Category: Transforming Trauma Podcast

Why is it that when met with a client, family member, or child who cannot access tools to self-regulate, practitioners often feel compelled to exert more effort rather than allow awareness and agency to guide the process? 

Welcome to a special episode of Transforming Trauma featuring NARM creator Dr. Laurence Heller and NARM Senior Trainer Brad Kammer. This episode provides a glimpse into the NARM Inner Circle online program and invites clinicians, therapists, and helping professionals to explore the foundation of health and trust upon which NARM is built. 

Brad and Larry begin this conversation with a reflective exercise, then zoom out to reveal a link between suboptimal emotional and physical health and the survival patterns acquired in response to developmental trauma. Throughout their conversation, Larry and Brad also identify ways in which this model of health and trust informs the four pillars of NARM––clarifying the therapeutic contract, asking exploratory questions, reinforcing agency, reflecting psychobiological shifts––and impacts client-practitioner interactions.

Brad and Larry cover a wide range of concepts, including: 

• The spirit of health and aliveness that is available to us all
• Life force––what it is and how it becomes distorted as a result of adaptations to myriad environmental failures
• The importance of somatic awareness and embodiment
• The growing medical evidence linking chronic conditions to the emotional armor one assumes as a result of early developmental trauma
• Spiritual bypass and the consequences of ignoring authentic emotional work
• Trust and its role in satisfying our basic need for joy and a connected human experience
• Fostering client agency and easing the practitioner's tendency towards efforting

Transforming Trauma is eternally grateful to Larry and Brad for all they’re doing in the world to expand our understanding of complex trauma and for providing training and mentorship to thousands of therapists and helping professionals around the world.

If you enjoy this episode, we invite you to explore the NARM Inner Circle online learning program, where we host NARM Topic Webinars like this one every month. Examples of webinar topics from the Inner Circle include: Differentiating Shock and Developmental Trauma; Working with Shame, Self-Hatred, and Self-Sabotage; Differentiating Depression and Grief; Complex Trauma and Addictions; Relational Trauma, Intimacy and Sexuality; Addressing Burnout in Helping Professionals; and the NARM Approach for Supporting Personal and Spiritual Growth.  

Dr. Laurence Heller is the creator of the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM), Senior Faculty member, International Trainer, and co-author of Healing Developmental Trauma and  The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma.

Brad Kammer, LMFT, LPCC, is a somatic psychotherapist, consultant, professor, NARM Senior Trainer, and NARM Training Director. He has worked in the field of trauma for over 20 years, specializing in Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD). Brad is the co-author of The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma.

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We invite you to explore the NARM Inner Circle online learning program, where we host NARM Topic Webinars like this every month. For further information and to sign up for a free two-week trial, visit: 

www.narmtraining.com/freetrial

These are challenging times to maintain physical and mental well-being, so much so that it’s increasingly difficult to encounter someone who isn’t struggling with some sort of significant medical and/or psychological challenge. On this episode of Transforming Trauma, Emily chats with award-winning journalist, author, speaker, and workshop facilitator Donna Jackson Nakazawa about her career at the intersection of neuroscience, immunology, and emotion. 

Emily and Donna discuss the impact of today’s cultural landscape on the mental health of children and young adults, particularly focusing on teen girls, as well as the correlation between human connection and whole health. They also discuss the power of storytelling to draw meaning from our experiences and help others who’ve experienced complex trauma.

In discussing her most recent work, Donna reports that “over the past few years, a new body of neuroscience has come out which shows the unique ways that the developing female adolescent brain handles and processes stress.” In her latest book, Girls on the Brink: Helping Our Daughters Thrive in an Era of Increased Anxiety, Depression, and Social Media, she posits that teen girls today feel especially vulnerable to threats, forced to navigate the consequences of historical misogyny in real life while combating waves of toxic online behaviors. 

While the ubiquitous nature of social media may compound girls and young women’s mental health issues, widespread sexism, bias, and intolerance aren’t doing boys and young men any favors either. Donna wants young men to recognize how our cultural history of misogyny impacts them and their ability to foster meaningful relationships with girls and women.

Connection––to oneself and each other––is essential for addressing the adolescent female mental health crisis. It’s also a vital step in easing our current chronic disease epidemic. Donna shares about her write-to-heal workshops which center on storytelling and mindfulness exercises to transform old trauma patterns into healing narratives, therapeutic techniques that mirror the core principles of NARM. “To come to that sense of embodiment and presence… because we've done the work, that, to me, is the most powerful thing we can learn as humans.”

Transforming Trauma is grateful to Donna Jackson Nakazawa for generating greater awareness of the forms complex trauma takes in our modern time for young people especially, as well as ways to support the youth to flourish in an increasingly disconnected, dysregulated world.

Donna Jackson Nakazawa is the author of four books that explore the intersection of neuroscience, immunology, and emotion, including Girls on the Brink and The Angel and the Assassin, named one of the best books of 2020 by Wired magazine, and Childhood Disrupted, which was a finalist for the Books for a Better Life Award.

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Can the art of horse whispering, a perceptive communication technique, work to heal complex trauma in humans? Isabelle Shook, the founder of Equine Guidance in Sedona, AZ, believes that horses possess an empathetic energy––telegraphed via non-verbal cues––that can resolve symptoms of stress, shock, and trauma in those seeking support. In this episode of Transforming Trauma, Emily discovers how Belle fosters this unique therapeutic experience and the approaches she and her herd of four-legged collaborators utilize to encourage client transformation.

“When I think of complex trauma or trauma in general, it's really about healing relationships,” confides Belle. “Today, more than ever, we have the opportunity, collectively and individually, to heal the disease of disconnection.” Horses may seem like unlikely allies for such intense repair work, but, as Belle explains, they are “geniuses at the somatic experiencing work…because that's their natural language.” 

Belle, who’s been involved with equine therapy since 1998, created Equine Guidance in 2004 as trauma-informed practice and relies heavily on her NARM training to facilitate client growth. “There's a spiritual aspect to it in that we're working with the horses (a trio of American Bashkir Curlies named Mimi, Penny, and Salsa) as guides to help clients have a top-down, bottom-up approach.” She appreciates NARM’s ability to marry the cognitions and emotions of the former with the instinctive, sensory-level responses of the latter. “It becomes this beautiful blend of the horses kind of being masters at the bottom-up approach, and then me supporting and continuing to help the integration and insights and awarenesses from the top-down.”

To connect with one of Belle’s equine cohorts is to find quiet acceptance and strength. As formidable as these animals are, their innate ability to tune into human neurobiology creates a safe environment where humans can explore their own capacity for reconnection and regulation.

We’re grateful to Belle for sharing her equine-centered approach to healing with us. The case studies referenced in this interview demonstrate NARM’s compatibility with other trauma-informed modalities and its ability to transform the entire therapeutic process. We invite the Transforming Trauma audience to learn more about Belle’s practice and how she incorporates NARM into her sessions by engaging with the entire episode.

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In this episode of Transforming Trauma, NARM Senior Trainer Brad Kammer invites author, cultural worker, cranial therapist, and NARM Practitioner Susan Raffo to share about her powerful work with the NARM community, as well as the motivation behind her latest book, Liberated To The Bone. Susan’s professional approach combines NARM’s trauma-informed framework with the nuances of her ancestral lineage as both colonizer and the colonized.

Susan begins by reflecting on “the relationship between the individual and the collective, [and] in particular, the way that trauma weaves back and forth between the two and across time.” The resulting conversation is a tender, authentic examination of what prevents humans from forming deep connections, both interpersonally and under the broader umbrella of community.

“What gets in the way of the thing?” asks Susan while simultaneously revealing that the thing––connectedness, wellness, safety––already exists. Unfortunately, our current systems still operate under a biased doctrine that is largely blind to the cultural significance of interdependence and what Susan calls the “intersections between healing our physical bodies and healing our social relations.”

She shares that she is descended from southern and western European people and people native to Turtle Island, and she is committed to working towards preserving the memory of her grandfather’s native line. Susan’s consideration of complex familial relationships and passion for radical, ancestral-based healing is evident in her work with Healing Histories Project and REP: Relationship Evolving Possibilities. The former seeks to interrupt the medical, industrial complex, and harmful systems of care, while the latter is a network of Black-led abolitionists dedicated to supporting folks in crisis. REP was created after George Floyd’s murder and is based in Mni Sota Makoce (or Minnesota), where Susan currently resides.

As Susan explains, Healing Histories Project and REP provide authentic and culturally focused foundations for addressing complex and generational traumas and reclaiming agency. Only then, she says, can we promote whole community wellness. “It's linking arms with NARM. If we… practice companioning, a lot of the time something will soften, and something else––a different possibility, a different state of being, an insight––will emerge, which then makes other things possible.”

We are grateful to Susan Raffo for how she’s weaving the NARM approach into her individual and collective healing work. We invite you to listen to the full episode to learn more about her journey and the personal connection that drew her to this work.

About Susan Raffo: 

Susan Raffo is a writer, cultural worker, and bodyworker. She is part of the Healing Histories Project, which focuses on transforming the medical-industrial complex and confronting eugenic legacies. She works with REP: Relationship Evolving Possibilities, a Black-led community-based crisis response model grounded in the belief that we have the ability to love and protect one another without giving our agency to systems built to destroy, consume, or commodify us. Author of Queerly Classed (South End Press, 1997) and Restricted Access (Seal Press, 1999), she is published in a range of anthologies and websites. She is based in Minneapolis, MN.

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Website – Susan Raffo

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In this episode of Transforming Trauma, Emily is joined by Dr. Sara Rapaport, a Naturopathic Doctor, Massage Therapist, Certified Biofeedback Provider and NARM Practitioner, with a passion for bringing agency and humanity to the practitioner’s room through mind-body practices. Sara has a deep appreciation for nature and the earth and believes that some of the best medicine in the world is the kindness and compassion that we can offer to one another.

Dr. Sara Rapaport shares her perspective on how humans don’t get a lot of information or education about their bodies. This means that whenever a client steps into their practitioner’s office, whether it be a doctor or a psychologist, the practitioner is viewed as the expert. Aligned with core principles of NARM, she works from a perspective that places clients as experts on their own bodies. This leads to a greater sense of personal agency for clients and helps to equalize the client-practitioner relational balance.

Dr. Rapaport highlights her tendency toward agency-driven interventions and how this aligns with the medical and philosophical principle of life energy, also referred to as Chi, Prana or vital force (depending on different modalities). One of the six principles of naturopathic medicine is “Identify and Treat the Cause”, which means there is a time and place for symptom suppression, however most naturopathic patients will benefit from identifying the underlying causes of illness and removing obstacles to cure. Dr. Rapaport interprets this to mean that the vital force is what helps people heal, however there are various ways that one’s life energy gets blocked. A naturopathic perspective – aligned with NARM – is that it is the practitioner’s role to assist the client to resolve these internal blocks. 

Since taking the NARM training and incorporating the NARM model into her practice, Dr. Rapaport shares how she’s been able to bring more curiosity and presence to her clients. Her goal is to support her clients in their agency, in their increasing ownership of their own authentic experience. Additionally, she brings her awareness of the “50-50” in NARM, focusing on her own humanity and attempting to meet clients with curiosity, kindness and compassion. 

We are grateful to Dr. Sara Rapaport for how she’s weaving the NARM approach into her naturopathic practice. We invite you to listen to the full episode to learn more about her journey into this integrative approach to healing and the personal connection that drew her to this work.

About Dr. Sara Rapaport:

Dr. Sara Rapaport is a Naturopathic doctor, biofeedback practitioner, and massage therapist based in Portland, OR. She specializes in mind-body medicine and the treatment of eating disorders. She combines counseling, nutrition, and physical medicine to support whole-person healing and transformation for her patients.

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Website – Dr. Sara Rapaport

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