Trauma/Family of Origin

Goal: Reduce trauma-related distress and increase emotional regulation, safety, self-understanding, and present-day functioning.

Objectives:
Client will increase awareness of trauma triggers, nervous system responses, and patterns connected to past experiences.
Client will develop grounding and stabilization skills to manage trauma-related distress.
Client will explore connections between past experiences and current beliefs, relationships, emotions, or protective strategies.
Client will build self-compassion and reduce shame related to trauma responses.

Interventions:
Therapist will provide trauma-informed psychoeducation on trauma responses, nervous system activation, and survival strategies.
Therapist will support stabilization, grounding, and affect regulation before deeper trauma processing.
Therapist will use trauma-informed, attachment-based, somatic, CBT, or parts-informed interventions as appropriate.
Therapist will help client identify and reframe shame-based beliefs connected to trauma history.

Goal: Increase client’s sense of safety, stability, and present-moment orientation.

Objectives:
Client will identify internal and external cues that signal safety, danger, or activation.
Client will develop grounding strategies to support present-moment awareness during trauma-related distress.
Client will identify people, places, routines, and practices that support stabilization and emotional safety.
Client will increase ability to notice trauma responses without becoming overwhelmed by them.

Interventions:
Therapist will provide trauma-informed psychoeducation on safety, threat responses, and nervous system activation.
Therapist will teach grounding, orienting, containment, and stabilization skills.
Therapist will support client in identifying environmental and relational factors that increase or decrease felt safety.
Therapist will help client practice noticing trauma responses while strengthening present-day coping and regulation.

Goal: Reduce trauma-related shame and strengthen self-compassion, self-trust, and personal agency.

Objectives:
Client will identify shame-based beliefs connected to trauma experiences or survival responses.
Client will increase understanding of trauma responses as adaptive attempts to survive or cope.
Client will practice replacing self-blame with more compassionate and accurate self-understanding.
Client will identify choices, boundaries, and values-based actions that support increased agency.

Interventions:
Therapist will provide psychoeducation on common trauma responses, including fight, flight, freeze, fawn, dissociation, and avoidance.
Therapist will use trauma-informed CBT, compassion-focused, parts-informed, or narrative interventions to address shame and self-blame.
Therapist will support client in identifying strengths, survival strategies, and areas of choice in the present.
Therapist will help client practice boundary-setting, self-advocacy, and values-based decision-making as clinically appropriate.