Category: Transforming Trauma Podcast

In this special Transforming Trauma series, we will be exploring the “origin stories” of influential therapists. These episodes offer a rare opportunity to peek behind the curtain and understand what inspired these therapists to pursue healing work – and how they have brought their life experiences into their professional work, impacting and inspiring many people along the way.  By learning from seasoned master therapists who openly share their professional journeys, as well as the painful personal life lessons along the way, we gain valuable insights to support our own growth, both professionally and personally.

On this episode of Transforming Trauma, host Emily Ruth re-introduces Stefanie Klein, a licensed clinical social worker who is Faculty and Assistant Training Director for the Complex Trauma Training Center (CTTC). Stefanie shares the pivotal a-ha! moments that guided her path to becoming a therapist, her post-graduate placement trajectory, and the healing modalities that have most influenced her life and professional work.

“When I think about what made me into a therapist, I often joke that it was debilitating symptoms of developmental trauma.” Stefanie’s opening line sets the tone for a candid discussion that will resonate with many mental health professionals and those considering a career as a helping professional. “I was a very young child suffering with so much anxiety,” she continues. “Nobody understood anything then. So, I was just the identified patient in my home.”

For those unfamiliar with the term, an identified patient refers to a family member – generally the most sensitive child within a family – who is viewed as the primary source of the family problems.  “Everyone in the family starts to focus on that person and makes them feel like if they could just ‘be normal,’ then everybody would be okay,” says Stefanie, who asked for professional help at age 10. “I had a parent who was in therapy and was open about being in therapy,” she recalls, adding, “That’s how I knew it was okay to ask for it.”

Stefanie began as a young client in the 1970s, a time she remembers as having fewer modalities focused specifically on childhood developmental trauma. “I was in therapy for two years straight with this very Freudian type, pipe-smoking man. It was crazy and, ultimately, amazing!” Stefanie’s sessions included talk therapy, dream analysis, and building model airplanes together. “I came to understand what was going on with me,” she says.

Those early experiences informed Stefanie’s decision to become a therapist. She eventually enrolled at UCLA and worked at the Betty Ford Clinic. “I did a lot of addiction work, but I never really asked myself, what do I want? What’s my passion?” She stumbled upon the answer — trauma and spirituality — after attending an event featuring Peter Levine. “It was so hopeful! I didn’t understand that I had a body or nervous system or anything, nor was I doing therapy with people in a way that included the body,” she recalls. “All of a sudden, all of these pieces kind of fell into place, and I was like, I’m doing this three-year training!” 

But that was just the beginning. Stefanie went on to train with Lawrence Heller, MD, the creator of The NeuroAffective Relational Model®. “NARM really still feels like the model that speaks to me in the way I wanna work,” she explains. “It’s a brilliant model, but I think what I discovered from years of NARM teaching, consultation, and everything, was that my real passion was mentoring therapists.” 

This led to Stefanie joining long-time colleagues and friends Brad Kammer and Marcia Black in developing the Complex Trauma Training Center (CTTC). In their many years of supporting mental health professionals, they saw that therapists were searching for more than just clinical training, but looking for personal support through professional community. They wanted to create an organization that reflects the passion that they had developed through their work as therapists, teachers, consultants, and mentors. Stefanie is especially proud of the work the team has done to launch the SPACE Inner development Program for Therapists. “No matter what model someone practices, it’s turning the focus inward to inside-out learning, and nurturing the person.”

Transforming Trauma thanks Stefanie for her generosity of spirit and giving us this special glimpse into the transformative journey of how someone seeking healing from a young age can share their learning with the world in deep and meaningful ways.

RECOMMENDED EPISODES

Supporting Presence, Awareness, Connection, and Embodiment for Mental Health Professionals with Brad Kammer and Stefanie Klein of the Complex

Trauma Training Center

Creating SPACE for Self-Discovery and Community Support for Therapists

GUEST BIO & CONTACT

Complex Trauma Training Center

Stefanie Klein is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who serves as the Assistant Training Director for the Complex Trauma Training Center (CTTC) where she is also a consultant and faculty in NARM® Trainings and the new SPACE program for psychotherapists. Stefanie has 30 years of experience practicing psychotherapy with adults in her Los Angeles private practice and has specialized in treating trauma and anxiety for the past 20 years. In her role as a mentor and teacher of psychotherapists working with complex trauma, she is most inspired by the desire to support other therapists to not only feel more effective in their work with clients, but to also experience more ease and fulfillment in their professional roles.

Many graduate students in psychology, counseling, and social work struggle to find their theoretical and clinical footing. As graduate students get closer to graduation, many feel under-prepared and ill-equipped to provide effective therapy to clients. Despite the differences between training in a depth-oriented model like NARM and studying traditional coursework required for a clinical degree, one student celebrates bridging these two different modes of learning to become a more confident and effective beginning therapist.

On this episode of Transforming Trauma, host Emily Ruth welcomes Caleb McNaughton, a graduate student currently seeking licensure in Tennessee. The pair discuss Caleb’s path that led him to enroll in the NARM Therapist Training as a graduate student. They also explore the friction that developed as Caleb began bringing back into his graduate program what he was learning in the NeuroAffective Relational Model, leading him to question, and at times push back on, his graduate school education and training. 

“Grad school can be like a jungle gym. It feels very confusing, like, what you’re supposed to take with you,” says Caleb. Hungry for finding a solid ground in a new career, Caleb stayed open to new ideas and approaches, which led him to explore depth-oriented clinical models like NARM. Studying NARM during his graduate program provided exceptional support. “I’m just so grateful to have the growth that I’ve had through this [NARM] training in a way that… impacted so many things around me”, Caleb reflects. “I love incorporating NARM into my papers, presentations, and things like that for grad school”

Caleb started grad school in his mid-20s. By then, he was already married and eager for answers to existential questions regarding his personal worth and professional belonging in the field. He was introduced to NARM through his father, Jason McNaughton, a NARM Master Therapist, and even though he had just started graduate school, Caleb decided to begin the NARM Therapist Training. “The training in NARM has provided so much growth”, says Caleb. “Every [NARM] module just kept going deeper. It just keeps cutting deeper every time and, the deeper it has cut, I feel like the more I understand about me.”

Although Caleb felt pretty familiar with NARM by the time he entered the clinical training, he wasn’t prepared for the personal shifts that occurred during the training. Caleb reflects on his process, “I’m going to get trained in this in-depth model, but it doesn’t feel like just a training. It’s like I’m getting to explore some very deep parts of my own life whilst I’m going through the training.” 

But, this deep clinical and personal growth often conflicted with what he was learning in his graduate program. Caleb began to question and even challenge his program, feeling that it wasn’t teaching what future therapists needed to learn. He was often met with lack of curiosity, and even outright resistance from his professors, who were quick to dismiss NARM. “I held a lot of judgment towards my professors,” he concedes. 

However, looking back now, Caleb says he wouldn’t change anything about his journey. “I feel like [NARM] made the whole experience a lot more enjoyable. I don’t feel as stuck or running through that jungle gym wondering which branch to grab onto.” 

He also believes strongly that to better equip future therapists, traditional graduate programs in psychology, counseling and social work should incorporate more depth-orientation into their programs. Based on Caleb’s experience, he says, “I’d be really lost without NARM.”

Transforming Trauma thanks Caleb for his spirit of curiosity. We appreciate his willingness to explore new territories, even despite the push-back he received, and giving our community a glimpse into what can occur when we’re open to new learning and pathways for healing. 

RECOMMENDED EPISODES

Self-Discovery as a NARM Therapist with Alex White & Sabrena Ness

Supporting Presence, Awareness, Connection, and Embodiment for Mental Health Professionals with Brad Kammer and Stefanie Klein of the Complex Trauma Training Center

GUEST BIO

Caleb McNaughton, a graduate student, is currently seeking licensure in Chattanooga, Tennessee, alongside training in complex developmental trauma. Caleb received his undergrad in Sports Management from Covenant College. After graduation, Caleb spent a year as a missionary in Mexico. It was during this time that he felt led to pursue a degree in counseling. Caleb was introduced to the Neuro Affective Relational Model (NARM) through his father Jason McNaughton and his colleague Heather Parker, both NARM Master Therapists in Birmingham, AL.

While most clinicians are seeking effective clinical skills to bring back to their clients, NARM® therapists are often surprised to experience such profound personal transformation for themselves through training in NARM. In learning more about themselves and their own healing process, the result is a better understanding of their client’s healing process. Self-discovery can be a vehicle toward personal and relational change.

On this episode of Transforming Trauma, host Emily Ruth invites NARM Master Therapists Alex White and Sabrena Ness to share their professional experiences as members of the NARM training community and personal journeys of self-discovery. The trio also discusses the mentorship programs that support ongoing professional development and personal growth hosted by the Complex Trauma Training Center, as well as opportunities for stronger community engagement and support.

“I think that’s something that I’ve always valued about this community is not just the work and the model, but the people who are in it,” says Alex, who has been in the field for fifteen years but didn’t begin exploring the NeuroAffective Relational Model® until 2020, just as the pandemic forced everyone to evaluate long-standing coping strategies and support structures. “I was newly licensed and still felt like I was sort of throwing things at a wall when it came to doing therapy.” While Alex continued to provide clients with critical behavioral skill sets and worksheets, he craved more depth. “I felt most effective…when we were able to sort of be human together,” he recalls, “even if I didn’t really have a concept of the intentionality in that.” 

Later that same year, Alex joined an online NARM Training. “I found concepts and understanding and intentionality to a lot of the things that I’d started to connect to,” he says, “bringing together these different ideas that had resonated for me but weren’t held together in any kind of holistic way.”

Sabrena, the Clinical Director at LifeStance Health in Utah, encountered her frustrations working with behavioral models early in her career. The search for a more meaningful therapeutic approach was the basis for many conversations with Alex, as well as CTTC Faculty Marcia Black. “It wasn’t until I started understanding more about complex trauma that I realized this is exactly what I have been looking for,” she says. “And then I was hooked!” 

Alex and Sabrena credit their extensive NARM training with creating a support framework that encourages exploration into personal behavior patterns. Not only did they both develop greater empathy for their clients, as a result, they also fostered more empathy toward themselves. “There were these things that I did in life that I didn’t quite understand, and it started to make sense,” says Sabrena. “when I started the NARM training, I didn’t even realize how much healing I had not done!”

Once they completed the NARM Master Therapist Training, they both felt like they were still at the beginning of their self-discovery, so they both signed up for the first SPACE Program through CTTC. This inner development program for therapists was the perfect next step. “Looking back, it’s evident the extent to which there was all of this personal healing that I just didn’t have the wording or bandwidth to do,” marvels Alex. “It feels really special the extent to which within these kinds of trainings, and the community more broadly, there’s an acknowledgment and holding of those kinds of things in a way that I don’t think I’ve really experienced in a lot of other years of my life or areas of my life.”

Transformation happens as we engage in an authentic process of self-discovery. Both Alex and Sabrena have found that supporting clients, while also supporting themselves, leads to profound personal and interpersonal healing. Sabrena reflects, “I realized I had so much more healing to do, and I still do…We can be messy, and we’re still growing. That’s part of the process…I always talk about it as, like, a coming home.”

Transforming Trauma thanks Alex and Sabrena for sharing their personal and professional development journeys with our community. We appreciate their invitation to explore NARM® Therapist Trainings and meet this moment of social transformation.

RECOMMENDED EPISODE

Creating SPACE for Self-Discovery and Community Support for Therapists

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

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

The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma: Using the NeuroAffective Relational Model to Address Adverse Childhood Experiences and Resolve Complex Trauma

GUEST CONTACT & BIOS

Lifestance Health

Sabrena Ness is a Clinical Mental Health Counselor (CMHC) in Utah and a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) in Colorado. She earned her Master of Science in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from the University of Wyoming. Sabrena is the Clinical Director at LifeStance Health in Utah and has been with LifeStance since 2021. She also serves as a Co-Chair for the Pacific Northwest region of LifeStance’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and

Belonging (DEIB) chapter, where she focuses on fostering an inclusive and supportive workplace culture. She has a deep passion for supervision, mentoring clinicians in their professional growth, and ensuring high-quality care delivery.

Sabrena specializes in complex developmental trauma and complex PTSD, working with individuals and couples across the lifespan. She is particularly dedicated to supporting LGBTQ+ and neurodivergent populations, creating affirming and effective therapeutic spaces. She is a NARM Therapist and participates as a Training Assistant in NARM Trainings, reinforcing her commitment to advancing trauma-informed care. Her work emphasizes innovative leadership, continuous improvement, and a deep dedication to mental health advocacy.

Alex White Counseling & Consulting

Alex White’s career spans more than 15 years in the mental health field, throughout which he has been continually inspired by the transformative power of the therapeutic process. A NARM Master Therapist, Alex first joined the NARM community in 2020 and has served as a Training Assistant in NARM Trainings since 2022.

Alex has worked with diverse populations across various settings, with a particular focus on the unique complexities of trauma work with adults (18+). He currently runs a private practice in Salt Lake City, Utah, focusing on issues such as religious trauma, LGBTQ+ issues, compassion fatigue, burnout, shame, relationship difficulties, and masculinity. He is also an adjunct faculty in the MS Counseling Program at Westminster University.

To fall under the influence of a narcissist is to wonder: how did I get here? We often think of narcissism as an overt disorder characterized by amplified displays of arrogance, self-importance, and a lack of empathy. But narcissists have a canny ability to repackage those traits and sell them as charm, intelligence, or sensitivity. It’s this “playbook” of calculated behaviors that allows them to avoid detection and continue manipulating close relations or entire groups. One filmmaker has drawn from his own experience, those of other survivors, and even narcissists themselves to expose patterns of abuse and educate all of us.

On this episode of Transforming Trauma, CTTC Director and NARM® Senior Trainer Brad Kammer welcomes Mark Vicente, the award-winning writer, director, podcaster, and producer, to discuss the personal awakening that eventually prompted him to leave the NXIVM cult and create The Narcissist’s Playbook. This feature-length documentary explores “one of the most pervasive and often misunderstood mental pathologies of our culture.” 

On this episode of Transforming Trauma, CTTC Director and NARM® Senior Trainer Brad Kammer welcomes Mark Vicente, the award-winning writer, director, podcaster, and producer, to discuss the personal awakening that eventually prompted him to leave the NXIVM cult and contribute to the documentary series The Vow and create the feature-length documentary The Narcissist’s Playbook (currently in production). This feature-length documentary explores “one of the most pervasive and often misunderstood mental pathologies of our culture.” 

The pair also delve into the role that narcissism plays in the manipulative tactics that lead to cults and other high control groups, as well as reflected in leaders in Hollywood, government, and business. They explore common narcissistic traits and how toxic shame shapes narcissistic behavior. 

As Mark recalls the 12 years of calculated conditioning he experienced as a member of NXIVM, he says, “I don’t think that everything is a cult. I think it’s based on the pathology of the leader. People think that narcissists know they’re lying. I think that they live in a world like a little child who believes their story. They live in a level of delusion that I don’t know that all of them know.“ He shares about the intense pain he felt upon awakening to the leader’s deceitfulness and the impact on his loved ones and himself. “Fast forward to 2017 when I finally understand that this veneer of the organization––which is all about goodness and ethics and morality––what’s happening underneath is evil,” says Mark.

Once the horror of the cult’s true nature sunk in, Mark had to contend with the existential crisis of being manipulated. NXIVM had severed him from his principles, including the strong sense of justice that he had cultivated, having witnessed atrocities in his native Johannesburg, South Africa. In addition to that betrayal, NXIVM’s leader had thoroughly twisted the concepts of gratitude, service, and empathy into chains that bound cult members to him. “They hooked you based on values you yearned for,” Mark admits.

“I was a mess,” Mark confides, adding that instead of dealing with the trauma, he went to war with the cult, channeling his rage into court appearances and contributing to The Vow, a multi-part documentary about NXIVM. But Mark didn’t receive closure from either endeavor.

Then, in 2019,  with input from his wife, Mark got the idea for a documentary about narcissists. “I wanted to tell stories from the victim’s perspective,” he says, “to talk to clinicians and neuroscientists about what’s going on with narcissists. I wanted to talk about the spectrum of narcissism. But, what I really wanted to do is, I wanted to speak to self-confessed narcissists.” 

Working on The Narcissist’s Playbook has challenged Mark to confront the same characteristics he had encountered in NXIVM’s leader. “The only way to relieve yourself is through reframing things to realize it wasn’t really your fault. There was a relief I felt,” he says. But Mark is keenly aware there’s more to his healing journey. “I don’t want to talk about narcissism forever. There’s something inside of me that says, at a certain point, we’ll be done,” he acknowledges. “I believe you can get closer to your true essence if you stop avoiding the uncomfortable things.”

Transforming Trauma thanks Mark for providing our community with a firsthand account of the emotional toll that cult survivors experience after leaving high-control organizations. We are also grateful to him for continuing to explore complex topics like narcissism through a comprehensive and compassionate lens.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

The Narcissist’s Playbook

What The #$*! Do We (K)now!!?

My Dinner With Andre

The Vow

A Timeline of the Nexivm Sex Cult Case – NYT

Stranger Things

GUEST CONTACT & BIO

About Mark Vicente:

Mark Vicente is an author, speaker, and award-winning writer/director/producer from Johannesburg, South Africa. Growing up amid the atrocities in South Africa, he began questioning fundamental beliefs about human behavior, morality, cosmology, existentialism, and mysticism at an early age. Unifying his love for science, philosophy, and film, Mark’s vision took shape with “What the BLEEP Do We Know!?”. He later released “Encender el Corazón”, a powerful film about Mexico’s kidnapping crisis. While the film touched people deeply, it was by association supporting the criminal enterprise NXIVM. Mark withdrew the film and, alongside fellow whistleblowers, exposed the group, resulting in multiple arrests and prosecutions. His journey is chronicled in HBO’s 15-part documentary series “The Vow”. 

Mark has since focused on exposing the manipulative dynamics of high-control groups. He’s currently finishing “The Narcissist’s Playbook”, a feature documentary on narcissism, told through the unflinching accounts of four self-aware malignant narcissists, alongside insights from survivors, scientists, and mental health experts, filmed across seven countries.

Website

Instagram

Podcast

For many mental health professionals, exploration into a client’s relationship with spirituality is often left out or actively avoided.  Could honest and open discussions about a client’s spiritual perspective help them reconnect to themselves and others while also alleviating their symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression?

On this episode of Transforming Trauma, host Emily Ruth is honored to welcome Harvard psychologist, author, and educator David Rosmarin, PhD., to explore the connection between spirituality and mental health, modern psychology’s aversion to the topic, and the ancient Jewish wisdom behind the connections paradigm.

“Since the dawn of psychotherapy, we’ve just shied away from these basic discussions, and it’s a real shame,” confides David, who has spent much of his professional life not only emphasizing but also providing clinical research on the connection between spirituality and mental health.  “It’s really not rocket science to address spiritual life as long as you have the right questions to ask and you’re willing to do so.” Orienting people to what’s most important in their life, what gives them the most meaning, and the most sense of connection, is a vital part of the therapeutic journey.

David is one of the leading voices in the psychology of spirituality and its application in mental health spaces. As director of the Spirituality and Mental Health Program at McLean Hospital, he oversees a multifaceted initiative to “meet the spiritual needs of patients by providing spiritually integrated care within multiple clinical programs throughout the hospital.” David is also an associate professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, where he studies the relevance of spirituality to mental health and innovates methods for clinicians to address this area of life.

“When I started taking Psychology 101 and all the other undergraduate courses. I was really struck by the absence of discussions about spiritual and religious life. It really didn’t jive with my own experience,” recalls David, who has a rich spiritual and religious practice. David acknowledges that most of the field is a long way from embracing spiritual inquiry as a regular component of treatment. “There’s a huge disparity between professionals and academicians in terms of spiritual and religious life and that of patients coming in for services,” he says. “If you look at the data, more than 90% of Americans have at least some belief in higher power or something greater. When I give continuing education seminars and ask for a raise of hands of how many people have had a single hour of training in how to address spiritual and religious life, if 5% of the audience raises their hands, that’s a lot.”

David appreciates therapeutic modalities that bring attention to the basic human desire for a larger sense of connection, a theme that is central to the connections paradigm. “It’s the basic idea is that people have the opportunity in this world for connection with ourselves, with others, and, then, some sort of spiritual connection. When we are connected and have these relationships, we tend to thrive.”

Transforming Trauma appreciates David for expanding our understanding of the relationship between faith and mental health and inviting our community to think more deeply about our approach to spirituality in therapeutic spaces.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Thriving With Anxiety: 9 Tools to Make Your Anxiety Work for You

The Connections Paradigm: Ancient Jewish Wisdom for Modern Mental Health

Spirituality & Mental Health Laboratory

Handbook of Spirituality, Religion, And Mental Health

GUEST CONTACT & BIO

Center For Anxiety

Dr. David H. Rosmarin is the director of the Spirituality and Mental Health Program at McLean Hospital and an associate professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He earned his PhD in clinical psychology from Bowling Green State University, completed a predoctoral internship, and then pursued a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital. Dr. Rosmarin studies the relevance of spirituality to mental health, and he innovates methods for clinicians to address this area of life. He has published over a hundred manuscripts, editorials, and chapters and served as co-editor of the Handbook of Spirituality, Religion, and Mental Health. Dr. Rosmarin’s work is regularly featured by the media and has appeared on CNN, NPR, Scientific American, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times.