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

This books is an amazing book that is not expresses the ideas very crisp but also offers a completely different perspective to look at life. It cuts across other models of how mental health and human interaction works to show that maybe the underlying principle of how everything works is different. The title suggests that the book is about developmental trauma. Yet it's not limited to people dealing with severe trauma. It provides insight in how most of us work and how our childhood affects our adult relationships. The book identifies five different attachment styles: trust attachment, love/sexuality attachment, independence, etc. It suggests that during human development each attachment develops at a different point of growing up. For example at six months old, our connection with a parent is that they are holding us in their arms and looking at us. A couple years later, we may be developing trust with our parents. Can we trust them that our needs will be met. If there are problems with one of the attachment styles, children will usually progress through a healthy range of calling attention to their needs - starting with "hey mommy, I'm hungry" to using healthy aggression. The concept of "health aggression" caught me eyes. The book is full of terms where simply hearing the term was a huge insight in and off itself. In this case, the idea that aggression can be healthy was intriguing. If that doesn't work, the child's sympathetic nervous system gets activated (fight/flight). If that doesn't work, the parasympathetic nervous system gets activated (e.g. shutting down). Simply these ideas of the different nervous systems are a fascinating concept. The sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system can be triggered at the same time (stepping on the gas and break at the same time). That's for example, when we panic and try to suppress the panic. The books proposed remedy is to pay attention to what we are feeling in our bodies because that's how we find out about our needs. In the ideal world that the book paints, we can freely express our needs in our relationships and (as adults) also deal with when people don't necessarily tend to our needs. (E.g., because I'm a hungry adult doesn't mean the other person has to feed me. They could be full and not interested in going to a restaurant with me. Yet, that I am aware of my hunger and can express it appropriately - without fear, panic or not at all -, that's the goal.) Most people I know are functioning adults, yet I often find that what the book describes affects me. Often when I'm with people, I'm very focused on making sure that they feel entertained and comfortable. (That might be a good host's job.) Yet the book's idea is that I should scan my body to realize what's going on with me and express my needs, e.g. "I feel a bit bored, let's check out the other pool." The book shifted my thought of what a good relationship looks like: Both people should feel comfortable to express their needs and the other person responds to that. (And needs don't have to be monumental things like needing help to move, but a need for comfort at the end of a tiring hike, a need for play in a conversation that turned dry, etc.) The book opens up many interesting topics. For example, it suggests that based on unmet childhood needs, people may develop pride. E.g., if they were ignored as a child, they may pride themselves as easy going. The book suggests that for each pride, there is usually an opposite shame. That example person may have shame around being too needy. That concept alone is very interesting. Now when I hear people making prideful statements, I wonder if there is an opposite shame in place as well. (The pride essentially is trying to make us feel good about a place where we are hurting.) I've written many quotes from the book into my notebook. It was a real page turner because each page offered so many intriguing insights to how life works.

Briefly put, this is one of the most important and profound works in the whole trauma literature. The authors' thesis holds that developmental trauma is very different than PTSD. Developmental trauma is radically far-reaching and colors the entire life of those affected by it. The athorrs outline five different adaptive survival styles used by infants to cope with trauma. The five styles are chronological in order. The first, connective survival style, is the earliest and most impactful. It takes place between birth and about a year. Where the child receives inadequate nurturing or abuse, this style becomes dominant. Other styles come in different times and have their own but less catastrophic impact. In the connection survival style the child adapts by disconnecting from his(or her) physical and emotional self. As a result, the child experiences great difficulty in relating to others and is often isolated without knowing how to address the problem. The other survival styles flow in later stages of infant development progression : attachment (difficulty knowing what we need and feeling that our needs deserve do not deserve to be met), trust (feeling that one cannot depend on anyone but themselves and feeling a need to be in control), autonomy (feeling burdened and pressured with difficulty setting limits and saying no directly), and love-sexuality (difficulty integrating heart and sexuality). The book focuses almost exclusively on the connective survival style. The two authors spend a great deal of time describing the conditions that cause this style and the difficulty that those who use it have with even recognizing it. They also spend several chapters outlining how to address the connective survival style therapeutically. In fact, those chapters are a superior description of how to operate therapeutically. Anyone in a helping profession could profit by reading them. Yours truly is one of the connective survival products. Reading the book felt like seeing myself for the first time and knowing why I was this way. The book well shows the disastrous consequences for a combination of abuse and neglect. I’m not sure what to do with all this yet but do something I will.

I got this book a week ago and have now thoroughly gone through it twice, highlighting and taking notes, as well as doing the exercises. Having practiced somatic meditation and mindfulness for a year and a half and experiencing expansion and greater aliveness through these practices, I knew that these tools were very helpful to me. What I didn't know and what this book made very clear was why these practices were so helpful. This book is a map of the terrain of my psyche and the directions on how to traverse that terrain and go from a place of emotional numbness and subdued aliveness to greater emotional intelligence, feelings of connection to self and others, and an increasing sense of aliveness. Granted not all of this has happened in the week since a got the book, but over the year and a half of practicing daily. That said the book has made the cause and now the course very clear and I've experienced big leaps forward in the areas mentioned, and of course all life areas as these are directly impacted. The book also added many insights, practices, and the motivation that goes along with these. It's very well written, easy to understand, and most importantly to apply. This really works! If you or someone you're close to, or clients you work with suffer from developmental trauma, and you want understanding and effectiveness in healing, get this book now! Many thanks to Laurence Heller and Aline LaPierre

This book gave me a lot of insight on the impact of early trauma (intentional or otherwise) on the developing brain. We all have shock of some sort or degree in our past -- this book is very helpful in identifying the root of behaviors we might be able to modify, or at least understand, in ourselves. I bought copies for both my sister and my daughter so we could discuss family patterns. Note that this book is not really a "self-help" book, in that it is academically oriented, and intended to inform actual therapists about new discoveries that might help them in their work. It isn't so heavy, though, that the average reader can't gain from it. I found it fascinating reading and chillingly accurate in identifying symptoms of childhood abuse that I had not considered as symptomatic before I found this book.

As a graduate student, this book has been fundamental in blowing the doors off of my own developmental trauma and understanding it in others. Taken in context with other therapies, theories, and how trauma has historically been approached, this book takes on even greater meaning. I can understand some reviewers' frustrations however, because while it's a concise overview, it won't answer all of your questions. (i.e. Can you have more than one survival style? Yes!) As a student, I have the luxury of dissecting the readings in class. It's very helpful. If you are a graduate student working towards licensing in therapy, social work, etc., or if you have a firm grasp of basic psychology and healing, you will find this a fairly easy and fascinating read. I wouldn't call it a "self-help" book, but it is certainly enlightening. As to the claims that it's not scientific, perhaps that is because there's not a citation in the book. While this is usually an issue for me, in this case, these theories are their own, based on their own work, and built upon accepted and known psychological foundations. If you need citations for basics like attachment theory, brain functions and the like, perhaps this is not the book for you. Other books I would recommend to help complete the picture would be Frank and La Barre's The First Year and the Rest of Your Life and Young, Klosko, and Weishaar's Schema Therapy.

One of the best books I've read to help me move forward on my life path! It's a harder read then 'Waking the Tiger' by Peter Levine but a good follow up, and takes a step further by explaining in detail the differences between shock and developmental traumas, and the different ways we adapt to survive. It's written for therapists so definitely a more difficult read for the average person, but worth the effort. After reading this book I found myself letting go of blaming myself for my own personality 'flaws' (called adaptive styles) and of the feeling of not being enough. I have become more knowledgeable and accepting of the therapy process. I also found this book exceptionally helpful as a parent. I find I am now accepting the role I unwittingly played in my children's development, without blame. And I hope to better understand and relate to them as adults. Heller & LaPierre provide a few suggestions at the end of the book to therapists on how to best work with their clients. These could be beneficial to the layman looking for a therapist. There is no self-help or how-to advice, other then through better understanding and to have patience with the therapy process.

I finally found a book that clearly addresses the right approach to work with people who have been negatively affected by Developmental Trauma, rather than shock trauma. It is written with a focus of helping therapists learn about this new approach, but in a way that those who have experienced this form of trauma can learn about how the adverse experiences in childhood lead to psychological problems in later life, and how there is an approach that can help them with their problems. There are a couple of examples of how a session with a NARM (NeuroAffective Relational Model) therapist works with a patient, so one can understand the significantly different approach this new therapeutic technique works. It is wonderful to read this, and feel so appreciative that someone has figured out how developmental traumas need to be addressed in a different way from the way violent or sexual traumas need to be treated.

Very very good book. It’s a little above my head and I will definitely read again to understand better, but the thoughtfulness and kindness and everything in this book is revelatory and healing. I highly recommend for the average person and definitely for therapists.

There has to be a sixth star for this book! This book presents the context of developmental trauma and its ways of healing in an easily understandable way and with a language that a non-professionell can understand perfectly. This is a book written for really everyone. The clear structure, the graphics and scales add to an understanding on a very deep level. The authors present their profound knowledge and experience and connect all of that to a new method that is more than fitting for our age, because old boundaries and frameworks, that have never been appropriate in the understanding of the complexity of human being over all, fall away. Here a person is supported in becoming whole in a appreciative and loving way. I love this book, and I think, one can feel by reading it with how much love this work and method for healing developmental trauma is originated and presented. A must read!

Pure gold Stupendously readable, a book hard to put down - successfully merges the worlds of psychotherapy, neuroscience, NLP (my insight) and somatic awareness into a truly innovative 21st century healing science which describes early developmental trauma to a great extent; a subject closely affiliated to Complex-PTSD: “a psychological disorder through prolonged, repeated experience of interpersonal trauma in a context of little or no chance of escape (entrapment) resulting in a pervasive disorganised-type attachment insecurity and distortion of one’s core identity.” C-PTSD is currently not included in the latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and for a number of years experts in the field of childhood trauma have suggested it may not be a useful category for diagnosis and treatment of children. Instead it is proposed Developmental Trauma Disorder (DTD: van der Kolk) becomes a diagnosis for “early life developmentally adverse interpersonal trauma as a result of a significant disruption or betrayal in the relationships with primary caregivers.” The ‘R’ in the NARM method stands for ‘relational’ which points to the fact “that the most important information for the development of the brain is conveyed by the social rather than physical environment.” The dominant symptoms of traumatised children can therefore be best understood, as efforts to minimise objective threat and regulate emotional distress; and “reenactments of oppositional, rebellious, unmotivated or antisocial behaviours in adulthood” can thus be viewed through the prism of ‘trauma-related triggers’ rooted in past behaviours once meant to ensure survival and minimise attachment loss, i.e. fear of abandonment. This is charted in NARM through the concept of the ‘distress cycle’: the caregiver misattunes - child protests - child senses self as bad - misattunement continues - disconnection continues - loss of capacity to self-regulate - pride based counter-identifications develop - leading to morbid nervous system dysregulation of high arousal. NARM ultimately has been designed to help those diagnosed with developmental trauma acquire the skills of coping by mastering new connections between their experiences, emotions and physical sensations to reprogram the damage done in early childhood when a distortion of ‘proception’ - the development of experience in order to anticipate social responses - created a confused internal schemata of the affective and cognitive characteristics of primary relationships. The main tools in NARM’s locker appear to be derived from Gestalt therapy’s in-the-moment framework and the principle “that the mind forms a global whole with self-organising tendencies.” A set of five powerful neuro-affective techniques are offered consisting of containment, grounding, orienting, titration and pendulation. These can be easily recognised as having parallels in other therapeutic approaches that repair the capacity for a healthy differentiation of self and connection to others. However, it is the sub-cellular (quantum array network) bottom-up processing interventions based on the work of Levine (Somatic Experiencing) which is the game changer and creates the conditions for discharging shock states through increasing contact with the body; and successfully integrates the neuroaxonal top-down processing of enquiry into issues of shame-based identification and the uncovering of core needs and capacities. The only other book I have yet read on the same topic is Steven Kessler’s 5 Personality Patterns (see review) which also delves into the bioenergetics of Lowen (1975) - ‘The Revolutionary Therapy That Uses the Language of the Body to Heal Problems of the Mind’. I found Heller’s approach more easily comprehensible in half the word count partly due to its overtly expressed clinical underpinnings in a technical format I happen to prefer, and in its supporting diagrams. In fact it is my truest contention the Neuro Affective Relational Touch Model could be marketed for the best seller list, possibly something akin to the once phenomenal popularity of The Roadless Traveled (1978) - such is the potential of this book “to anyone on a path of self-discovery seeking new tools for self-awareness, growth, and healing.” Finally, it must be the saddest truth of all that unless we have been vastly fortunate not to have suffered some kind of early trauma - “when in a world the vast majority of those responsible for child maltreatment are the children’s own parents” - then the tendency for many of us to grow up and repeat the sins of our perpetrators is a hidden statistic that is waiting to be acted upon, and would account for so much social disruption in literally ‘all’ walks of life.

This book has a very clearly laid out structure and pathway through its subject. It has tables and charts which summarize the types of trauma it addresses, the ages at which these can particularly impact development and the related traits which may develop in the child and adult. The second part of the book gives examples of interactions between therapist and client. I found it extremely useful.

The book claims that CPTSD clients could access their numbed emotions through bodily sensations, and they could develop attachment with the therapist through bodily touches. It is persuasive. It's just that the book is so repetitive. It feels often like "You just said that two sentences ago!! And you said that in the beginning of this chapter and also in the previous chapter and also in the chapter before the previous chapter, and four sentences ago also!!" to the extent that in the end made me feel physically sick. I did not feel the authors' effort in trying to communicate the message in an effective way. The book probably didn't have to be this long if they did. The Affective Touch case study is descriptive and practical, but for the rest, I did not enjoy the reading.

I read this book from the perspective of a survivor of developmental trauma. It has made my journey make sense. I will continue working to heal this trauma. Thank you for a great list of resources as well for continued reading. And I imagine therapists would gain so much insight into understanding their clients' early childhood trauma. Highly recommend.