Healing Developmental Trauma

1. Early trauma shapes our adaptive survival styles and capacity for connection

When there is early trauma, the ensuing biological dysregulation forms the shaky foundation upon which the psychological self is built.

Developmental impact. Early trauma, including prenatal experiences, birth complications, and neglect or abuse in infancy, can profoundly affect a person's nervous system, identity formation, and ability to connect with others. This trauma creates systemic dysregulation that impacts all aspects of life, including:

• Physiological responses (e.g., chronic anxiety, sleep disorders)
• Emotional regulation
• Cognitive functioning
• Relational capacities

Adaptive survival styles. To cope with early trauma, individuals develop adaptive survival styles that, while initially protective, can become limiting in adulthood:

• Connection: Disconnection from self and others
• Attunement: Difficulty recognizing personal needs
• Trust: Seeking power and control
• Autonomy: Struggle between independence and pleasing others
• Love-Sexuality: Challenges integrating love and sexuality

These styles shape how individuals relate to themselves, others, and the world around them, often creating ongoing patterns of disconnection and dysregulation.

2. The Connection Survival Style: Disconnection as a coping mechanism

Individuals with the Connection Survival Style have disconnected from their bodies, from themselves, and from relationship.

Characteristics. People with this survival style often:

• Experience chronic anxiety and a sense of impending doom
• Struggle with interpersonal relationships
• Disconnect from their emotions and bodily sensations
• May appear intellectually oriented or spiritually focused

Coping mechanisms. To manage overwhelming early experiences, these individuals:

• Dissociate from their bodies and emotions
• Isolate themselves from others
• Develop a "designated issue" to explain their distress
• May struggle with various physical symptoms (e.g., chronic fatigue, migraines)

Healing for those with the Connection Survival Style involves slowly rebuilding their capacity for connection with themselves, their bodies, and others, while addressing the underlying trauma and nervous system dysregulation.

3. Attunement Survival Style: Difficulty recognizing and expressing personal needs

Individuals with the Attunement Survival Style have difficulty attuning to their own needs; knowing, allowing, and expressing their needs is associated with humiliation, loss, and fear of rejection.

Core struggle. People with this survival style often:

• Become caretakers, focusing on others' needs while neglecting their own
• Struggle to recognize and express their personal needs
• Experience a chronic sense of emptiness or unfulfillment

Two subtypes:

1. Inhibited: Foreclose awareness of personal needs, pride themselves on needing little
2. Unsatisfied: Chronically feel unfulfilled, may be demanding but never satisfied

Healing involves learning to attune to personal needs, express them appropriately, and tolerate the vulnerability of having needs met. This process often requires challenging deep-seated beliefs about deserving and entitlement.

4. Trust Survival Style: Power and control as defense mechanisms

Individuals with the Trust Survival Style seek power and control.

Behavioral patterns. People with this survival style often:

• Compensate for feelings of powerlessness by attempting to control others
• May be manipulative, evasive, or deceitful to maintain a sense of dominance
• Use anger, substances, or even violence to reinforce control
• Can be visionaries and dynamic leaders or manipulative and ruthless

Two subtypes:

1. Seductive: Use charm and manipulation to get what they want
2. Overpowering: Rely on physical strength, wealth, or intimidation

Healing involves addressing the underlying fear of vulnerability and betrayal, learning to ask for help, and developing the capacity for healthy interdependence. This process often requires confronting deep-seated beliefs about power, control, and trust.

5. Autonomy Survival Style: The struggle between independence and pleasing others

Given their childhood experience, it is easy to understand how love and intimacy are associated with fears of invasion, of being controlled, smothered, crushed, or overwhelmed.

Internal conflict. Individuals with this survival style often:

• Feel paralyzed by internal contradictions between pleasing others and asserting independence
• Experience intense ambivalence in relationships
• Struggle with setting boundaries and saying no directly

Behavioral patterns:

• Outwardly compliant but internally resentful
• Prone to rumination and self-judgment
• Struggle with procrastination and feeling burdened

Healing involves learning to set appropriate boundaries, express authentic needs and desires, and integrate the seemingly conflicting needs for connection and independence. This process often requires challenging deep-seated beliefs about self-worth and the nature of relationships.

6. Love-Sexuality Survival Style: Integrating love and sexuality

Individuals with the Love-Sexuality Survival Style are highly energetic, attractive, and successful. They are the doers and the winners of the world, the sports heroes, cheerleaders, top actors and actresses, the people who often become the icons of our collective consciousness.

Core struggle. People with this survival style often:

• Base their self-worth on looks and performance
• Struggle to integrate loving feelings with sexual desire
• Experience fear of vulnerability in intimate relationships

Two subtypes:

1. Romantic: Disconnected from sexuality, may be moralistic
2. Sexual: Focused on conquest and performance, difficulty with emotional intimacy

Healing involves learning to integrate love and sexuality, allowing vulnerability in relationships, and developing self-worth beyond looks and performance. This process often requires addressing early experiences of heartbreak and rejection.

7. NARM therapy: Healing developmental trauma through mindful awareness

NARM is a unified systemic approach that works with both developmental and shock trauma.

Key principles. NARM therapy focuses on:

• Supporting connection and organization
• Exploring identity
• Working in present time
• Regulating the nervous system

Therapeutic approach. NARM uses:

• Somatic mindfulness to increase body awareness
• Inquiry into adaptive survival styles
• Present-moment focus to address distortions in time perception
• Techniques to support nervous system regulation

By addressing both top-down (cognitive) and bottom-up (somatic) aspects of experience, NARM helps clients resolve developmental trauma and increase their capacity for connection and aliveness.

8. Somatic mindfulness: Reconnecting with the body and emotions

The practice of mindfulness comes to us from Eastern traditions and is becoming an increasingly popular psychotherapeutic tool.

NARM's approach. NARM adds two refinements to traditional mindfulness:

1. Somatic mindfulness: Focusing on bodily sensations and nervous system states
2. Mindful awareness of adaptive survival styles

Benefits. Somatic mindfulness helps clients:

• Increase their capacity for self-regulation
• Reconnect with their bodies and emotions
• Develop a more grounded sense of self

By cultivating present-moment awareness of bodily sensations, emotions, and adaptive patterns, clients can begin to resolve developmental trauma and increase their capacity for connection and aliveness.

9. Working with identity distortions and shame-based beliefs

In NARM, regardless of how a client presents, we keep in mind that both identifications and counter-identifications are always present.

Key concepts:

• Shame-based identifications: Negative beliefs about self (e.g., "I'm unlovable")
• Pride-based counter-identifications: Compensatory beliefs (e.g., "I don't need anyone")

Therapeutic approach:

• Help clients recognize both shame- and pride-based identifications
• Support disidentification from limiting beliefs
• Encourage curiosity and open inquiry about self and experience

By addressing both shame-based and pride-based identifications, NARM helps clients develop a more authentic and flexible sense of self, free from the constraints of early trauma-based beliefs.

10. The importance of present-moment focus in trauma therapy

NARM moves a person's attention away from past history to the moment-by-moment process of therapy.

Rationale. Present-moment focus:

• Interrupts patterns of being stuck in past trauma
• Supports nervous system regulation
• Increases capacity for agency and empowerment

Therapeutic techniques:

• Bringing awareness to present-moment experience
• Exploring how past patterns manifest in current life
• Supporting dual awareness of past and present

By focusing on the here-and-now, NARM helps clients develop greater agency and the ability to respond to life from a regulated, adult perspective rather than from trauma-based patterns.

11. NeuroAffective Touch: Healing through attuned physical connection

Touch is a valuable tool with which to address breaches in the development of the relational matrix that cannot be reached by verbal means alone.

Key principles:

• Attunement to the client's nervous system
• Respect for boundaries and consent
• Integration of touch with verbal processing

Benefits. NeuroAffective Touch can:

• Support nervous system regulation
• Heal early attachment wounds
• Increase body awareness and connection

By combining attuned touch with verbal processing, NeuroAffective Touch provides a powerful tool for addressing early developmental trauma and supporting the integration of body, mind, and emotions.

Last updated: August 27, 2024