The Comprehensive Resource Model (CRM) is a psychotherapy that clears distressing emotional memories from traumatic experiences by having clients reprocess them in a resourced state.
Being resourced means that the nervous system feels safe and isn’t engaged in an active defense response (fight, flight, freeze, or dissociate). Defense responses can block the natural resolution of emotional distress following a traumatic event, causing issues such as anxiety, depression, and PTSD.
CRM therapists combine well-known healing techniques from across scientific literature, cultures, and history to build a unique neurobiological scaffold of resources for each client. A neurobiological scaffold is built by introducing resources in unique sequences and combinations to help you feel safe enough to fully step into and clear the memories of traumatic experiences (sensations, emotions, thoughts, and beliefs) without getting overwhelmed.
CRM resources include breathwork, sound, symbolism, and guided imagery using all five senses. CRM aims to provide more than just symptom relief and coping strategies.
The goal of CRM therapy is to fully clear the root emotional wounds that cause internal conflicts and develop a positive relationship to self through increasing co-consciousness, communication, and cooperation between all parts of self.
WHAT TO EXPECT FROM CRM THERAPY
Every session of CRM is a journey through your inner universe; an internally-guided vision quest. Your psychologist will ensure that you feel grounded in your body and the present moment, with a deep sense of control and support from beginning to end.
Once your mind and body feel safely held, you can step into distress; feeling it fully for just a few seconds and then breathing it out of your body like excess electrical charge.
When you experience your distress as tolerable and release it, you are able to let go of unhelpful thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors. This happens naturally in the days and weeks following a session; as your brain quietly integrates the shift in the background while you go about daily life.
At all times throughout CRM, the hurt parts of you are honored, respected, and invited to express their deepest wounds. Without the constraints of having to explain everything to yourself or a therapist, your mind is free to roam where it needs to go, and come back with exactly what you need.
There is often very little talking in a CRM session; the therapist is mostly there as a conduit for the process which your mind and your body (somehow!) already know how to do.
What CRM therapists “do” during a session is help you to dismantle the psychological blocks which prevent the body and mind from fully processing traumatic material; encouraging and supporting along the way.
In other words, the therapist is just a lighthouse; you are in charge of the ship.