The spine of the developmental trauma work here
NARM therapy
NARM, the NeuroAffective Relational Model, is a therapy for developmental trauma: the patterns laid down early, before you had words or choices, that still shape how you meet your own life. It starts from curiosity rather than diagnosis, and it works with what the past installed rather than excavating the past itself. Reem Glasco, LPC-S, is a NARM therapist, and NARM is the spine of most of her work with developmental trauma. Sessions are 50 minutes, self-pay, online anywhere in Texas, with Blue Cross Blue Shield accepted.
NARM in short
- Full name
- The NeuroAffective Relational Model
- Developed by
- Dr Laurence Heller
- Built for
- Developmental trauma and complex PTSD, rather than single-event trauma
- Core question
- Where did I learn this pattern, how was it serving me, and is it still?
- Orientation
- Present-focused. It meets what the past installed, now.
- Reem's training
- NARM therapist
- Format
- Online, anywhere in Texas
- Session
- 50 minutes, $240 self-pay; Blue Cross Blue Shield accepted
What NARM actually does
Every child adapts to the environment they are given. If closeness was unsafe, you learned distance. If your needs made things worse, you learned not to have them. If being competent earned the only reliable attention going, you learned to be useful. Those are not flaws. They are solutions that worked, and they kept working long after the conditions that required them had gone.
NARM calls these adaptive survival styles, and its interest is not in cataloguing them but in what they cost you today. The invitation is to notice how a pattern keeps you from being present in your own life, and to discover through felt sense which direction leads toward thriving rather than toward more of the same.
This is why NARM is less about the story than most therapies. The history matters, but understanding your history is famously compatible with nothing changing. What shifts things is working with the pattern as it shows up in the room, in the present tense.
It tends to fit when
- The trouble is a lifelong pattern rather than a single event.
- You understand your history intellectually and nothing has changed.
- Self-criticism is doing most of the talking.
- You disconnect from what you want before you have finished wanting it.
- Other people's needs arrive clearly and your own arrive late or not at all.
How a NARM session feels
Slower than you expect, and more curious than sympathetic. The question is rarely what happened and more often what is happening right now as you say it: what your attention does, where it goes instead, what arrives in your body when you name something you want.
Agency is the quiet subject throughout. Developmental trauma teaches people that their own impulses are dangerous or irrelevant, and NARM keeps returning the choice to you, including the choice to not go there today.
What it is not
It is not catharsis, and it does not ask you to relive anything. It is also not advice. If you want a therapist who will tell you what to do about your mother, this is the wrong model and worth saying so early.
Reem's NARM credentials
- NARM therapist
- Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, which NARM sits alongside
- LPC-S in Texas since 2016, license 66562
Related
Somatic Experiencing
The pacing partner. NARM asks what the pattern is; SE decides how fast your nervous system can go near it.
IFS-informed EMDR
Where processing happens, once NARM has named the pattern and the protective parts have agreed to it.
Trauma therapy here
What working on developmental trauma and C-PTSD looks like as an actual course of therapy, with fees and openings.
Depression and flatness
Where NARM's reading of shutdown as an old solution rather than a defect does the most work.
Related reading
How to set healthy boundaries, on why holding a limit is harder than technique, and where that difficulty is usually learned.
Questions about NARM
What is NARM therapy?
NARM is the NeuroAffective Relational Model, a therapy developed by Dr Laurence Heller for developmental trauma. It works with the adaptive survival patterns formed early in life and with how they shape the present, rather than with the events themselves. Its organizing question is where a pattern was learned, how it was serving you, and whether it still is.
What does NARM stand for?
The NeuroAffective Relational Model. Neuro for the nervous system, affective for emotion, relational because the patterns it works with formed in relationships and show up in them.
How is NARM different from regular talk therapy?
Conventional talk therapy tends to build an account of what happened. NARM is interested in what is happening now: how you relate to what you are saying, where your attention goes instead, and what your body does when you name something you want. Insight is a side effect rather than the goal.
Is NARM the same as somatic therapy?
No, though they overlap and are often used together. Somatic therapy works primarily through bodily sensation. NARM works with identity, agency and the adaptive patterns that organize them, using felt sense as one source of information among several.
How long does NARM therapy take?
Longer than single-incident work, because the target is capacity rather than a symptom. Patterns built over a childhood do not unwind in six sessions. The arc is reviewed together as the work goes rather than promised at the start.
Can I do NARM therapy online?
Yes, and it is the default here. NARM tracks your attention, your relationship to what you are saying and your felt sense, none of which require being in the same room. Both you and your therapist must be physically located in Texas during the session, because that is where this practice is licensed.
How can I learn more?
The frequently asked questions page collects everything that is not specific to one service: fees and insurance, how the methods differ, complex PTSD, what Texas requires of a counselor, and how to start. If the answer is not there either, a free consult is the quickest way to get one.
This practice does not provide emergency care. If you are in immediate danger, call 911. For a mental health crisis, call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
Start with a conversation
Therapy consults are fifteen minutes. Supervision and EMDR consultation consults are thirty. Both are free and commit you to nothing.