Treatment Planning and Interventions · Trauma-Informed Sequencing

Phase and Pace

Three clients at three phases, and the same nine interventions on the shelf each time. The question is not what is wrong with them. It is what you are permitted to do.

What this exercise practises

Reading the three-phase framework as a set of permissions rather than a timeline, assessing stabilisation for sexual material specifically, and giving an accurate answer when a partner asks whether things will go back to how they were.

Watch what happens to the size of the available set as the phases advance. Most people expect the opposite, and the expectation is what produces premature escalation.

Estimated time to complete this exercise: 22 minutes

1Three clients
2The outcome
3Close

Before you begin

How this one works

Three clients at three phases of the trauma-informed framework. The same nine interventions are on the shelf each time.
For each client, select everything that is available to you now. The phase is given, so the question is not diagnosis. It is what you are permitted to do.
Watch what happens to the size of the set as the phases advance. It is the structural point of the framework and most people expect the opposite.
Nothing is graded and nothing is recorded. Reloading starts it again.

The central organising principle is that the sequence matters. Safety and stabilisation should precede activation, and trauma processing or stabilisation work should precede direct erotic reconnection when trauma responses are active maintaining factors.

References

  1. Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence from domestic abuse to political terror. Basic Books.
  2. van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.