Sanctuary by the Sea Counseling Services

04/03/2026

Big emotional release isn’t necessarily the goal.

In depth-oriented trauma work, what matters more than intensity is capacity.

Can we stay with our sadness without collapsing?
Our anger without escalating?
Our fear without disconnecting?

Staying with what we feel doesn’t mean suppressing it OR making it bigger. It means gradually developing the capacity to remain present with emotional experience while
staying connected with ourselves.

When that capacity grows, emotions can be integrated rather than acted out or acted in.

Emotional integration doesn’t necessarily involve a dramatic release. It unfolds over time as we learn to stop disconnecting from what's arising.

03/29/2026

Many of the beliefs we hold about ourselves today were formed early on.

“I’m too much.”
“I’m not enough.”
“I have to handle everything alone.”

At one point, those conclusions helped us make sense of our world and helped us figure out how to survive within it.

But as we grow up and out of those original circumstances, we’re allowed (even invited) to revisit those beliefs.

We can begin to question the conclusions we once drew about who we are.
And perhaps most importantly, we can reconsider how we relate to ourselves today.

03/29/2026

What if healing from the effects of complex trauma didn’t have to mean going back and analyzing everything that ever happened to us?

Of course, our early experiences matter.

But in NARM, the focus of the work isn’t on revisiting the past for its own sake. We can’t change what happened to us. What we can work with are the adaptations we made in order to survive.

How do those adaptations continue to show up in the present moment?
How are they influencing who we take ourselves to be, how we relate to others, and how we see the world around us?

Working with complex and developmental trauma doesn’t require reliving the past. It invites awareness of the strategies that formed in response—and exploration of whether they are still necessary.

The past informs the work.
But the work happens in the present.

03/12/2026

02/24/2026

01/27/2026

Our next NARM Post-Masters Immersion Training weekend is this weekend, January 30–February 1, with teaching and advanced practice sessions centering on the topic of Sexuality, Love, and Intimacy.

These Post-Masters weekends offer NARM Master Therapists an opportunity to continue deepening and refining their clinical understanding of NARM through advanced study and mentorship. This upcoming weekend will explore how NARM works with themes of sexuality, love, and intimacy in clinical work.

Registration for this training weekend is open to those who have completed the NARM Master Training. We look forward to gathering again for this ongoing learning process within the NARM community!

Learn more, find out about CE offerings, and register here 👉 https://narmtraining.com/online-post-masters-immersion/

01/23/2026

We’re honored to share that a new book from NARM founder Dr. Laurence Heller is coming soon!

Healing Shame and Guilt () is both a practical personal resource for understanding your own chronic shame and guilt, and a clinical guide for practitioners who want to deepen their work with these dynamics. Co-authored with NARM Teacher Stephan Niederwieser, the book explores shame and guilt not as emotions, but as developmental processes that take root early in life.

Grounded in decades of clinical practice and the NARM framework, this work helps us understand how shame is learned, why it has nothing to do with who we are, and how it can be worked with in a precise and effective way.

This book speaks to anyone who lives with or works with chronic shame dynamics.

📘 Preorder your copy today:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/804584/healing-shame-and-guilt-by-laurence-heller-phd-and-stephan-k-niederweiser/

More to come soon on book launch offerings from the NARM Training Institute...stay tuned. 💙

01/18/2026

Live online workshop for therapists. Jan 23–24.

01/03/2026

12/19/2025