An essential piece of trauma literature this well-organized valuable book draws from
somatic-based psychotherapy and neuroscience to offer clear guidance for coping with complex
PTSD (Peter Levine author of Waking the Tiger) Although it may seem that people suffer from an
endless number of emotional problems and challenges Laurence Heller and Aline LaPierre
maintain that most of these can be traced to five biologically based organizing principles: the
need for connection attunement trust autonomy and love-sexuality. They describe how early
trauma impairs the capacity for connection to self and others and how the ensuing diminished
aliveness is the hidden dimension that underlies most psychological and many physiological
problems. Heller and LaPierre introduce the NeuroAffective Relational Model® (NARM) a method
that integrates bottom-up and top-down approaches to regulate the nervous system and resolve
distortions of identity such as low self-esteem shame and chronic self-judgment that are the
outcome of developmental and relational trauma. While not ignoring a person s past NARM
emphasizes working in the present moment to focus on clients strengths resources and
resiliency in order to integrate the experience of connection that sustains our physiology
psychology and capacity for relationship.
