Written for those working to heal developmental trauma and seeking new tools for self-awareness and growth, this book focuses on conflicts surrounding the capacity for connection. Explaining that an impaired capacity for connection to self and to others and the ensuing diminished aliveness are the hidden dimensions that underlie most psychological and many physiological problems, clinicians Laurence Heller and Aline LaPierre introduce the NeuroAffective Relational Model(R) (NARM), a unified approach to developmental, attachment, and shock trauma that, while not ignoring a person's past, emphasizes working in the present moment. NARM is a somatically based psychotherapy that helps bring into awareness the parts of self that are disorganized and dysfunctional without making the regressed, dysfunctional elements the primary theme of the therapy. It emphasizes a person's strengths, capacities, resources, and resiliency and is a powerful tool for working with both nervous system regulation and distortions of identity such as low self-esteem, shame, and chronic self-judgment.
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Healing Developmental Trauma presents a comprehensive exploration of our deepest human urge. Seasoned clinicians Larry Heller and Aline LaPierre weave a rich and coherent synthesis of childhood development in the pioneering tradition of Wilhelm Reich, Erik Erikson, and Alexander Lowen. This well-organized, valuable book offers easy-to-understand tools for all of us who are seeking a better understanding of our fundamental conflicts between oneness and separateness, dependence and autonomy.
Healing Developmental Trauma provides clear guidance to help us hold, with knowledge and self-compassion, those seemingly irreconcilable opposites and is a vital and accessible map supporting emotional maturity and psycho-spiritual growth."
--Peter A Levine, PhD, author of
In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness and
Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma "Laurence Heller, PhD and Aline LaPierre, PsyD's
Healing Developmental Trauma provides a method that blends bottom-up and top-down approaches to regulating the nervous system, and provides the NeuroAffective Relational Model which focuses on maximizing client strengths and resiliency to integrate physical and emotional connections in the body."
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Midwest Book Review
