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Healing Developmental Trauma

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

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About this listen

Explaining that an impaired capacity for connection to self and to others underlies most psychological and many physiological problems, clinicians Laurence Heller, PhD, and Aline LaPierre, PsyD, introduce the NeuroAffective Relational Model™ (NARM), a unified approach to developmental, attachment, and shock trauma that 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.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.

©2012 Laurence Heller, PhD, and Aline LaPierre, PsyD (P)2015 Tantor Mental Health Neuroscience & Neuropsychology Personal Development Personal Success Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Self-Esteem Health Nervous System Childhood Trauma Body Image Adoption Trauma Relationship Ptsd

Critic reviews

" Healing Developmental Trauma presents a comprehensive exploration of our deepest human urge." (Peter A Levine, PhD, author of In an Unspoken Voice)
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Exceptional for disconnection with oneself in terms of bodily sensations,feelings and signals, but mediocre otherwise. It doesn't dwell on other mentioned types of early developmental trauma and does not provide treatment recommendations for them either. If one identifies with issues pertaining to other types of developmental trauma than the connection type, there is no need to proceed with reading further than the categorization that helps place oneself into a type. While the narration is well fit for the book contents, I feel like the title is deceptive due to the hyperfocus on one developmental trauma and its treatment only so I rated it 3 stars overall.

only useful for dissociation/disconnect with body

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I was enthused to recognise myself in one of the types of trauma that they describe in the beginning of the book and I was looking forward to listening on how to heal that type of trauma in the rest of the book. Sadly, they only concentrated on Connection trauma for the next 7 hours of the book to my great disappointment.
I must say also that the book is heavily geared towards trained professionals as the jargon is highly professional and I only would understand because I myself have psychology degree otherwise a lot of the book would go over my head.
It was a useful ‘read’ and an interesting perspective but has a lot of room for improvement to make it well-rounded and more accessible to general public.

Only one type of trauma is covered in detail

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After listening to less than three chapters I decided to return this book and ordered the printed version. It seems that there is a lot of content organised in the form of lists, and it gets really boring and somewhat difficult to process the otherwise interesting information when the narrator reads them in a rather monotonous tone.

Lists, lists, lists

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After constantly hearing throughout this audio how this form of therapy was something new and how what psychotherapists have been doing is lacking, I tried to understand what was so different about this approach. The authors say this approach is top down as well as bottom up as if this is radical and portray 'traditional' Psychotherapy as being preoccupied with the past. However as a Psychotherapist I wouldn't be doing right by my clients nor would they be returning if I only focused on the past. The past helps people understand how they developed coping strategies and patterns of reacting. Then of course we have to look at how to be doing things differently today, with looking at how to soothe the self and bring in more effective skills and using gentle challenge.
Psychotherapists are constantly integrating new ideas and learning skills to help in the here and now so it would be nieve to portray otherwise. Personally I believe skills are very useful but the relationship brings about healing and the relationship isn't developed as quickly as a technique. The relationship with skills of coping is the best combination. This book does offer skills and I will be listening to it again. Yet they are not skills that are so new to what I have done in Psychotherapy, ie.. asking somebody to look at their relationship with anger. I would recommend this book but I would also like practitioners to consider whether they want to buy into the dismissive attitude towards other styles and approaches.

Informative

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I found the developmental information very helpful and informative, in terms of thinking about how attachment styles develop and how people develop their presentation, communication and coping styles.
I especially found it interesting and enlightening to learn about addressing trauma not only from the cognitive but also in the body and the nervous system, where the "bottom up" is addressed and not just "top down".
However, it was heavy going a lot of the time and the narration felt monotonous and not very engaging.
It took a lot of discipline to listen to, and probably a lot of drifting off occurred.
I think this audiobook is probably more useful to academics who have a specific interest in this area, maybe from a clinical practice or medical perspective.
I'm not sure whether it suits those who are just looking for accessible information about trauma in general and how to/they can address it.

Useful and informative, but heavy going at times.

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