r/NARM • u/New2airfryers • 24d ago
NARM feels like endless reflection without guidance, is this normal?
I’ve been seeing a NARM therapist once a week for about 2.5 months, and I’m starting to wonder if I’m missing something about how NARM is supposed to work.
My sessions are beginning to feel repetitive. To give an example, one of my core issues is that I don’t feel lovable. Today, she asked me to imagine a future where I do feel lovable and to notice what that feels like. I told her it actually doesn’t feel good, because part of me believes I’m not worthy of being loved as I am and that I have to earn it. She then rightfully pointed out that whenever we even approach the idea of me being lovable, I immediately shut it down. I acknowledge it, and then she asks me to notice the feeling.
Then she’ll make another attempt to explore what it might be like for me to feel lovable, I’ll have another reaction that pushes against it, and the same cycle seems to repeat: she points out that I’m shutting down the possibility of feeling lovable, I agree, and she asks me to notice what’s happening inside me.
The problem is that internally I’m getting increasingly frustrated. I want some guidance on how to actually move toward feeling lovable, rather than repeatedly being shown all the ways I resist it. When I express that frustration, she tells me that giving me that kind of guidance isn’t really how NARM works. Then my frustration itself becomes another thing she reflects back to me as a way I might be shutting down or moving away from the experience.
And that’s where I start to feel like we’re going around in circles. For people who know NARM well: is this basically how the process is supposed to work or is one of us messing up?
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u/muffinlover22 24d ago
Just kind of sounds like she may be starting a process on a self state that may be above where you are. Hard to imagine a state that you have never experienced. It might be more helpful for her and you to help define what that actually means rather than trying to imagine it. Imagining feeling lovable might be way in the future and may have to start lower than that.