"Healing Developmental Trauma" by L. Heller and A. LaPierre

From Laura: "I've been fighting a godawful battle for health and enough energy to finish what I need to do in this life which can take some time yet, but I'm only as good as the support I get from all of you. I just can't do it alone. We are up against forces and intelligences that are way bigger than we are individually, and only together, as a sort of super-being connected by chakras etc, will we get through this.

Just remember the ship captain in the movie "Krakatoa" who took his ship straight into the WAVE. We have to do that.

Listen to the description in this clip and think of it as a metaphor for what we are going through".

Thank you Laura for the powerful reminder, reflections and advice. As always, we are all in this together and will provide any support you need. I too am having an awful time with pain as a result of 3 fractured vertebrae and 3 herniated discs. This forum gives me the will to move forward even in times of despair, a big thank you to all forum members and especially the Chateaux crew!
 
Thank you for your timely words, Laura! I've been very discouraged this past year and like you said, it would be a crying shame to give up and then find out later, only a bit more effort was needed!! It's time to re-double efforts and forge ahead. As others said, just what I needed to hear! Thank you!!
 
Laura said:
Flashgordonv said:
I have had a look at what is available in Australia/ NZ and am somewhat disappointed to see that you have to buy a PC/tablet of some sort to run the software - there doesn't seem to be an option to just get the software. it makes the whole thing very expensive (US$7K plus a pass). Is there somewhere where you can just have sessions with a therapist ? I wasn't able to find any in our region.
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Just hang on for a bit. As soon as we determine for sure the benefits of the system, we'll try to work out ways so all our FOTCM members can participate. One option would be for the org to purchase a few of the personal systems and then they can be shipped to members for long enough to do a good set of sessions, and then shipped on to the next member. We've got two experimental groups at the moment that are renting the system to test it and a few outliers who have local practitioners who are trying it and reporting results. Results will be posted in this thread: https://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,33124.0.html
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Thanks Laura. Much appreciated.
 
Thanks for your words Laura, they are very encouraging and very timely.

I just wanted to share here that this book has been a true blessing, it has helped me to find a new way, a new perspective to address old issues. The bottom-up, top-down "healing cycle" made clear a lot of things and showed me how to move forward. Of course, there's still a lot of work to do, but now there's a "map" to follow and hope.

You know, I think that all the new readings and the neurofeedback seem to be part of the help the Cs have said that is on the way :D Very useful and practical tools to help us go trough this chaotic times.

I also dug around and there are NARM webinars for people that want to learn the method: http://narmtraining.com But well, it's more focused for therapists.
 
Laura said:
Arwenn said:
I'm eagerly awaiting the book, so thank you Altair for the excerpts in the meantime. I can honestly spot programs in myself from all the 5 survival strategies, so I can only surmise that I'm in need of total dismantling & rebuilding from the ground up & vice versa. :/
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Or, simply the knowledge and awareness from the reading assignments PLUS the NeurOptimal neurofeedback brain training.
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As Laura points out, new knowledge and exercises might be what it takes. The NARM cycle of healing chart shows this:

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The top-down approach, of increasing awareness coupled with applying it as we observe how we think and behave, and the bottom-up approach of strengthening the nervous system and self-regulation are all that are required. Obviously this is easier said than done - this can be a lot to tackle. But, as part of my daily routine I keep a checklist of Ben Franklin's virtues. I have found that, over time, I am more inclined to see my behaviors through what is or what is not virtuous, and to remind myself of different ways I'm behaving. So I am thinking about doing something similar with the different survival styles. With that in mind I've posted the different behavioral characteristics, as well as the healing goals, from each chapter:

The Connection Survival Style Behavioral Characteristics

• Lack of affect
• Feel shame about needing anything from anyone
• Communicate intellectual or spiritual superiority: “I know and you don’t.”
• Relate to other Connection types who don’t challenge their need for personal space
• Use interpersonal distancing as a substitute for adequate boundaries
• Withdraw in emotionally disturbing situations
• Tend to relate in an intellectual rather than a feeling manner
• Seldom aware that they are out of touch with their bodies
• Fear both being alone and overwhelmed by others
• Feel like a frightened child in an adult world; do not know how to deal with or appropriately manipulate their environment
• Exaggerated fear of death and disease
• Fear their own impulses, particularly anger
• Fear groups and crowds
• Intense ambivalence: deepest desire for contact is also the deepest fear
• Yearn to fill emptiness and fear fulfillment at the same time
• Strong need to control self, environment, and other people
• Difficulty tolerating intimacy
• Want to know reason why; transcendentally or intellectually oriented

The Connection Survival Style Healing Goals:

Individuals with the Connection Survival Style began life experiencing rejection and isolation; in turn they have become self-isolating, rejecting of self and of others. It is an important development in their growth process when they become aware of the disparity between what they tell themselves—that they are lonely and want contact—and their emotional reality—that they avoid contact because contact feels threatening.
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Move slowly. Don’t underestimate the need for careful titration. Despite the shut-down appearance, the Connection type is highly activated, filled with terror, and easily overwhelmed.

• Build trust and connection.
• Provide empathic resonance; you may be the first kind person in their lives.
• Mirror all increases in organization during the therapeutic process or in the client’s life.
• Help clients learn to listen to and trust their internal experience.
• Hold the overall organization of the therapeutic process, containing the client’s fragmentation as it inevitably surfaces.
• Help clients become reacquainted with their own existence by recognizing and feeling their emotions.
• Work with self-hatred and profound shame.
• Learn to integrate their anger, neither acting it out nor acting it in.
• Gradually support feeling, identification with the body, and the capacity to track sensation. Establish and progressively deepen
Stay available to address the client’s suspicions, anger, and resentments.
• Help clients manage their inevitable disappointment in the therapist.

The Attunement Survival Style Behavioral Characteristics

• Difficulty in sustaining energetic charge; they get excited about new projects but have difficulty finishing them
• Longing for their needs to be met without expressing them
• Clinging in a covert way
• Like to talk; getting attention is equated with getting love
Often describe an emptiness in the belly
• Periods of elation at the beginning of a relationship or new, exciting project without the ability to follow through
• Do not reach out for what they want because of low energy and fear of disappointment
• Expression of anger is weak; tendency to be more irritable than angry
• Resignation
• Relationship to love object is self-oriented: “I love you … I take care of you … You have to love me.”
• Encourage others to depend on them

The Attunement Survival Style Healing Goals:

Build the capacity to experience charge in all of its forms (strong sensations, emotions, attachment connections).

• Work with the cognitive distortion of not deserving.
• Work with the reality that their worst fear, abandonment, has already happened.
• Realize that by always being the giver, they abandon themselves.
• Acknowledge and help them integrate their split-off aggression.
• Work with their identification with longing but not having, with the fantasy “If [or when] I have … then I will be happy.”
• Help them to be realistic about their needs.
• Help them learn how to express their needs directly.
• Build the capacity for fulfillment and consistent connection.

The Trust Survival Style Behavioral Characteristics:

• Underlying feelings of impotence and powerlessness
• Fear of failure
• Feelings of emptiness for always playing a role
• Displacing of blame: always make it someone else’s fault
• Not being able to depend on others, they feel alone
• Projective identification making others feel small, weak, stupid, or helpless
• Inflated self-image
• Always needing to be “one up”
• Always wanting to be the best, the winner
• Empire builders; when healthy they can be visionaries
• Deny the reality of their bodily experience
• Act “as if”
• Appearance of commitment to others, but in reality self-serving
• Good at reading other people, particularly their weaknesses
• Become anxious when they cannot avoid or deny
• When the idealized self-image fails, they may become self-destructive, prone to alcohol, drug abuse, and other high-risk behaviors
• Paranoia: life is a jungle—survival of the fittest
• Turn the tables:
“I have lived with fear, now I’ll make you afraid.”
“I don’t get ulcers, I give ulcers.
“I’ll never be betrayed again—I’m the betrayer.”

The Trust Survival Style Healing Goals:

Help them develop connection to, and compassion for, their underlying hurt and powerlessness.
• Help them develop the courage and strength to allow healthy dependency on others.
• Help them remove the mask of the idealized self-image and move toward increasing authenticity.
• Help them develop the strength to be vulnerable.

The Autonomy Survival Style Behavioral Characteristics

• Ambivalent, paralyzed by their internal contradictions
• Often complain of feeling stuck or in a morass
• Fear of losing their independence when they become intimate
• Choose to please others over themselves and then feel resentful
• Will-based, stubborn identity based on efforting
• Fear of their own spontaneous expression
• Fear of being rejected or attacked if they are openly oppositional
• Global feeling of guilt, inappropriately apologetic
• Superficially eager to please
• Covertly feeling spite, negativity, and anger
• Passive-aggressive; self-assertion and access to healthy aggression is limited
• Secretive about their pleasures for fear that they will be taken away
• Feel their only choices are to submit to authority or rebel against it
• Strong fear of humiliation
• Often complain of feeling “stuck”
• Forceful in defending others but not themselves
• Will avoid or distance themselves from a situation rather than confront it
• Projection of authority on others
• Believe that others have an agenda for them; imagine it even when not true
• Want to know what is expected of them so they can do the opposite
• Pressure themselves constantly while imagining the pressure as coming from the outside
• Continual self-judgment and self-criticism
• Confuse their unwillingness to stand up for themselves with flexibility
• Use the pressure of waiting until the last minute before a deadline as a motivating force to break through their paralysis in order to complete tasks about which they are ambivalent

The Autonomy Survival Style Healing Goals:

Encourage them to be curious about their internal conflicts rather than judging themselves and “efforting” to resolve them.
• Explore internal conflicts without taking sides.
• Support non-efforting and a non-goal orientation.
• Have a clear contract about what clients want from therapy: Make sure they set the intention.
• Be careful not to have an agenda for them.
• Do not let them externalize their conflict into the therapeutic process.
• Watch out for their “good client” behavior that can lead to sabotaging the therapy.
• Explore the difference between counter-dependency, rebellion, and true autonomy.
• Help them learn that they can have intimacy without giving up their autonomy.
• Know that any authority, including the therapist’s, will evoke resentment.
• Help them see their hidden contrariness and rebelliousness.
• Support their developing capacity to self-reference.
• Support the possibility of self-expression.
• Help them see how they get others to reject them so they can be “free.”
• Reflect to them, but do not get caught in their internal struggles, their self-created pressures and the unrealistic expectations they hold for themselves.
• Help them develop a sense of personal authority.
• Help them learn to say no and to set realistic limits with people without feeling guilty.
• The antidote to the will and efforting

Love and Sexuality Survival Style Behavioral Characteristics

• Perfectionistic and critical; impossibly high standards for self and others
• Hard on themselves when they fail to live up to their high standards
• Continually oriented toward self-improvement
• Drawn to working out, plastic surgery, wanting to make their hard bodies even harder
• Mistake admiration for love
• Difficulty feeling heart and sexual connection together; tendency to shut down sexually when heart opens
• Difficulty maintaining relationships
• Sexually acting out—or moralistic, prim, and prudish
• Self-righteous, judgmental, stiff with pride
• Driven, compulsive, rigid, black-and-white thinking
• Orientation toward doing rather than feeling and being
• Sex as their primary way of being in touch with the body
• Seductive, then rejecting; will always reject first
• Base sense of sexual desirability on sexual conquests
• Afraid to open heart: “I’m not sure I even know what love is.”
• Competitive
• Fear of surrender; difficulty allowing vulnerability in love relations

The Love and Sexuality Survival Style Healing Goals:

Struggling with a love relationship that has failed provides an opportunity for therapy and growth.
• Support these clients to move from blaming their partner for the relationship difficulties to seeing their own contribution in the dynamic.
• The emotional work of learning to recognize and allow tender and vulnerable feelings is a central theme.
• Work slowly to support and allow tenderness and vulnerability toward self and others to emerge in these clients.
• Help them deepen their bodily awareness, not just beautify or objectify their body.
• Support mindful awareness of how doing helps them avoid their vulnerability and underlying hurt.
• Help them understand that their constant striving for the idealized self-image actually reinforces the shame-based image of feeling flawed and unlovable.
• Help them understand that love based on looks and performance is not love at all.
• Work with their tendency toward a rigid, black-and-white belief system.
• Work on their ability to feel and open themselves to their heart responses.
• Work on the hidden shame related to sexuality.
• Work toward resolving the split between love and sexuality.
 
Hesper said:
The top-down approach, of increasing awareness coupled with applying it as we observe how we think and behave, and the bottom-up approach of strengthening the nervous system and self-regulation are all that are required. Obviously this is easier said than done - this can be a lot to tackle. But, as part of my daily routine I keep a checklist of Ben Franklin's virtues. I have found that, over time, I am more inclined to see my behaviors through what is or what is not virtuous, and to remind myself of different ways I'm behaving. So I am thinking about doing something similar with the different survival styles. With that in mind I've posted the different behavioral characteristics, as well as the healing goals, from each chapter:
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Thanks for posting the lists here Hesper. I think that having them handy to consistently review and compare with how we're thinking, feeling, and behaving, so that we can adjust as needed as we work from the top-down and the bottom-up is a good approach.
 
Merci Laura pour vos encouragements et à tous pour vos liens et partages...
J'ai reçu mon livre "Guérir les traumatismes du développement j'ai fini la partie 1 et j'attaque la partie 2
J'ai l'impression de me retrouver un peu dans chaque profil mais je crois que celui dans lequel je suis est l'amour sexualité...

Thank you Laura for your encouragement and everyone for your links and sharing...
I received my book "Healing Developmental Trauma I finished part 1 and I'm attacking part 2.
I feel as if I am a little bit in each profile but I believe that the one in which I am is sexual love...
 
Have worked my way through this thread and am half-way through the book. And thank you for sharing quotes and notes!

So far I've recognized myself mostly in the Connection Survival Style (the more a connection deepens, the more the fear increases; the feeling of being often isolated from other people by a glass wall - one can't get hurt but the feeling of isolation hurts while dissociating from this sensation / feeling of hurt; etc.) and in the Autonomy Survival Style (fear of anger and of conflict while striving for harmony with everyone; "the good girl"; passive-aggressive behaviors; deep underlying anger; rumination to great extents; procrastination and self-sabotaging behaviors; etc.). And the other survival styles apply to some extent as well, depending on situations and areas of life. But the two former seem to be dominating to a great extent and I see a lot of work ahead.

So I concur what others mentioned already, that there doesn't seem to be a category in which everyone fits in a clear-cut way. It's quite interesting to see (using myself as a case example) how there are more categories at play and how they can also overlap in regards to personal issues relating to several areas in life, reaction patterns to (certain) situations and how one 'sees' the world.

FWIW, after reading the introduction and the overview chapter which gave me a rough idea about the categories and how they could apply personally, I searched for an online test of the five adaptive survival styles relating to the NARM approach and found the following one:_https://www.quiz-maker.com/QX7DRW

Welcome! We usually think that we are like this or like that without knowing that most of the time is just a way we found to survive, an adaptation. Although this is not a scientific tested quiz, it was designed to show you how much of each adaptive style you have.
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The results of the test had confirmed for me what I already gleaned from the beginning of the book as well as from reading further, and they match with what I know from what I've encountered as a child - from what my family told me and what I can still remember. Pretty interesting.
 
Hesper said:
jhonny said:
Thank you very much, Laura! You allways have the right words at the right time.
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Yes, thank you very much Laura. :flowers: :flowers: :flowers:
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Indeed, thank you quite a lot for this timely reminder in combination with the clip, Laura! It just reminds me again how meaningful all your efforts and those of the network have been over the years and continue to be :flowers: :love:

It made me think of a hiking trip I once undertook together with my sister in Scotland. It was evening, rain poured down, it was misty, the backpack weighed on the shoulders like a heavy rock, the feet and legs ached while shoes and clothes were rather dump by then although we had rain protection on us. There was a sleeping cottage supposed to be coming up on the route, but it just didn't appear. There was a feeling of overall tiredness coupled with something like deep despair creeping into every cell of the body, while continuing to put one foot before the other, slogging and trudging along with no end of the rain in sight, and as if sun didn't exist anymore. Just while the frustration and the feeling of forlornness seemed to reach a tipping point within me, my sister suddenly exclaimed: "The cottage is in front of us!" And then I was able to see it becoming more visible through the mist and the rain, while we were approaching it. We had found our shelter for the night, and the next morning was beautiful with the sun lightening the countryside and warming up everything.

Referring to that allegory, help seems to be along the way just a couple of steps ahead, becoming visible especially when feelings of frustration, pointlessness and despair reach a tipping point while one foot is still being put in front of the other. By just keeping on a little bit longer than we think we can, and against all odds, it seems we are then met by light. Here I see this light as the new knowledge opportunities that came up recently and that, when actively engaged in them, can heal the scars in the brain and heal whatever blocks us from coming into true Being (connecting us to the Life Force = Creativity). You are right that we can only do this together and combined as we are all sitting in the same boat (or ship, like in that clip).
 
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