Page 7 - NARM Model for Working with Affect
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NARM Model for Working with Affect
§Threatening emotional reactions arise for children in reaction to basic needs not met by their environment
§These emotions are a child’s communication to their environment
§Needs themselves become frightening because if individuals feel the need it unconsciously cues the environmental failure, which triggers the unresolved early threat of attachment loss
§Children learn early to foreclose their needs and feelings, essential aspects of the self, in order to protect their attachment relationship
• These strategies, while assuring our survival, also elicit various emotional responses associated with adapting to not getting basic psychobiological needs met
• When these emotional responses are left unresolved, they disrupt physiological, psychological and relational functioning
NARM Model for Working with Affect Laurence Heller, PhD & Brad J Kammer, LMFT, LPCC 8
