These therapeutic approaches can be tailored to meet the unique needs and preferences of individuals with complex trauma, offering hope, healing, and empowerment on their journey toward recovery. It’s essential for therapists to collaborate with clients and treatment teams to create a treatment plan that addresses their specific symptoms, strengths, and goals.
7 Worksheets for Clients With CPTSD
Providing clients with CPTSD with worksheets can be a helpful adjunct to therapy, as it allows them to engage in structured activities outside of sessions and deepen their understanding of their experiences (Müller-Engelmann et al., 2016). Here are several types of worksheets that can be beneficial for clients with CPTSD:
Trauma timeline
A trauma timeline worksheet allows clients to map out significant events and experiences throughout their lives, including both traumatic incidents and positive moments. This can help clients identify patterns, triggers, and themes related to their trauma history, as well as track their progress in therapy.
Use our Childhood Timeline worksheet to help your client track developmental wounding events and patterns that may be causing their present challenges.
Grounding techniques
Grounding techniques provide clients with helpful strategies for managing distressing symptoms, such as flashbacks, dissociation, and anxiety.
These may include sensory grounding exercises, mindfulness practices, or self-soothing techniques that help clients stay present and regulated during times of distress. Our Grounding and Centering worksheet will help your client locate and play with their center of gravity while keeping them in the present moment.
Emotion regulation
Emotion regulation can help clients identify and understand their emotions, develop awareness of emotional triggers, and learn effective strategies for managing intense feelings.
This may include exercises for identifying primary and secondary emotions, practicing emotion regulation skills, and creating personalized coping plans. This Emotion Regulation Worksheet aims to help clients identify and manage their emotions and choose alternate ways of responding.
Cognitive restructuring
Cognitive restructuring assists clients in challenging and reframing maladaptive thoughts and beliefs associated with their trauma experiences.
You can use our Cognitive Restructuring Worksheet to help your clients identify cognitive distortions, evaluate the evidence for and against negative beliefs, and generate more balanced and adaptive perspectives.
Self-compassion
Self-compassion worksheets can be used to encourage clients to cultivate kindness, acceptance, and understanding toward themselves, especially in the face of trauma-related shame, self-blame, or criticism.
These worksheets may include exercises for practicing self-compassionate self-talk, writing compassionate letters to oneself, and developing a self-compassion plan. The “I Will Survive” worksheet will help your client evaluate their coping skills, support resources, and how to access these in the face of challenges.
Value clarification
Value clarification exercises help clients identify their core values, priorities, and aspirations in life, which can serve as a guide for healing and recovery.
Clients can explore questions about what matters most to them, what gives their life meaning and purpose, and how they can align their actions with their values.
This Personal Values worksheet will help your client identify what’s most important to them and how to focus their energy to support those values.
Self-care
Self-care prompts offer clients opportunities to explore and implement activities that promote relaxation, self-soothing, self-nurturing, and wellbeing. This may include exercises for creating self-care routines, scheduling pleasurable activities, and practicing relaxation techniques such as deep breathing or progressive muscle relaxation.
The Self-Care Check-In worksheet is a quick way to evaluate where your client is and what prompts they may need to do more self-nurturing.
You can use these worksheets in conjunction with therapy sessions to enhance learning, self-reflection, and skill building for your clients with CPTSD (Müller-Engelmann et al., 2016). It is important, however, that you tailor worksheets to meet the needs and preferences of each client, providing guidance and support as needed throughout the process.
A Path Forward: From CPTSD to Post-Traumatic Growth
Post-traumatic growth refers to the transformative journey some individuals undertake following traumatic experiences (Dagan & Yager, 2019).
It is characterized by the manifestation of positive psychological changes and personal development post-trauma.
Helping your client move from CPTSD to post-traumatic growth requires a comprehensive and intentional strategy (Jayawickreme et al., 2021). This process necessitates a multifaceted approach, encompassing therapeutic interventions aimed at addressing trauma-related symptoms, fostering resilience, and cultivating adaptive coping mechanisms.
By providing a supportive and empowering environment, you can facilitate the exploration of trauma narratives, reframing adversity as an opportunity for growth and self-discovery (Coleman et al., 2021). Additionally, interventions focusing on enhancing self-awareness, promoting self-compassion, and fostering a sense of meaning and purpose can facilitate the cultivation of post-traumatic growth.
By taking intentional steps toward healing and self-discovery, those with CPTSD can navigate the challenges of trauma and emerge with resilience, authenticity, and a renewed sense of meaning in their lives (Dagan & Yager, 2019).