In June, 2003 I attended Shirley Jean's DNMS workshop in Chicago and immediately starting using the DNMS with my clients. The DNMS is now my preferred method of therapy and I use it with most of my clients. During most of my forty-plus years of practice, I have been a "psychodynamic" therapist, focused not only on neutralizing the negative effects of childhood but on facilitating my client’s achievement of a more cohesive and differentiated sense of self. Over the years, I have made major personal and professional investments in four different therapy methods prior to my DNMS exposure. In the year that I have been practicing DNMS, it is proving to be the most effective method I have yet discovered for helping clients neutralize those childhood experiences which inhibit a natural developmental process of increasing self cohesiveness and differentiation.

There are several characteristics of the DNMS that, when taken together, make it a truly unique and innovative therapeutic approach. They are as follows:

1. Focus on unmet needs

Most therapies that focus on childhood assume that the recall and processing of negatively charged memories are an essential aspect of neutralizing negative childhood experiences. The DNMS makes a different assumption: one that leads to a very different innovative focus and methodology. It is based on the assumption that the traumatic qualities of negative childhood experiences are embedded, not in the negative experiences themselves, but rather in the fact that needs critical to the development of the child are not being met. The DNMS protocols focus not on the negative past experiences themselves but on helping the client identify and remediate the important childhood needs associated with these experiences that were unmet by the child’s primary caretakers.

2. The use of the client’s of own mature adult self as the primary healing agent

As the client identifies the unmet needs that underlie negative childhood experience the DNMS protocols make systematic use of the client's mature adult capacities for self healing: In most therapies (EMDR is one exception) the therapist-client relationship is seen as the primary healer, In DNMS, the client's own adult resources do the healing and the therapist’s role is to facilitate the client's connection to his own healing capacities. The DNMS protocols contain specific procedures for helping the client access and strengthen his connections to both his core self and his own adult capacities for nurturing and protection. These three parts are called Resources. Once the client is able to connect to his three Resources, the Resources are then formed into a “Healing Circle”. With the help of the therapist, the client identifies basic needs that were unmet in childhood. As each unmet need is identified, the Healing Circle becomes the instrument by which the client experiences the reality that needs that caretakers did not meet in childhood can now be met by a part of the client’s own adult self (his resources). The healing process takes place as the client begins to experience this reality that he is currently in the care of an adult (himself) who can meet his previously unmet developmental needs. When this happens, the negative emotional charge associated with childhood experiences dissipates. As more and more previously unmet needs are met by the client’s own resources, the client’s experience of current reality deepens and expands and his experience of his unhappy past becomes neutralized memory. Thus the past truly become history and no longer intrudes into the present. Psychotherapists have often talked about focusing on a client's strengths rather then weaknesses, on a client’s healthy parts rather then "sick" parts. The DNMS protocols contains specific procedures for not only focusing and strengthening the most mature parts of the client's adult self, but for helping the client use those parts for self healing.

3. Parts language

The DNMS is one of a number of ego state therapies that embrace the concept of parts. The DNMS was my first exposure to parts language. Like many people new to ego state therapy, I, initially, found thinking in terms of “parts of self” strange and using parts language awkward and unnatural. As I continued to think about the person in terms of different child and adult parts, the strangeness and awkwardness disappeared. I now find the parts concept to be an immensely helpful and clarifying way to think and talk about the client's feelings, thoughts and behavior.

4. Introjects

The concept of introjects is not unique to DNMS. It has long been a central concept of psychodynamic thinking. DMNS has a distinctive way of thinking about and working with introjects. In DNMS, intojects are defined as those parts of a child that are mimics of the way an adult caretaker relates internally to himself or externally to the child. Introjects of healthy caregivers are congruent with the child’s real self and promote the child’s mature development. Introjects of dysfunctional caregivers are incongruent with a child’s true good nature. While maladaptive introjects may help a child adapt to her dysfunctional family-of-origin, they can impede development and/or create problems in her adult world. The DNMS assumes that maladaptive introjects will heal, and cease to mimic dysfunctional caregivers, once the associated unmet needs have been met by the client’s adult Resources. It is fascinating to observe the changes that take place in clients after an important maladaptive introject has successfully healed.

5. Respectful attitude towards maladaptive child parts, even seemingly destructive parts

Notions of non-judgmentalness, unconditional acceptance, etc. are long standing therapeutic stances. But there are also contradictory ideas. Terms like “resistance,” “pathology,” “unconscious hostility” etc. are often expressed in disrespectful contexts. The DNMS protocol’s patient, respectful and welcoming way of working with child parts that are resistive to the process has deepened my own capacity to work effectively with therapeutic resistance. While the specific procedures of the current DNMS protocol may change, I believe that the ideas that I have described above will, in time, find their way into the mainstream of therapeutic practice. For this reason, I see DNMS as at the cutting edge of future developments in psychotherapy.