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

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 ModelR (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.

Laurence Heller, PhD, is the originator of the NeuroAffective Relational Modelc, a unified approach to developmental, attachment, and shock trauma. He co-founded the Gestalt Institute of Denver and is a senior faculty member for the Somatic Experiencing Training Institute.

Aline LaPierre, PsyD, is an adjunct faculty member in the somatic doctoral program at Santa Barbara Graduate Institute. Trained as a psychoanalyst and as a hands-on somatic psychotherapist, she has been in private practice in Los Angeles for more than 25 years.