Trauma Recovery Workbook

What this is

About the workbook

Written for people whose nervous system is still running an old alarm. The emphasis is on steadiness first — grounding, orientation, and knowing what to do when you are flooded — before anything from the past gets opened.

Nothing in it asks you to write out what happened. It is not a substitute for working with a clinician, and it is not an assessment.

What is in the pack

The pack runs to twenty pages. It opens with explanation rather than exercises: How Trauma Affects the Body and Brain, in two parts — The Smoke Alarm, then Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn — followed by PTSD and C-PTSD, in Plain Language, and The Window of Tolerance. Two of those pages add a short noticing prompt: tick boxes for the four survival responses, and blank lines for what leaving your own window looks like.

The rest is skills and worksheets, in this order: 5-4-3-2-1 Grounding and Orienting, Soothing Through the Body, Dual Awareness and Anchor Phrases, My Flashback Plan, The Container Exercise, Calm Place, a Trigger and Grounding Log, a Regulation Menu, Sleep and Trauma, After a Nightmare, Getting Professional Support, a Weekly Check-In, and a sheet of six cut-out Pocket Grounding Cards. The Regulation Menu is grouped into five families — body, senses, movement, connection, containment — with room to star what works and note your top three.

How it is meant to be worked through

The second page sets pacing rules before anything else. Go slow; one page at a time is plenty. Skip whatever does not sit right today — the workbook calls skipping a skill, not a failure. If you feel flooded, stop and turn to a grounding page. Practise the calming tools while you are calm. Ten minutes counts as a full session.

Most of the worksheet pages end with a small pacing note pointing back to 5-4-3-2-1 Grounding and Orienting or Soothing Through the Body if the page starts to stir something up. The plans are all written to be filled in ahead of time rather than mid-moment. The flashback plan, the container, the calm place and the after-a-nightmare routine each say so on the page, and the reason the workbook gives is that the thinking part of the brain is partly offline during a flashback — so the decisions get made while it is not.

What the material is built on

The workbook describes itself as a stabilization-focused self-help pack drawn from widely used trauma psychoeducation. It does not claim a single named model. The ideas it works with are named on the pages themselves: the window of tolerance, the four survival responses, dual awareness, orienting, the container — introduced as an imagery skill trauma therapists teach — and the calm place.

What it leaves out is stated as plainly as what it contains. There are no trauma-processing or exposure exercises in it at all. The pack states that processing traumatic memories belongs in therapy with a trained professional.

Print once, or reprint often

Some pages are one-time fill-ins you keep: your window-of-tolerance signals, your anchor phrase, the flashback plan card, the container and its 'not now' phrase, the calm place sensory build, the three-step wind-down, and the after-a-nightmare plan. The flashback plan and the six Pocket Grounding Cards are meant to be cut out and carried.

Two pages are built for repeat use. The Trigger and Grounding Log takes a row per triggered moment — date, the trigger in a word or two, an intensity number, the tool used, and what helped even a little. The Weekly Check-In is set up for once a week: a steadiness rating, tick boxes for which tools got used, and short reflection prompts. Print spares of both.

Nothing here produces a score

There are numbers on a few pages, and none of them add up to anything. Soothing Through the Body asks for a 0–10 tension rating before and after a minute of one tool, so the page records a before and an after rather than an impression. The Weekly Check-In carries a 0–10 steadiness rating. The log has an intensity column. They exist so you have something to compare against later, not to place you anywhere.

The tick boxes work the same way. The survival responses page says on its face that it is just noticing, no details and no story needed, and the PTSD and C-PTSD page states that it is not a diagnosis and that the words are there so they feel less frightening and so you know what to ask about. It is educational material from cover to cover.

Who this is for, and who should wait

The workbook is for someone whose alarm system is still running — jumpiness, scanning, numbness, flashbacks, broken sleep — and who wants steadier days without opening anything from the past. Its pages never ask what happened, which makes it usable before therapy, between sessions, or for someone not ready to talk yet. It is written for going slowly: ten minutes counts as a full session, and skipping is called a skill.

Some readers should bring it to a clinician before working alone. If a grounding page leaves you more spaced out than before, if you lose time or watch yourself from a distance when you try one, or if the noticing prompts on the survival-responses page stir more than you can hold, that is the workbook's own signal to stop and get company for the material. The same applies if you are in a crisis, if a loss or an assault is very recent, or if the thoughts include not wanting to be here. It is educational material: the PTSD and C-PTSD page is there to make the words less frightening, not to diagnose, and nothing in the workbook processes a memory.

How it fits with therapy at TEO

Trauma therapy at TEO begins where this workbook does — with stabilisation. Both EMDR and CBT for trauma open with a preparation phase: building grounding skills, a container, a calm place and a plan for flashbacks before any memory is worked on. The workbook is that phase on paper. Mohamad Shabib and Alison Shaji (British Columbia) are both EMDR-trained, and both use cognitive behavioural approaches with trauma; the trauma therapy and EMDR pages describe how the phases run by video.

What therapy adds is the part the workbook deliberately leaves out — processing the memory itself, at a pace set with a trained person in the room — and someone to tell whether the alarm is settling or whether a different approach is needed. Sessions are available across British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Newfoundland & Labrador, evenings and weekends included, with a free 15-minute consultation first and individual sessions at $150 per 60-minute session. A filled-in flashback plan and a week of the trigger log are useful to bring.

Related pages: Trauma therapy · EMDR therapy · PTSD therapy.

Common questions

About using this workbook

This workbook is educational. It is not therapy, not an assessment, and nothing in it is a diagnosis. If you are in crisis, call or text 9-8-8 (Canada, 24/7); 911 in an emergency. Kids Help Phone (for young people): 1-800-668-6868, or text CONNECT to 686868.

Download the PDF

If you want to go further

Working on this with someone

A workbook can take you a surprising distance on its own. If you would rather not do it alone, TEO offers virtual therapy in British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Newfoundland & Labrador — evenings and weekends, with a free 15-minute consultation first and no obligation afterward.

Related: Trauma therapy.

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