The DNMS is a gentle, multidimensional, comprehensive, strengths-based, client-centered, ego-state therapy developed by Shirley Jean Schmidt, MA, LPC. It helps heal childhood trauma and attachment wounds by meeting the needs of wounded child parts to help them get unstuck from the past. Wounded child parts feel hurt, powerless, alone, and lost. They hold negative, untrue beliefs about self and world. Reminders of a painful past can trigger a flood of overwhelming emotions, evoking a felt sense that the past is still happening now. Some child parts manage those painful emotions with troubling behaviors – like overeating, starving, withdrawing, gambling, or drinking.

The DNMS approach provides all the emotional support, compassion, empathy, and radical acceptance wounded parts needed in childhood but didn’t get. They’re gently given all the information they need to come out of the past and into the safety of the present moment. As more and more wounded parts heal, unwanted behaviors, beliefs, emotions, and urges diminish. Internal conflicts fade out and self-esteem grows. All this makes it easier to handle the stresses of life with adult skills and strengths.