Includes:

• NARM Organizing Principles
• NARM Theoretical Orientation
• Differentiating Interventions for working with Shock vs. Developmental Trauma
• Working Top-Down and Bottom-Up
• Tracking Connection & Disconnection
• Developmental Process: Attachment & Separation-Individuation
• Reframing Attachment and Attachment Loss
• The Distortion of the Life Force Model
• Distress and Healing Cycles
• 5 Adaptive Survival Styles
• Connection Survival Style
• Attunement Survival Style
• NARM 4 Pillars: Clinical Model
• NARM Pillar 1: Establishing a Therapeutic “Contract”
• NARM Pillar 2: Asking Exploratory Questions

Includes:

• The NARM Relational Model
• Working Hypothesis
• Identifying Core Dilemma: Core Themes vs Survival Strategies (Behaviors, symptoms, etc.)
• Trust Survival Style
• Autonomy Survival Style
• Love-Sexuality Survival Style
• NARM Pillar 3: Supporting Agency (Agency as the Foundation for the Development of the Adult Self)
• NARM Pillar 4: Reflecting Positive Shifts
• NARM Languaging

​Includes:

• NARM Model for Working with Affect
• Primary vs Default Emotions
• Emotional Completion
• The Psychobiological Process of Shame (“Shame as a Verb not a Noun”; “Shame as a Process not a State”)
• Shame, Guilt & Self-Hatred
• Working with Anger & Aggression
• Countertransference in NARM
• Unmanaged Empathy and Therapist Efforting
• Narcissism and Objectification of Self
• Narcissistic vs Sadistic Abuse
• NARM Personality Spectrum

Includes:

• Deepening Study into the Connection Survival Style Issues, Symptoms and Related Disorders
• The Interplay of the Survival Styles: Primary and Secondary Patterns
• Revisiting the Dynamics of Attachment, Separation-Individuation, Attachment Loss and the Core Dilemma
• Relationships, Couples, Intimacy and Sexuality
• Survival Styles & the Polyvagal Theory
• NARM & the Body
• Working with Identity
• Transgenerational Trauma
• Disidentification Process
• “Cutting the Cord”: Freedom from Identity
• Post-Traumatic Growth
• Resiliency: Supporting the Capacity to Tolerate Increasing Complexity
• Integrating NARM Effectively Into Our Clinical Practice

In the NARM Therapist Training you will learn:

• The different skills needed to work with developmental versus shock trauma; when and why shock trauma interventions may be contraindicated in working with developmental trauma.
• How to address the complex interplay between nervous system dysregulation and identity distortions, such as toxic shame and guilt, low self-esteem, chronic self-judgment, and other psychobiological symptoms.
• How to work moment-by-moment with early adaptive survival styles that, while once life-saving, distort clients’ current life experience.
• When to work ‘bottom-up’, when to work ‘top-down’, and how to work with both simultaneously to meet the special challenges of developmental trauma.
• How to support clients with a mindful and progressive process of disidentification from identity distortions.
• A new, coherent theory for working with affect and emotions, which aims to support their psychobiological completion.

The NARM Therapist Training consists of 120 contact hours and is offered in four live modules. The live modules will be held for a total of 18 days over the period of the training. The training modules are typically spaced 3-4 months apart to allow time for continued study, practice, peer meetings, and training webinars in support of greater integration of the NARM clinical approach.

Supplementary learning opportunities include: study and practice groups, individual and group consultation, individual NARM sessions, access to library of demonstration videos, and other learning intensives.

All modules include a combination of 2 complementary instruction approaches:

1. Didactic and theoretical learning: including lecture, question and answer periods, class-wide discussion, case consultation, and deconstruction of live NARM demonstration sessions and demonstration videos.
2. Experiential learning: including self-inquiry exercises, small group activities, role-plays, guided skill practice and active coaching on NARM clinical skills and full clinical sessions.

We appreciate that so many mental health professionals work from a spirit of social justice and advocacy.  At the NARM Training Institute, we are also grounded in a strong commitment to addressing healing complex trauma as a vehicle for both personal and social transformation.  The vision and passion for our trauma-informed Institute is to introduce a more humane approach for working with complex trauma, which includes addressing attachment, developmental, relational, cultural and intergenerational trauma.  This also includes a strong commitment to promoting accessibility to the NARM model, creating a learning environment that supports diversity and fosters inclusion, and holding the intention to support connection and learning from each other.

We also want to be transparent with the intention for this Level 2 training so all prospective NARM training participants know what this training will provide and what it will not provide.  The Level 2 NARM Therapist Training is an advanced psychotherapeutic training and will provide a comprehensive clinical training on the NeuroAffective Relational Model.  This Level 2 training is not focused on social or political activism and will not provide specific training in addressing the systemic failures that perpetuate complex trauma.  While we do acknowledge and discuss the origins of complex trauma emerging out of social systems and the legacy of unresolved cultural and intergenerational trauma, if your focus is in these areas, or you are wanting a trauma-informed training that will provide deeper training in these areas, we would encourage you to explore other trainings.

We recognize that every training participant has different needs around their learning process and goals.  We understand that if the NARM Therapist Training does not deliver on what you are expecting that this could impact your learning process.  So we want you to have a clear understanding of the boundaries of this Level 2 NARM Therapist Training.  This promotes clarity for us all.

While the Level 2 NARM Therapist Training itself will not specifically focus on addressing these important areas of changing systems that maintain systemic oppression and inequalities, we do very much hope that our NARM Graduates will work in the many systems they are associated with and can use NARM to impact these systems for the better.  We support these efforts outside the Level 2 NARM Therapist Training and are excited to be providing people with what we believe is a great psychoeducational model to promote real change.

Before registering for this training, please be aware that your full attendance is a requirement during this training, unless we are informed of an absence ahead of time or in the event of an unforeseen emergency. Absence and/or lack of participation in this training will not only impact your own learning process, it will also impact the experience of other participants and the group learning process. So your attendance and participation is critical to the success of this training for everyone involved.

Prior to the start of the training, you will be given the opportunity to notify us of any planned absences you may need to take throughout Modules 1 – 4. This will include full days away, arriving late, leaving early, or missing any part of any session. If you have any questions about this attendance policy prior to submitting your application for this training, please feel free to email us at [email protected].