We all move spontaneously towards connection, health, and vitality. It doesn't matter how alienated and isolated we have become or how severe the trauma we have experienced is; at the deepest level, everyone has an impulse within them that drives them towards connection and healing, like a plant that spontaneously turns towards the sun. This organismic impulse is the fuel of the NeuroAffective Relational Model.

Although it may seem that people face countless emotional problems and challenges, Laurence Heller and Aline LaPierre argue that most of these can be traced back to five biologically based organizing principles or needs for: connection, attunement, trust, autonomy, and love-eroticism-sexuality. The authors describe how early trauma undermines the ability to connect with oneself and others and how the subsequent reduction in vitality is the hidden dimension that underlies most psychological and many physical problems.

Heller and LaPierre introduce the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM), a method that synthesizes the bottom-up and top-down approaches to regulating the nervous system and resolving identity distortions, such as low self-esteem, shame, and chronic self-criticism, which are the result of developmental and relational trauma. Without neglecting the individual's past, the NARM approach emphasizes therapeutic work that takes place in the present moment, focusing on the person's strengths, support resources, and resilience. Thus, through this process, the experience of connection can be integrated, ensuring the continuous development of physiology, psychology, and the ability to create healthy relationships.