Fiona Rogers

Towards the Sun: Embodied Trauma Therapy

"There is in each of us a spontaneous movement towards connection, health and vitality. Whatever the degree of withdrawal and isolation we have achieved and the severity of the trauma we have suffered, there is in each of us, at a very deep level, a force that pushes us towards connection and healing. This force found in each of us can be compared to that which is at work in a plant and which directs it towards the sun. This organic impulse is the essence of NARM's approach."

(Dr Larry Heller, 2012)

Are you experiencing a sense of.....

Disconnection from yourself or from others ? That you don’t really feel alive in your own life? That you can’t move forward? Overwhelmed and anxious? Distressed and hopeless? That there is something wrong with you? Numb or dissatisfied? Feeling that you are no good at relationships? That you keep repeating the same patterns of behaviour?

These may be symptoms of early environmental failures, adverse childhood experiences and complex developmental trauma.

Developmental Trauma

As Children we rely completely on our caregivers for survival. We need to feel secure and connected to our caregivers. If, for whatever reason, our core needs are not attuned to, not seen, heard or met by our caregivers, this  may create feelings of overwhelm, panic and fear in the developing child. As a child we cannot understand that the failure is in our environment, that it is not our fault.

 In order to survive the longing for safety and connection, we may internalise a sense that this experience is our fault; I am bad, or too much, or that something is wrong with me. 

We may then go on to develop adaptive strategies that help us disconnect from the feelings of rage, sadness and despair. Or we may turn those feelings inwards attacking and shaming ourselves for our not being 'lovable'.These adaptive strategies become essential in supporting the child in surviving their experience.

 However as we move through childhood into adulthood we can become closely identified with those strategies, and the accompanying patterns of behaviour, until we  feel this is who we are.

 In this way, the strategies and fear based beliefs that once kept us alive can become self-limiting, and full of self judgement. Disconnecting us from our true, authentic self, leaving us with a sense of not being fully alive.

How I work

I work at depth, in the present moment by bringing a compassionate curiosity and embodied awareness to explore with you how the strategies developed back then, show up in the here and now and what is getting in the way of what you most want for yourself.

The NeuroAffective Relational Model(NARM) developed by Dr Laurence Heller, is an advanced clinical training for mental health professionals who work with complex trauma. NARM is a cutting-edge model for addressing attachment, relational and developmental trauma, by working with the attachment patterns that cause life-long psychobiological symptoms and interpersonal difficulties. These early, unconscious patterns of disconnection deeply affect our identity, emotions, physiology, behaviour and relationships. Learning how to work simultaneously with these diverse elements is a radical shift that has profound clinical implications for healing complex trauma. As such, NARM is positioned to become an invaluable treatment option for the Trauma-Informed Care movement as we gain a greater understanding of the nature of adverse childhood experience (ACEs).

This developmentally-oriented, neuroscientifically-informed model, as outlined in Dr. Laurence Heller’s book Healing Developmental Trauma, emerged  out of earlier psychotherapeutic orientations including Psychodynamic  Psychotherapy, Attachment Theory, Cognitive Therapy, Gestalt Therapy,  and Somatic Experiencing®, and bridges traditional psychotherapy with  somatic approaches within a context of relational practice. NARM is a  mindfulness-based clinical treatment, as its method is grounded in a  phenomenological approach to addressing identity and consciousness of  self – who we truly are beneath these patterned ways of relating to  ourselves and the world. Seen in this way, healing complex trauma is a vehicle for transformation on a personal and collective level.