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Prepare for trauma reliving sessions and process the experience afterwards — tracking hotspots, emotions, and updated meanings.
This worksheet supports the reliving component of CT-PTSD. Before the session, note your current distress and any specific concerns. After reliving, record the hotspot moments, the emotions and meanings that emerged, and any updated meanings you reached through processing. This helps track progress across reliving sessions.
Use immediately before beginning imaginal reliving or prolonged exposure to prepare the client and maximise the therapeutic benefit of the session. Essential for ensuring the client consents to and understands the process.
Explain what will happen during the reliving session, including the rationale, the therapist's role, and what the client can expect to experience. Collaboratively plan the session structure, including grounding strategies and post-session processing time.
For clients with high dissociative tendencies, include additional grounding anchors and agree on a signal to pause if dissociation occurs. For clients who are highly avoidant, use a gradual approach starting with the narrative written in third person before progressing to first-person present-tense reliving.
Do not proceed with reliving if the client is significantly dissociated, intoxicated, acutely suicidal, or has not given informed consent to the process. If the therapeutic alliance is not yet strong enough to support the client through high distress, invest more time in relationship-building first.
Effective reliving requires emotional engagement with the memory — if the client narrates without affect, gently guide them to slow down and stay with the sensory details. Plan for hotspot-focused processing within the reliving and ensure adequate time for post-reliving grounding and reflection within the session.
Suitable for clients working with ptsd, reliving, trauma, ct-ptsd, ehlers, clark, hotspots, processing. This tool can be used as a standalone worksheet or as part of a structured homework plan.
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Practise and record the use of grounding techniques when experiencing flashbacks, dissociation, or overwhelming emotions.
Explore how the traumatic event has affected your beliefs about yourself, others, and the world.
Write a structured impact statement exploring how the trauma has affected your beliefs about safety, trust, power, esteem, and intimacy.
Prepare for a visit to the trauma site, record predictions, and process the experience afterwards to update the trauma memory.