NARM holds that while what happened in the past is significant. It is not what happened in the past that creates the symptoms that people experience as adults, it is the persistence of survival styles appropriate to the past that distorts present experience and creates symptoms. These survival patterns, which include dissociation and isolation as the primary coping mechanisms, have outlived their usefulness. This creates ongoing disconnection from our authentic self and from others.

Developed by Dr. Laurence Heller over the course of his 45-year clinical career, The NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM) is a method of psychotherapy specifically aimed at treating attachment, relational, and developmental trauma, otherwise referred to as complex trauma, complex PTSD, or C-PTSD. Integrating top-down psychotherapy with bottom-up somatic approaches within a relational context, the NARM clinical model has precise and effective techniques for working with the core themes of identity distortion and physiological dysregulation. In the NARM approach, practitioners work simultaneously with the psychology and the physiology of individuals who have experienced developmental trauma and focus on the interplay between issues of identity and the capacity for connection and regulation.

NARM uses five primary organizing principles:
· Supporting connection and organization
· Exploring identity
· Supporting emotional completion
· Working in present time
· Supporting re-regulation of all systems of the body

Organizing Developmental Themes

There are five developmental life themes and associated core capacities that are essential to a healthy sense of self, capacity for intimacy, and capacity for emotional and biological regulation.

Connection – We feel that we belong in the world. We are in touch with our body and our emotions and capable of consistent connection with others.
Attunement – We have the ability to know what we need and to recognize, reach out for, and take in the abundance that life offers.
Trust – We have an inherent trust in ourselves and others. We feel safe enough to allow a healthy interdependence with others.
Autonomy – We are able to say “no” and set limits with others. We speak our mind without guilt or fear.
Love-Sexuality – Our heart is open, and we are able to integrate a loving relationship with a vital sexuality.

To the degree that these five basic needs are met, we experience ourselves as authentic and develop the capacity for human connection. We feel safe and trusting of our environment, fluid and connected to ourselves and others. We experience a sense of regulation and expansion. To the degree that these basic needs are not met, we become symptomatic and develop survival styles to try to manage the disconnection, distortion of identity, and physiological dysregulation which drive the symptoms.

Cost

Cost is $1,500 per person, which includes two meals Friday, three meals Saturday, two meals Sunday, lodging at Rio Retreat, and ground transportation from and back to the airport.