Understanding the Trust Survival Style

As mentioned previously, Larry Heller, founder of the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM®), identified five adaptive survival styles that develop in response to early relational trauma:

  • Connection

  • Attunement

  • Trust

  • Autonomy

  • Love–Sexuality

Each survival style is named after a core developmental need that was disrupted, and the corresponding capacity that became compromised.

Let us explore the Trust Survival Style.

The Trust Survival Style

Individuals organized around this survival pattern often struggle with the feeling that they cannot depend on others. There is a deep internal belief that they must rely solely on themselves. Control becomes a central organizing principle.

This adaptation frequently develops in environments where caregivers were intrusive, abusive, manipulative, or unreliable. The child may have been used — consciously or unconsciously — to serve the emotional or psychological needs of the adult.

For example:

  • A child may have been rewarded for aligning with one parent against the other.

  • A child may have been praised for being strong, exceptional, or superior.

  • A child may have been valued for performance rather than authenticity.

These experiences create profound confusion. The child may feel special or powerful on the surface, while simultaneously feeling unsafe or exploited internally.

Adaptive Strengths and Defensive Patterns

The Trust Survival Style is often organized around strength, competence, and self-sufficiency. There may be a strong need to appear powerful, capable, or superior.

Some individuals lean toward seduction or charisma as a way of maintaining control. Others may express dominance or rigidity. At the more extreme end of the spectrum, traits associated with narcissistic or antisocial patterns may emerge.

However, in NARM, these are understood not as fixed personality defects, but as adaptive strategies developed to survive relational betrayal.

Behind the posture of power often lies a profound difficulty with vulnerability and dependency.

In the Therapeutic Relationship

Clients organized around the Trust Survival Style may:

  • Challenge or confront the therapist

  • Struggle to ask for help

  • Resist experiencing vulnerability

From a NARM perspective, confrontation is not resistance — it is protection.

Therapeutic work focuses on:

  • Increasing tolerance for vulnerability

  • Supporting gradual access to authentic feeling

  • Strengthening the capacity for mutual regulation

  • Restoring a sense of relational safety

Importantly, NARM therapy does not shame or dismantle the adaptive structure. Instead, it helps the client recognize how these patterns once ensured survival — and how they may no longer be necessary.

Beneath the Adaptation

At the core of this survival style is often a child who experienced relational betrayal or exploitation.

The identity that formed — strong, independent, untouchable — was necessary.
But it may have come at the cost of trust, intimacy, and authentic connection.

Healing does not mean losing strength.
It means integrating strength with vulnerability.

Karima Reisinger
February 28, 2018 – Revised

Source:
Healing Developmental Trauma
Heller, L., & LaPierre, A. (2012). Healing Developmental Trauma: How Early Trauma Affects Self-Regulation, Self-Image, and the Capacity for Relationship. North Atlantic Books.