloud by Fritzi that they’ve experienced, they take one step forward into the circle. Step Inside The Circle highlights that childhood trauma is a shared experience of most people who are incarcerated. Fritzi says, “our pain is shared, and almost all of us have been victims of inhumanity and violence.”  

Fritzi and Sarah agree that in order for healing to happen, toxic shame must be addressed. “We need to stop the stigma of addiction. And the stigma of homelessness. And the stigma of poverty,” says Fritzi. “There is no shame in being alive.” In alignment with NARM, the Compassion Prison Project puts forth the idea that people matter, regardless of their situation. That’s a lesson Fritzi hopes we can all learn from. 

Sarah asks Fritzi, “what do you imagine a trauma-informed prison system to look like?” Fritzi shares that a trauma-informed prison would be a center for rehabilitation and healing that supports people to change the underlying behaviors that were created originally by trauma. She envisions a system that helps vulnerable individuals build a bridge back to society, and most importantly, would return them back to their community as a human, and “not the felon, not the criminal that you know, but the human that [they] are.” 

Sarah and Fritzi also discuss the implications of trauma-informed care beyond the prison setting to other institutions and settings, impacting systemic trauma as it is embedded into our society. The pair reflect on their work in the field of trauma and draw a hopeful line from the “global reboot” brought on by the COVID pandemic to a more equitable, compassionate, and trauma-informed future.

RESOURCES MENTIONED

The Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma – by Bessel van der Kolk, MD

Hustle 2.0

The CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study

Gabor Maté, PhD

Transforming Trauma host Sarah Buino and guest Giancarlo A. Simpson, MS, reconnect in the wake of George Floyd’s death and the nationwide protests against racial violence and systemic oppression, providing real-time context to their previously-recorded conversation about NARM’s ability to address complex trauma and support post-traumatic growth in communities of color.

Giancarlo shares with listeners that now is the time to look inward, to be vulnerable, to listen to others, to address our internal biases, and to actively work to be anti-racist. In their discussion both Giancarlo and Sarah provide resources on Anti-Racist learning, which are avaialble in this online guide.

Recounting stories from his work as a therapist, mentor, and teacher of teens and young adults, Giancarlo centers the discussion on the corrosive effects of complex trauma, specifically within the Black community. “The system in itself needs to shift in order for people to feel comfortable about who they are as individuals, because right now what the system itself is telling people, communicating to people, is that you are not good enough, and that in itself is reinforcing a lot of thinking, a lot of behavior that occurs in these environments and communities, and makes it very hard for us to get out of that, because we don’t have enough individuals telling us otherwise, or showing us otherwise.”  Giancarlo shares the ways he has begun using the NeuroAffective Relational Model, particularly in classrooms, to shift this implicit learning and the long-term effects of complex trauma, which includes the under-recognized impact of cultural, intergenerational, and racial trauma. 

Communities of color in America, particularly the African American communities that Giancarlo works in, are faced with a legacy of severe and ongoing complex trauma. From his work with children within these communities, Giancarlo shares, “A lot of these personal experiences in these kids’ lives have really conditioned them to feel uncomfortable opening up to people, and being open and honest with themselves at times.” Sarah and Giancarlo explore the trickle down effect of complex trauma and how it can show up in the classroom. They discuss the innovative ways Giancarlo is incorporating NARM in the classroom, creating safe spaces for BIPOC to experience vulnerability and regain their agency. 

Sarah and Giancarlo discuss how early and prolonged exposure to complex trauma leads individuals to develop survival strategies. While these survival strategies allow people to manage in the face of trauma, it comes at a significant cost. Giancarlo explains, “When we think about survival patterns, it's basically anything that we do to maintain a sense of balance and homeostasis for ourselves.” Oftentimes, a person’s capacity for vulnerability can become eclipsed by their survival strategies. But vulnerability is a pathway to authenticity, and ultimately long-term health and success.  Giancarlo talks about the healing power in vulnerability, when kids can say, “I’m OK with opening up and acknowledging the things that have hurt me and that now are hurting others”. He supports youth in working through shame and guilt, recognizing that most of these kids have not received consistent connection from their environments, and have experienced adults in their lives who are not aware or even interested in what’s going on emotionally for the child.  Instead, these adults, the child’s teachers, parents, and other adults, focus on the child’s behaviors. In NARM, a person’s behaviors are viewed as their survival strategies developed in response to early trauma.  

As Giancarlo explores the role vulnerability can play in healing complex trauma, specifically with BIPOC, he demonstrates for his students what it looks like to be vulnerable, which gives space for their own vulnerability.  As Giancarlo shares, he focuses on helping children in “being authentic, finding out what that really even looks like for you right now, and finding out the things that are stopping you from being the best version of yourself.”

Sarah asks what post-traumatic growth looks like in places where the trauma never stops. Giancarlo reminds us that there are systems in place that enable these traumas to continue. He shares that his students of color are “navigating not only a tough environment, but also navigating through a culture and a system that has told you, over and over again, that you are either less than, or have to work twice as hard to get where others are.” Giancarlo identifies this as pressure a person puts on themselves just to feel like they are enough. He also speaks to the power of coming together to speak out against a system that consistently places one group of people above another. This power imbalance leads to identities around superiority and inferiority.  This can lead to those in the superiority position, which in the American culture is white Americans, to not recognize their implicit bias, and feel threatened when it is challenged.

This conversation leads to what is referred to as “white fragility”, which is the difficulty that many white people have in engaging in honest conversations about systemic racism. “What’s normal is comfortable for us… in order for us to change as a culture or as a society, or even as ourselves, we have to really be comfortable being uncomfortable.” 

Giancarlo reframes the current nationwide protests against racial violence and systemic oppression as protests against needs not being met for Black Americans. Communities are coming together to communicate about environmental changes needed in response to centuries of oppression and violence. Instead of using old stereotypes like “angry black man” and “angry black woman”, which shut down expression of authentic experience and make people feel bad for feeling, it is time for our culture to listen to and respect people’s experiences. Giancarlo suggests that our culture needs to do better in understanding the root causes for why the anger is occurring, instead of just focusing on behaviors – the outbursts, outcries, protests, violence, etc.  All Americans need to listen to Black Americans, and not continue “minimizing the reasons why we feel the way we do, why we’re hurting, why we’re upset, what we’re lacking, the things we’re not receiving at the most basic human level.”  While this discussion can make some uncomfortable, it is essential for transforming trauma and leading to a more just, humane and healthy society for us all.

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

Right Of Passage Program

Lynn University

Family First Adolescent Services

Jane Elliot, PhD

White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard To Talk To White People About Racism – by Robin J.DiAngelo

Decolonizing Therapy for Black Folk (event)

Geonograms

Dr. Laurence Heller, PhD

We’re grateful to have Claude Cayemitte back with us to reflect on the current events emerging from the demonstrations against ongoing systemic, cultural, racial, and complex trauma. Transforming Trauma host Sarah Buino and Claude dive into the macro and micro perspectives of the traumatic response to long-term suffering that the black community, and other communities of color, have been dealing with for centuries. Claude shares his perspective, “Having these specific conversations about racism is a gateway into people’s interpersonal relationship to trauma… I think that’s the difference with this reaction. People are connecting emotionally to themselves while connecting also to the experiences of people of color.”

Claude shares his thoughts on the importance of opening up a real dialogue around racial injustice and systemic oppression. “Even though it feels uncomfortable, that’s the opportunity for you to move to a different place, to respond differently, to grow. It’s like there’s so much opportunity in growth in talking about this topic, personally and professionally.” 

Claude addresses the objectification that is often overlooked in racial trauma. “When I do individual therapy, I’m not engaged in the political process, because when I enter the room, especially for me as a black man, that shows up… whether it’s explicitly said through the client or not. So I’m always sort of holding these dynamics in play and I can look for how they show up clinically… This is a reality because it’s part of your reality and my reality… Therapy is about talking about how you relate to reality.”

As a NARM therapist committed to addressing the relationship between these systemic social issues and complex trauma, Claude brings an important voice to the trauma-informed movement. In this episode, Claude invites us all into this specific conversation around racism and trauma. This important conversation can help us, as therapists and people who work with and care about individuals coming from communities that face these realities, identify the complexities of addressing trauma on multiple levels. And, the need to systemically address this now. “Anything that we can do to take one brick off this pyramid, this ugly monument of racism. If we can take one brick off at a time, whatever we can do to do that, I want to just acknowledge and at the same time, you know, it's about damn time. I would say that with love, of course.”

In this episode of Transforming Trauma, Dr. Laurence Heller, the Creator of the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM), is joined by our host, Sarah to answer a very common question about the role spirituality plays in the healing of trauma. How can spirituality serve reconnection to oneself in the aftermath of complex and developmental trauma? What are the ways that religious and spiritual practice might support trauma healing?  What role does spirituality play in post-traumatic growth, and specifically in the NeuroAffective Relational Model for resolving Complex Trauma?

Sarah begins this exploration by asking Dr. Heller how he defines spirituality. He says that it is very hard to define, and that spirituality is more than just a cognitive understanding. He says it is “an embodied understanding that there’s something more to us than what we take to be our personal identity.” Dr. Heller says that he could not have just learned this through books or cognitive learning, and shares a glimpse into his experiences with many different spiritual practices over the years that helped him refine his own embodied understanding of spirituality. Dr. Heller recounts the “peak experiences” he experienced first-hand that came about through spiritual practice, as well as psychological work and even physical exercise. These peak experiences led Dr. Heller to moments of transcending his identity and experiencing a deep level of interconnectedness. In those moments, he realized that we’re never truly disconnected from our larger sense of connection.

Dr. Heller states that trauma ultimately does not create disconnection; it leads to the loss of awareness of connection, which feels to individuals like profound disconnection and disorientation. Dr. Heller shares his personal belief that “we can never truly be disconnected.”

While Dr. Heller did not explicitly build a spiritual approach to healing trauma, it is implicit in the model he created. Training in the NeuroAffective Relational Model does not involve any specific spiritual teaching or practice. What is supported is a process by which every individual learns how to better listen to themselves, to their own experiences, and from that place they get more connected to the deepest elements of self. This happens as a by-product of healing complex trauma. As people experience more secure connection to themselves, free from the psychobiological patterns of trauma, they develop a deeper sense of “Heartfulness”. 

Spirituality reconnects a person to their heart. Heartfulness is an important quality of the NARM approach, specifically the heartfulness of the therapist.  Dr. Heller reminds listeners that clients pick up on their therapist's internal state — meaning clients also pick up on the spiritual foundation of their therapist. When a client senses a strong spiritual foundation of their therapist, the client often feels a stronger sense of safety. This can lead to the client feeling more capacity to be curious about their own experiences.

Sarah and Dr. Heller also discuss a spectrum of spiritual trauma, from those who’ve been abused by others exploiting spirituality for their own gain, to those who, as Sarah puts it, are “addicted to spirituality”. They talk about what is referred to as “spiritual bypass”, which is when spiritual beliefs or practices are used to disconnect, generally in the face of uncertainty, for example in minimizing emotions and pushing for forgiveness. This can happen for individuals without an embodied spiritual foundation. “Real spirituality just gives us additional resources to tolerate uncertainty and be in the moment and helps us to distinguish between our objective response vs what is subjective having to do with old survival mechanisms.”

Before this episode concludes, Sarah and Dr. Heller reflect together on the role spirituality is playing now in the midst of the global Coronavirus pandemic. Instead of using spirituality as a way to “make meaning of the situation”, Dr. Heller sees spirituality as providing the capacity to hold the possibility of not knowing what’s going on in the world, and finding acceptance and calm in the face of collective trauma. Embodied spirituality provides more resources for people to be in the moment, even in the face of ongoing threat.  When describing spirituality, Dr. Heller uses the word abiding, meaning being able to be with the not knowing. 

When we experience trauma, it exposes the cracks in our perceived identity. For people who are curious about exploring these cracks in their identity, oftentimes beautiful growth and even a stronger spiritual foundation can develop when faced with trauma. The concept of cracks in our identity reminds Sarah of Kintsugi, a Japanese artform where breaks or cracks in pottery are seen as a part of the object’s history and celebrated by filling them in with gold, and reminds Dr. Heller of Leonard Cohen’s line, “There is a crack in everything – that's how the light gets in”.