Developmental Needs Meeting Strategy

The developmental needs meeting strategy (DNMS) is a psychotherapy approach developed by Shirley Jean Schmidt, designed to treat adults with psychological trauma wounds, such as those inflicted by verbal, physical or sexual abuse, and with attachment wounds, such as those inflicted by parental rejection, neglect or enmeshment. It is an ego state therapy based on the premise that the degree to which a client's developmental needs went unmet in childhood is the degree to which that client may remain stuck in childhood, and it aims to identify ego states stuck in the past and help them become unstuck by meeting those unmet developmental needs. Processing begins with the DNMS therapist guiding a patient to mobilize three internal resource ego states, a Nurturing Adult Self, a Protective Adult Self and a Spiritual Core Self, which then gently help wounded child ego states get unstuck from the past by meeting their unmet developmental needs, processing painful emotions, and establishing an emotional bond; the relationship these wounded child parts form with the resource states is considered the primary agent of change. Alternating bilateral stimulation, the technique popularized by EMDR therapy, is applied at key points in the protocol to enhance the process, and the DNMS gives special attention to healing maladaptive introjects, meaning wounded ego states that mimic an abusive, neglectful or dysfunctional caregiver, on the premise that these states cause clients the most trouble and that helping them heal can significantly reduce unwanted behaviors, beliefs and emotions.