Transforming Trauma: Episode 141

Being in community with other trauma-informed helping professionals offers many opportunities for learning and growth. For example, they get to explore the impact language and cultural nuance may have on treating complex trauma. Community interaction prompts helping professionals to reflect more deeply on why they’ve chosen this profession, where they might improve their therapeutic effectiveness, and how to bring these healing principles into spaces beyond their office walls.

On this episode of Transforming Trauma, Brad Kammer, CTTC Director and NARM Senior Trainer, invites Tobias Konermann, Ph.D., NARM Therapist, to share insights from his recent article: How the NeuroAffective Relational Model Expands the Psychotherapeutic Landscape. Together, they discuss a broad range of topics, including what sets the developmentally-oriented, mindfulness-based aspects of NARM apart from its humanistic predecessors, how shame functions in the therapeutic relationship and inhibits client transformation, and strategies for working with the phenomenology (or lived experience) that influences every interaction. As NARM Trainers, they also reflect on how to support new NARM Therapists to embody the model in a way that supports “connection to their own subjectivity, to their spontaneity, and to their curiosity.”

Tobias is a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist who has been practicing in Berlin, Germany, for the last decade. He has dedicated his professional research and work to how developmental and collective trauma impacts our ability to be fully connected to our sense of self. Tobias trains psychotherapists and coaches in the principles of process-oriented work. He is a leading faculty member of the Academy of Inner Science and a training assistant of NARM training in Europe.

“I was originally trained in CBT…In Germany, 95% of the universities [and] faculties are in the hands of CBT-oriented therapy,” explains Tobias. “Even during my basic training, I was already orienting towards humanistic approaches and other process-oriented models. I was very drawn to that and psychodynamic schools. And then when I met the NARM model, things came together for me.”

Tobias is especially drawn to the relational aspects of NARM. His article offers a compelling entry point from which the rest of his observations naturally flow: do treatments cure disorders or do relationships heal people? “There is this intimate connection between why goal-orientation can get so much in the way,” he says, “[and] why that’s specifically, the case when you understand the dynamics of developmental trauma.” Tobias refers to these dynamics as modes of processing––the analytic and experiential modes–drawn from the revolutionary work of Dr. Iain McGilchrist.

Brad and Tobias also discuss the importance of intention and receptivity, rather than goal-orientation and over-efforting, in the therapeutic process. “Larry [Heller, the creator of NARM], sometimes says, ‘We wanna hold the possibility for clients, but we don’t wanna make them go there,” Tobias says. “That simultaneous process is key to the model and understanding how the clinical application actually works. We don’t go with anything that comes up. It’s directed, but it’s not pushing for change.”

Brad reflects on the balance between leading and following, and giving and receiving, that propel the intersubjective process of therapy.  They ponder together how this all relates to right and left brain hemisphere processing, as well as archetypes such as anima and animus, feminine and masculine, and yin and yang.  Throughout this discussion, they share their passion for the transformative power of relationship for healing complex trauma.

Transforming Trauma is grateful to Tobias for his generosity of spirit and knowledge. We’re also deeply appreciative of the global NARM community for its encouragement and support.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

How the Neuro-Affective Relational Model (NARM®) expands the Psychotherapeutic Landscape

Academy of Inner Science

The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma

Iain McGilchrist, FRSA

John Dewey, Ph.D.

Viktor Frankl, Ph.D.

Dan Siegel, MD

GUEST CONTACT AND BIO

Website

Tobias Konermann is a Clinical Psychologist and licensed Psychotherapist practicing in Berlin, Germany. He teaches at several institutes for psychotherapy (DGVT, HAP, IMU) and specializes in working with developmental trauma. Tobias has developed maps for principles of process-oriented change and offers advanced training for psychotherapists and coaches. He has worked with Thomas Hübl for over ten years and leads the Inner Science Training Group in the Academy of Inner Science. Tobias is part of the faculty for NARM training in Europe as a teaching therapist and supervisor.