NeuroAffective Relational Model™ (NARM)
Trauma Therapy
A gentle, depth-oriented approach for patterns that started long before you had words for them.
Sometimes you know exactly what you do.
You shut down.
You over-function.
You people-please.
You disappear.
You get rigid.
You panic.
You take care of everyone else.
You disconnect from your needs before you even realize you had any.
You may even understand why.
And still, in the moment, the pattern takes over.
That is where NARM™ can help.
NARM™, or the NeuroAffective Relational Model™, is a therapy approach for working with developmental trauma, attachment wounds, shame, disconnection from self, and survival patterns that formed early in life.
In plain language: NARM helps us understand the ways you learned to survive relationships — and how those same strategies may now be getting in the way of feeling connected, real, safe, and fully yourself.
This is not about blaming your childhood.
NARM is not about digging through the past to prove what went wrong.
It is about noticing what is happening now.
How do you relate to yourself?
How do you respond when you need something?
What happens when someone gets close?
What do you do with anger, grief, desire, disappointment, conflict, or vulnerability?
Where do you leave yourself in order to stay connected to someone else?
The past matters because it shaped the nervous system.
But the work happens in the present: in your body, your relationships, your choices, your patterns, and the places where you are ready for more freedom.
Why survival patterns are not character flaws
Many of the patterns people feel ashamed of began as intelligent adaptations.
If it was not safe to need too much, you may have learned to need very little.
If connection felt unpredictable, you may have learned to scan, manage, perform, or disappear.
If your feelings were too much for the people around you, you may have learned to disconnect from them.
If being yourself created conflict, rejection, shame, or danger, you may have learned to become whoever the room required.
That was not weakness.
That was survival.
NARM helps us hold that with respect while also asking:
is this still the life you want to live?
What NARM™ can support
NARM therapy may be helpful if you struggle with:
Chronic shame or self-criticism
Feeling disconnected from yourself, your body, or your needs
People-pleasing, over-functioning, or difficulty setting boundaries
Anxiety, collapse, shutdown, or emotional overwhelm
Feeling responsible for other people’s emotions
Difficulty trusting yourself or your perceptions
Fear of being too much, too needy, too sensitive, or too complicated
Relationship patterns that repeat even when you understand them
A sense that you have spent your life adapting instead of belonging
Parenting reactions that seem bigger than the present moment
Grief about what you needed and did not receive
Burnout from masking, performing, or pushing through
How I use NARM™
I use NARM as part of a relational, neurodivergent-affirming, nervous-system-informed approach.
That means we do not force insight. We do not shame the pattern. We do not try to “fix” you by overriding the very strategies that once helped you survive.
Instead, we slow down and get curious.
What is happening inside you right now?
What does this part of you want?
What does it fear would happen if you changed?
What becomes possible when you do not have to abandon yourself to stay connected?
The work is often subtle, but not shallow.
It helps build more connection to self, more capacity for choice, and more room to live from who you are now — not only from what you had to become.
NARM and neurodivergence
For neurodivergent people, NARM can be especially useful because many of us have spent years adapting to systems that did not understand us.
Masking, people-pleasing, perfectionism, shutdown, sensory suppression, and chronic self-doubt can become deeply woven into identity.
NARM helps us explore those patterns without treating neurodivergence as the problem.
The goal is not to make you more normal.
The goal is to help you feel more connected to yourself, your body, your needs, your boundaries, and your own way of being in the world.
NARM and parenting
Parenting has a rude little habit of waking up everything we thought we had already dealt with.
Your child’s needs, emotions, refusal, sensitivity, anger, grief, or dependence may touch places in you that are much older than the current moment.
NARM can help parents notice what gets activated, understand the survival pattern underneath the reaction, and create more space to respond with steadiness instead of panic, guilt, anger, or collapse.
This is not about becoming a perfect parent.
It is about becoming more present, more honest, and more able to repair.
A way back to yourself
NARM is not about becoming someone else.
It is about noticing the places where survival taught you to leave yourself — and creating enough safety, awareness, and choice to begin coming back.
Back to your needs.
Back to your body.
Back to your boundaries.
Back to your yes and your no.
Back to the self that was never actually gone, only very well protected.
Ready to begin?
Start with a $25 virtual consultation. If we decide to move forward, the consultation fee will be deducted from the cost of your first session.
We’ll talk about what is happening, what kind of support you are looking for, and whether this approach feels like the right fit.