NARM Training Institute

Originally presented live in 2019, this 4-hour teaching with NARM founder Dr. Laurence Heller offers a comprehensive introduction to the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM) and one of its central clinical orientations: helping practitioners become more effective by working less hard. 

In this extended presentation, Dr. Heller explores where helping professionals commonly get stuck—in taking too much responsibility for clients’ growth, becoming overly goal-oriented, attempting to “fix” symptoms, or unconsciously enacting countertransference dynamics such as caretaking and over-functioning. Through a clear overview of the Four Pillars of NARM, the Five Adaptive Survival Styles, and NARM’s present-moment, non-pathologizing orientation, this session reframes how to work with developmental trauma more effectively. Central to the teaching is a foundational NARM perspective: that symptoms persist not because of the past itself, but because survival strategies are carried forward into the present.

This recording serves as an ideal longer-format, asynchronous introduction to NARM for therapists and helping professionals who want to deepen their understanding of developmental trauma and learn how attending to their own process in the helping relationship can support them in getting unstuck, reducing burnout, and working with greater precision and ease.

*Please note that while some minor language and elements of the model have evolved since this recording, the core principles and clinical insights remain aligned with the current NARM approach.