Complex Trauma Therapy for Parents of Children with Medically Complex Diagnoses with Caroline Clyborne

"NARM is really great at honoring that basic human need of being able to protect yourself. Being able to protect yourself doesn't mean that you have a magic wand and you can make the world a safe place. It's being able to do some things on your behalf that really honor your ability to be an actor in your own life." ~Caroline Clyborne

Transforming Trauma host Sarah Buino is joined by Caroline Clyborne, MA, LCP, a psychotherapist in Austin, Texas who specializes in clients with chronic illness and parents who are raising children with medical challenges.

Caroline is also a NARM Therapist and has seen the positive impact that addressing complex trauma, and specifically the NARM approach, has had on clients and families managing chronic illnesses and medically complex diagnoses.

After having her daughter who was born with medical complexities, Caroline observed the impact that medical trauma has on many children, as well as the impacts on parents and families.

Caroline and Sarah discuss how disability, going in and out of the medical system, and other non-medical stressors influence the attachment relationship between parents of a child with disabilities and their children. These relational challenges often activate unresolved attachment and developmental trauma for already stressed and overwhelmed parents.

What's often lost in the parents' overwhelm is the sense that even when a parent doesn't have the ability to change or predict their child's medical complexities, they still have their ability to be a parent to their child. In the NARM approach, this is referred to as agency.

Caroline talks about finding "relative safety", even when there is still an ongoing sense of danger surrounding them. Even when a parent can't keep their child completely safe, Caroline explains that they can orient themselves to the safety measures they are taking -- this space of relative safety allows parents to experience the agency necessary to sustain themselves and their children.

Sarah draws parallels between the work Caroline does with this population of parents to all child-parent relationships in situations when the issue can't be solved by the parent, such as during the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Caroline shares that when she was going through a very overwhelming time in her life as a parent, she would have loved to experience the feeling of agency that she found as she began engaging with NARM. She has since become a NARM Therapist which has enriched her capacities as a trauma-informed therapist. She finds the NARM approach to have strengthened her medical advocacy in adults with chronic illness and in parents raising medically complex and neurodivergent children.

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Free Resource Give-Away

We're offering a podcast review give-away. Each week, we're choosing one podcast reviewer to receive a NARM Clinical Protocol and NARM Personality Spectrum Worksheet.

To enter, please submit a review within Apple Podcasts from your computer or mobile device and send a screenshot of your review to transformingtrauma@narmtraining.com.

That's it! Winners will be chosen weekly.

NARM Community Gatherings

We are grateful to have come together with so many of you for the recent NARM Online Community Gatherings, and we are looking forward to our next free community gathering on May 14, 2020.

These events focus on how we can stay emotionally healthy during this time of isolation and are great opportunities to engage with NARM material and the NARM Community.

We've made the replay videos from all of these events available on our website so that you can access them even after the events have occurred. We hope these are useful resources for you during this time.

Please go to http://www.narmtraining.com/events to sign up for the replay videos.

NARM Training Institute

http://www.NARMtraining.com

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The NARM Training Institute provides tools for transforming complex trauma through: in-person and online trainings for mental health care professionals; in-person and online workshops on complex trauma and how it interplays with areas like addiction, parenting, and cultural trauma; an online self-paced learning program, the NARM Inner Circle; and other trauma-informed learning resources.

For the full show notes including references, podcast episodes mentioned, and a quick glossary of terms, visit us at http://www.narmtraining.com/transformingtrauma

This episode was edited by The Creative Impostor Studios.

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