“NARM really helped me through all of these protective strategies I had that were getting in the way of me showing up the way I authentically wanted to show up. So, I found something that has been personally transformative. And, whenever I do that, I want to tell everyone about it! I’ve seen my friends and peers go through NARM and really transform how they’re showing up in the world. It’s just really life-changing.” ~Bianka Hardin, PsyD

Our host Sarah is joined by Psychologist, Professor and NARM Therapist Dr. Bianka Hardin, to discuss the NeuroAffective Relational Model® (NARM®) and its role in professional development for helping professionals, including its central focus on the therapist’s own personal development, as a tool for impacting personal healing and social change. 

Bianka was already an accomplished trauma therapist and professor working in Chicago, had completed many previous therapy trainings, and had been a leader in the trauma-informed movement for years when she was introduced to NARM. Having already been trained as a somatic-oriented psychotherapist, she was drawn to the deeply relational approach of this new model for resolving attachment and developmental trauma. She felt aligned with the theoretical model, and soon became aware of the central role her own vulnerability played in helping her become an even more effective therapist.  She recalls the moment in her NARM training when she went all in — using her own life as case study. 

Although originally drawn to NARM’s “bottom-up” and “top-down” methodology, and its blending of somatic mindfulness with mindful awareness, it was the experiential practice that helped her feel the power of this work and that differentiated NARM from other approaches she had studied. “In NARM, we believe in the importance of understanding our own healing journey, our own struggles, and holding it with humility,” she says. “I think what’s really important is that we’re doing our own work.”

Bianka credits NARM for promoting an environment where a person’s protective strategies are honored, not forcibly eradicated. “It’s really helped me as a person in that I have really worked on my own personal vulnerability and my ability to authentically show up, which has been really amazing.” She was able to do this, she says, not from trying to reach some goal or outcome, but by learning to be present with herself in a new way, unencumbered by the pressure that goes along with trying to fix or eradicate symptoms. 

Sarah and Bianka share the relief at finding a healing modality that provides less pressure for both the therapist and client, and a vehicle for embodying a sense of adult agency, a feeling of truly “growing up”.

NARM prepares therapists to bring this impactful work to their clients by giving them a learning experience  to learn from the inside-out. Bianka wouldn’t have it any other way: “You can’t have joy if you’re not able to tolerate the experience of your own pain.” When therapists do this work, they can support their clients to do this work, and they better understand the obstacles along the way. Bianka and Sarah reflect on the gift they’re able to give to their clients in supporting their capacity to discover what they most want for themselves in their lives and to be able to more deeply connect to themselves and others.

Bianka credits NARM with her growth as a therapist, teacher, mother, wife, friend and an individual. She has recently witnessed similar changes in NARM-trained friends and peers, as well as the clients she has introduced NARM to, likening their collective awakening to ripples on water, spreading the model outward. Bianka is thrilled to be an ambassador for this cutting-edge model, in a field of complex trauma still in its infancy, and she’s honored and optimistic about sharing it with the world.

SOURCES DISCUSSED

Trauma & Recovery: The Aftermath Of Violence – Judith Herman

The Body Keeps The Score: Brain Mind & Body In The Healing Of Trauma – Bessel Van Der Kolk