In this episode, Transforming Trauma host Sarah Buino is joined by Caroline Clyborne, MA, LCP, a psychotherapist in Austin, Texas who specializes in clients with chronic illness and parents who are raising children with medical challenges. Caroline is also a NARM Therapist and has seen the positive impact that addressing complex trauma, and specifically the NARM approach, has had on clients and families managing chronic illnesses and medically complex diagnoses.

After having her daughter who was born with medical complexities, Caroline observed the impact that medical trauma has on many children, as well as the impacts on parents and families. She identified an underserved population when it comes to trauma-informed care: the parents of children who are medically complex. Caroline says, “I realized that what the parents were going through was very different from what the kids were going through or what the disabled population was going through.” She learned first-hand that these parents have their own need for trauma-informed support, in addition to the needs of their children. 

Caroline and Sarah discuss how disability, going in and out of the medical system, and other non-medical stressors influence the attachment relationship between parents of a child with disabilities and their children. These relational challenges often activate unresolved attachment and developmental trauma for already stressed and overwhelmed parents. Being a parent of neurotypical children can already be very stressful, but as Caroline says, “That’s different from the level of helplessness that comes up when your child has medical complexities.” 

What’s often lost in the parents’ overwhelm is the sense that even when a parent doesn’t have the ability to change or predict their child’s medical complexities, they still have their ability to be a parent to their child. In the NARM approach, this is referred to as agency. Caroline says that often these parents feel overwhelmed by the feeling of powerlessness to the most significant thing in their child’s life, and then can’t recognize the agency they do have. The key, she believes, is in recognizing the agency one has even in small moments.

Caroline talks about finding “relative safety”, even when there is still an ongoing sense of danger surrounding them. Even when a parent can’t keep their child completely safe, Caroline explains that they can orient themselves to the safety measures they are taking — this space of relative safety allows parents to experience the agency necessary to sustain themselves and their children. “NARM is really great at honoring that basic human need of being able to protect yourself. Being able to protect yourself doesn’t mean that you have a magic wand and you can make the world a safe place. It’s being able to do some things on your behalf that really honor your ability to be an actor in your own life.” 

Sarah draws parallels between the work Caroline does with this population of parents to all child-parent relationships in situations when the issue can’t be solved by the parent, such as during the current COVID-19 pandemic. Caroline reminds parents of the simple power of providing relative safety for their children, and parents themselves to feel into the agency that comes in these moments.

Caroline shares that when she was going through a very overwhelming time in her life as a parent, she would have loved to experience the feeling of agency that she found as she began engaging with NARM. She wanted to be able to support this feeling in her clients. She has since become a NARM Therapist which has enriched her capacities as a trauma-informed therapist. She finds the NARM approach to have strengthened her medical advocacy in adults with chronic illness and in parents raising medically complex and neurodivergent children.

“The one thing I love about NARM is that it's empowering. It helps you realize that there’s so much power in you. It returns your agency. The power of agency is that you let go of the helplessness.”- Wangui Wanjiru

In this episode, host Sarah Buino and her guest Wangui Wanjiru, a Kenyan clinical psychologist and the first NARM Therapist on the African continent, seek to humanize the culturally-specific challenges of complex trauma care in Africa. “Trauma isn't a localized issue. It's a global issue. This is something that needs to be an international movement, it can’t be localized. Personally I feel that societies that are communal, and mainly authoritarian, need NARM.  I don’t think any other treatment model has hit the nail on the head more than in NARM in terms of actually being able to capture that communal setting of living. So for me, it’s been a great journey.”

Wangui describes the cultural orientation that’s very present in Kenyan culture, a strong focus on the group over the individual. Sarah points out that this construct is the opposite of what’s common in American culture– where society is more individually focused. Wangui shares about the complex trauma she’s observed within the Kenyan culture. “We exist, but we’re completely disconnected from our individual self.”  Wangui says people don’t personalize themselves or each other outside of sweeping social categories. And when people do acknowledge their individuality, they are labeled as “selfish”. 

She shares that when a child is born, they have a sense of self, but that “the culture works hard to remove the individual parts of themself, and to deny their own needs,” resulting in what Wangui refers to as “soul death”. Sarah points out that, through a NARM lens, denying one’s individuality to stay connected to one’s culture is a way children learn to adapt themselves in the face of developmental and cultural trauma. 

While painting the picture of how more communal based cultures work against the individual’s connection with themself, Wangui describes the bind that comes with the desire to remain in connection with your culture. Sarah and Wangui talk about what they’ve learned in their NARM Training– that when someone is more connected with themselves, they actually have more capacity to be connected with others, their community, and their culture. Paradoxically, reconnecting with the self, which pushes against the Kenyan social construct of “the group over the individual”, will actually allow for more connection with the Kenyan culture as a whole. 

Wangui brings up an important question: What are we gaining from losing touch with ourselves?

And then Sarah and Wangui go even further in their discussion, reflecting on the impacts of racial oppression and cultural trauma, to ask: Who is benefiting from people losing touch with their individuality?

Sarah prompts Wangui to share what it has been like to bring NARM back to Africa and applying the NARM approach to her work with her clients. Wangui shares that with other modalities, she’s had to adapt the modality to her culture. With NARM, Wangui found that the NARM approach provides patients access to healing regardless of their cultural foundation. “NARM is…not a cultural thing,” Wangui explains. “It's human behavior, basic, general human behavior, and it's relational human behavior.”

After sharing how transformative NARM has been for Wangui personally, she shares empowering stories of transformations in her clients. Specifically, a session where the client was able to recognize and shift from their child consciousness into more adult consciousness, a foundational NARM principle. Wangui shares, “You sit with them and you do [NARM].  It’s like pulling a string on a sweater, and it’s not really a sweater, it’s a blanket, because it’s heavy and big and has gone on for generations.”

Sarah asks if healing trauma is possible as cultures are still currently living through trauma. How can one transform trauma amidst ongoing trauma and oppression?  “The beauty of reclaiming your self is that when issues come, or even though you’re still living within the trauma, these issues don’t come to an empty soul, or they don’t come to a dead soul.  They’re coming to a soul that can resist and choose what gets in and what does not get in. And that’s the empowering part of it. Yes, people might be continuing to go through trauma, but as long as the software within themselves is different, you’re giving them the virus protection.  It’s not about getting people out of trauma, it’s not about let’s do this treatment after the trauma is done, it’s letting empower people as they’re going through trauma so they will carry less of it.”

In this special episode, our host Sarah is joined by Dr. Laurence Heller, creator of the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM) and Brad Kammer, NARM Training Director and Senior Faculty. As we face the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the trio reflects on how to come together in community to support each other in times of crisis. Faced with the need for physical distancing and isolation, it can be difficult to connect to the resources that we rely on to manage the stressors in our lives. Additionally, the fear and anxieties triggered by the unknown – our uncertain future – can create additional challenges for us all. 

Dr. Heller and Brad Kammer share constructive advice for managing the powerful emotions triggered by the COVID-19 crisis. Feelings of fear, helplessness, uncertainty, and grief, valid during any crisis, are often overwhelming. What if, instead of avoiding them, we followed Dr. Heller’s suggestion and allowed ourselves to fully experience these emotions? What if we gave ourselves the same compassion we show others and created space for self-reflection and self-compassion? “Emotions are not designed to be permanent,” says Dr. Heller. “They only tend to stay permanent and fixed if we run away from them.” 

Recognizing that we’re all in this together, the NARM Training Institute was created to support individuals, families and communities in facing the impacts of complex trauma, and provide effective strategies for navigating the fear, isolation and uncertainty during this challenging time for our world.

SOURCES DISCUSSED:

Netflix Watch Party

“Complex trauma shows up in so many different ways that are covert and overt. And, the more we can recognize it, the more we're able to approach it in a way that moves towards healing and not isolation.”~ Gina Essex, MA, LPC-S

Our host Sarah is joined by Gina Essex, a psychotherapist, NARM Therapist and Senior Training Assistant, who began working with the NeuroAffective Relational Model® (NARM®) in 2013. Gina has a passion for making this trauma healing work accessible to everyone, as she says: “It’s so important for everyone to know that the effects of trauma can be healed over time.” Over the past few years Gina has been focused on introducing NARM to first responders in her community.

Gina works with firefighters, paramedics, law enforcement, and military— populations that tend to present unique challenges for traditional therapists. “These people run toward danger. They run toward life threat. They’re trained to go against their normal human instinct: to get away from danger.” Gina describes how she thinks of running toward danger as the flip side of what these first responders are dealing with internally. She suggests that in order to run toward danger, they have to run away from themselves. 

In addition to the tolerance for high-risk experiences required in these professions, there’s an element of fraternity that frames any evidence of vulnerability as a potential liability. The constant desensitization to high-risk experiences can prevent these deeply-caring professionals from accessing and expressing their real feelings. “There are stigmas within these communities, ‘Don’t show your emotion. Don’t cry. You'll look weak, or you'll be weak and people don't want to work with you, or you won't have our back, or you'll be shunned if you’re weak.’” The work Gina does with the first responders address these stigmas head-on. “The work we do really evokes vulnerability. I think vulnerability is something they so desperately want and are also terrified to actually experience in an environment that they're not sure is safe.”

First responders are humans too, with real emotions and high loads of unresolved trauma. When given the right kind of support, they can share their vulnerability in connection with their group. Gina introduces NARM techniques to first responders in group settings where peers lead by example. She relies on the fraternity among the group to establish first responders' sense of safety. The process of NARM helps to promote an environment for self-compassion and healing.

“If the fire is there, the person will be armored as a result. But what will it be like if there’s no fire? Well, then there’s not a reason for the armor. We start to explore what it would be like to not have this armor, and we start to recognize the ways in which armor may feel safe. In NARM sessions, as a person feels more safe and more trusting of the space, and with me, they are then able to not be as armored, to be more open, which fosters growth in them in a wider and deeper way. Instead of showing up in a narrow way, which we see as a survival strategy, the person begins to show up in a much deeper way. This leads to more capacity as they show up in this new way; more capacity with their families, relationships and friends, and even with the general public.”

Gina has witnessed the power of NARM in her private practice to transform people shackled to complex trauma into fully engaged participants of life. When NARM is applied, the client often reconnects with emotional skills that were lost or unavailable to them previously. In turn, they’re better able to express their pain and more adept at communicating their desires. “It feels like a miracle to watch someone kind of melt into themselves again.“

As for her own journey, Gina says that NARM training has opened her up to areas where she had, in the past, focused too much attention on the doing. She’s learning to trust the process more, including her clients’ capacity to be their own healers.  “It’s a very sacred space and not to be overlooked.”

SOURCES DISCUSSED

Dr Laurence Heller

Healing Developmental Trauma: How Early Trauma Affects Self-Regulation, Self-Image, and the Capacity for Relationship