Inland Empire Chapter of CAMFT

The COMPREHENSIVE RESOURCE MODEL

            The Comprehensive Resource Model is a psychotherapeutic approach originally developed for the treatment of attachment disorders, Complex PTSD, and severe dissociative disorders, and which has been found to be effective with all psychiatric diagnoses.  CRM is a streamlined model that promotes a natural healing through the body utilizing aspects found in a variety of psychotherapies. 

            Created and developed over the last nine years by licensed (PA) Clinical Psychologist, Lisa Schwarz, M.Ed., she has been the senior trainer for Brainspotting™ in the U.S.   Originally called Resource and Attachment Brainspotting, CRM’s influences and antecedents include Brainspotting™, EMDR, and ego state therapy, and encompass similar elements as those found in hypnosis, somatic experiencing and mindfulness.  

            One of the most powerful techniques available to help change and resolve deep issues, CRM combines traditional approaches, cutting edge technologies and energetic/spiritual work.  It utilizes relational and neurobiological attunement.

Based on the neurobiology of fight-flight-freeze and the mechanisms of memory, it utilizes the power of the therapeutic attunement.  The therapist’s awareness of somatic cues and intuitive tracking of the client’s moment-to-moment experience lays the groundwork for deeper processing. Focusing on the use of internal resources and anchoring them into the neurophysiology through the use of eye positions allows for the creation of a relative sense of safety and for fear responses to be extinguished while being fully present in the moment.  Resourcing activates the dormant neurobiology of the resources themselves.

            Attachment disruption and trauma occurring at any age, including as early as in-utero, infancy or toddlerhood, can expose an individual to survival terror.  When this happens, the nervous system responds with the instinctual survival mechanism of Fight-Flight-Freeze.  The sympathetic nervous system comes online and shuts down parts of the memory consolidation system, specifically the hippocampus, as a result of a flooding of the stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol.   With the hippocampus shut down, memories are not able to become explicit or fully conscious and they are precluded from integration into the autobiographical story.  Instead, they are submerged and stored in the subconscious, as well as in the somatic systems.  This leads to the perpetuation of dysfunctional cycles of behaviors, emotional dysregulation, addictions, disease processes and diagnoses such as PTSD, Complex PTSD, and Dissociation.

            Chronic, long-standing stress creates system overwhelm, increases stress hormones and, in this state of emotional dysregulation, causes the Central Nervous System to become stuck on “high” – activation – or “low” – dissociation.

            True healing therapy can only occur when the system is not in survival terror.  Therefore, high levels of resourcing are necessary to process the grief, rage, terror and shame, which are too frightening to face.  People spend their entire lives trying to avoid actually feeling – whether in or outside therapy.     

            Four primary beliefs (conscious or unconscious) associated with survival terror:

• ·         I am going to die.
• ·         I don’t exist.
• ·         I am a failure as a human being.
• ·         Mom and Dad don’t love me.

            The events that led to these beliefs are the source of this wounded-ness that drives profound terror, grief, rage, shame, confusion, guilt, paradox, and the Locus of Control Shift (“It’s my fault”).  These “Little t truths” of one’s life underlie the survival terrors and are the object of processing:

• ·         What happened
• ·         What didn’t happen that should have
• ·         The experience and conflicts of being attached to a perpetrator and the         consequences of this
• ·         How your life was shaped and limited as a result

            Without adequate resourcing, processing can force the nervous system into the Fight-Flight-Freeze response, possibly re-traumatizing through exposure to the traumatic material.   Activating the innate, organic healing energy within the body while in a state of internal and external attunement allows for the processing and integration of traumatic memories, the release of pain and the emergence of a fresh perspective so that new truths are realized.

            There are seven layers of resources that can be used sequentially, consecutively or concurrently; these include, from outermost layer inward:

• 1.      Attuned relationship between therapist and client
• 2.      Breathing skills
• 3.      Sacred Place
• 4.      Grids
• 5.      Attachment/Attunement, internal
• 6.      Distress
• 7.      Core Self

Sound/tones, movement, imagery, ego state work, sacred geometry, and ancestral resources are woven into the layers throughout the work, depending upon what the client needs in any given moment.

            Implicit memories are able to become explicit as the amygdala “goes to sleep” and the Fight-Flight-Freeze mechanism is de-activated as a sense of safety allows the parasympathetic system to come online.   This allows for the client to orient toward and step fully into the painful material.  When this is done fully in the present moment, the stories of one’s life become available and accessible for resolution, and can then be clarified and integrated into the autobiographical story, allowing for emotional regulation and homeostasis.

            Then the “Big T truths” – the Core Self - is Re-membered as obstacles are cleared:

• ·         What is the light inside of you trying to express?
• ·         What is your special gift for yourself and to the world?
• ·         Who are you really?

            Working with traumatized clients can activate a therapist’s own unresolved traumatic material.  Attachment disruptions and survival terrors that may be stored in our own neurophysiology become part of our story - and reactions as a therapist. Here is the truth - we cannot take a client somewhere that we haven’t gone ourselves.  Fear of our own deep work precludes doing this work with others. 

            When the therapist becomes hyper-vigilant due to their own unhealed trauma vortex, they are picking up cues from the client’s trauma vortex and their survival terror.  Once triggered, the therapist is in fight-flight-freeze and cannot attune to either self or client.  The client experiences the attunement/attachment disruption as a replay of their childhood rejection.   This leaves the client vulnerable and exposed to re-traumatization. 

            Therapy becomes stuck in intellectualizations and an unwillingness to “go deep.”  The therapist’s creativity and intuition shuts down as the right brain/sub-cortex goes offline and the left brain/neocortical functioning takes over.  Out of attunement, the therapist’s performance anxiety rises (survival terror is activated) and the focus shifts to the outcome of the session and is no longer on the client’s healing.  The work has then become fear-based and ego-driven and does not “stick.” This costs the client far more time and money than necessary, and possibly most costly, the loss of hope.  

            The Comprehensive Resource Model provides the opportunity to re-member one’s true self; the meaning of the truth of one’s life; and the ability to embody love and joy.  Reconnecting to our internal resources allows for a healing alchemy: manifestation of our spiritual purpose through action while living in a human, physical body.  Consciously or unconsciously, this is what we are looking for, what we all desire.

CRM Power Point Presentation.pptx