CRM – Comprehensive Resource Model
What is the Comprehensive Resource Model
CRM offers a fresh perspective on trauma therapy. Developed by Lisa Schwarz the model integrates various healing techniques including mindfulness. breathing , somatic experiences, and evidence based approaches like parts work and remembering and enhancing personal strengths and resources . Unlike most traditional approaches that talk about the Trauma even if evident that this is not changing belief systems. CRM focuses on identifying, remembering and enhancing personal resources and strengths so that the Trauma can be processed easier.
Having studied various methods/approaches of Trauma Therapy I have found CRM (Comprehensive Resource Model) to be one of the most promising and effective methods to provide lasting relief for Trauma-rooted distress.
The model combines:
- Neurobiology
- Reconnection to Nature/horses and internal strength
- Parts or Ego states work.
- Using meaningful, mindful and spiritual practices
Like breathing, body grids, sacred place and toning to create certain neural pathways in the brain, specifically the attachment neuro-network, to help us dive deeper into the trauma in a way that is less dysregulating.
Using the CRM Model for anxiety, depression and trauma
Neurobiology (how your brain works and reacts to a Trauma)
CRM effectively incorporates neurobiological knowledge into its framework. For me as the therapist to understanding the brain’s stress response so I can modify my approaches and for the clients to understand what is actually happening in the brain, making sense of why they feel the way their feel.
Finding joy again and reconnecting to the internal, focusing on identifying and enhancing personal strengths
Remembering and re-connecting to our internal, as well as ancestral resources, nature, and joy is as important as processing and integrating traumatic and painful memories. This helps to remove distressing emotions we have been carrying whilst living.
- CRM targets the root causes of trauma by re-connecting with uplifting memories which helps to bypass the logic brain, finding the answers yourself which have been forgotten and not supported by our culture and daily life. This helps to process your trauma before the defences are kicking in
- This sense of agency, and clarity helps to feel and change core negative emotions/feelings like helplessness, worthlessness and loneliness
- Thoughts, emotions and feelings are not tangible – meaning you cannot physically remove them or operate on them. They are made out of positive or negative energy – CRM helps to transform the negative thought forms into positive ones
To connect internally to the Earth, Universe and the horses as resources, forgotten in our society, will help to transform the aspects of you which are still looping or frozen in a trauma memory that happened a long time ago, or recently, leading to trust your instincts again.
Working with Horses to Deepen Your Healing
While CRM is powerful on its own, working with horses adds an extra dimension to the process. Horses help you access your body sensations more easily while feeling safe at the same time.
To feel the horses presence and receiving their unconditional help, is a new experience you are not used to feeling – this helps your autonomous nervous system to send signals to your mid brain that things can change/start to unblock neurological pathways which have been frozen in time.
Breathing (there are many techniques) building a geometry grid inside your body helps with the activation of emotions that come up, feeling them fully (in a safe and resourced way) and then releasing them.
Horses help calm and regulate your nervous system, creating a safe foundation for healing. Their presence provides support that allows you to feel and work through fear—even deep survival terror—so these emotions can be processed and transformed.
More about the Comprehensive Resource Model
CRM was conceptualised by Lisa Schwarz with the aim of healing dissociative disorder, Complex PTSD, attachment disorders, and gestational trauma. CRM offers a neurobiological way of healing trauma by focusing on activating areas in the mid brain that are responsible for activating feeling of calm and safety. It is the most advanced way of working existentially in psychotherapy.