How to create a mantra worksheet
Looking for trauma group therapy worksheets? This guide to group therapy for trauma provides therapists with an overview of trauma group therapy activities and trauma psychoeducation to provide to clients.
We’ve also included free downloadable trauma group therapy worksheets that you can save to your electronic health record (EHR) and use with clients.
What is trauma?
Trauma is the direct experience of, or witnessing of, a distressing event, such as:
A natural disaster
Crime
Accident
Violent event
Emotional abuse
Childhood neglect
War
Mass shooting
Assault
Car accident
Death of a loved one
Trauma can also include events where you feel under threat, unsafe, abandoned, humiliated, invalidated, trapped, frightened, ashamed, and powerless.
People experience trauma in multiple ways, such as:
One-off events
Being directly harmed or abused
Witnessing another person being harmed
Living in a family or community environment that has experienced trauma before you were born
Repeated and ongoing trauma (chronic trauma), such as experiencing intimate partner violence
Prolonged exposure to multiple traumatic events, which may start in childhood, such as experiencing neglect, and continue into adult experiences of trauma—this is called complex trauma
If you have directly experienced or witnessed trauma, it can have a significant physical, emotional, and psychological impact on your life.
You may experience:
Difficulty concentrating
Feeling anxious, sad, or angry
Replaying the event in your mind
While most people will recover and their responses will lessen over time, some individuals may develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The symptoms of PTSD include:
Hypervigilance: Being on guard or feeling on edge even when a threat isn’t present.
Flashbacks: Reliving the traumatic events as if they are happening in real time.
Avoidance: Avoiding people, places, activities, situations, thoughts, and conversations that may remind you of the traumatic event.
Difficult emotions and negative thoughts: Feeling anxious, guilty, angry, ashamed, and blaming yourself.
Nightmares and difficulty sleeping: Trouble getting to sleep, disturbed sleep, waking up after experiencing nightmares, and oversleeping.
Dissociation: Feeling detached from your body or environment. You might also feel like things aren’t real.
What is trauma therapy, and how does it work?
Trauma therapy involves working with a mental health therapist to process traumatic events and find healing from the psychological effects of trauma. This can occur during individual sessions or through trauma group therapy activities.
Trauma therapy aims to:
Reduce distressing symptoms, such as flashbacks, anxiety, nightmares, reexperiencing, and hypervigilance
Increase a sense of safety
Strengthen emotional regulation skills
Process the trauma in a safe and supportive way
Help to strengthen relationships
Rebuild self-esteem, confidence, trust, and sense of security and control
There are several types of trauma therapy, including:
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for trauma: Helps individuals identify and reframe negative thoughts and beliefs related to the trauma.
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR): Uses bilateral stimulation (like eye movements) to help the brain reprocess traumatic memories.
Trauma-focused CBT (TF-CBT): Especially effective for children and adolescents, combining trauma processing with cognitive and behavioral strategies.
Somatic therapies: Focus on how trauma is stored in the body and use body awareness, movement, or touch to help release it.
Exposure therapy: An intervention that involves facing your fears through gradual exposure.
Narrative therapy: Helps clients tell their story in a way that gives them agency and understanding.
Internal family systems (IFS): A type of therapy that involves working with internal "parts" of the self to gain greater understanding and reconnect with your core self. IFS is often used for the treatment of complex or developmental trauma.
Therapy may be delivered on an individual basis or in a group setting through the use of trauma group therapy worksheets.
How does trauma therapy work?
While each modality of trauma therapy is slightly different, and therapists may have their own approach to trauma group therapy activities, the general format of processing trauma involves:
1. Establishing rapport
The first step of trauma therapy, and any other type of therapy, is developing a therapeutic alliance—a collaborative and trusting relationship between the client and therapist in which the client feels comfortable, the therapist establishes a safe environment, and both the therapist and client agree on the goals of therapy.
2. Resourcing
The next step is teaching and strengthening coping skills for distress tolerance and emotional regulation.
3. Identifying and understanding the trauma
This part of trauma group therapy worksheets involves naming the trauma(s), exploring the impact of trauma on thoughts, emotions, and the body, identifying triggers, and gaining insights into other ways trauma is affecting the person and their relationships.
4. Processing the traumatic experience
Next, this step involves talking or using other methods of processing trauma, reframing unhelpful thoughts, and finding separation from the trauma in your story.
5. Reassessing
The reassessing step of trauma group therapy worksheets includes measuring the impact of traumatic experiences after processing to establish the following steps: further reprocessing or reconnecting oneself and others.
6. Reconnecting and moving forward
This step includes finding meaning and identity beyond the trauma, reinforcing healthy boundaries, strengthening relationships, rebuilding self-esteem, and strengthening coping strategies to cope with future stressors.
This stage may also involve developing a safety plan to provide support for suicidal ideation.
7. Ongoing support
Lastly, provide ongoing therapy as part of a support strategy and to empower the client on their continued journey.
Trauma group therapy activities
Trauma group therapy involves multiple individuals who have experienced trauma coming together in a structured environment to collaboratively share their experiences, strengthen coping skills, and find healing with the support of trained facilitators.
Trauma group therapy activities can have many benefits, including:
Reduces isolation by providing a sense of safety and support
Validates trauma experiences and responses to trauma
Strengthens coping strategies
Builds connection and a sense of community
Collectively reminds each other of their resilience
Increases self-awareness and emotional regulation skills
Common trauma group therapy exercises
1. Psychoeducation: Learn about the impact of trauma on the brain and body, such as:
Exploring how to define trauma
Understanding trauma responses (fight, flight, freeze, fawn)
Discussing triggers, boundaries, and self-care
2. Grounding and mindfulness exercises:
Progressive muscle relaxation techniques
5-4-3-2-1 grounding exercise
Visualizations (e.g., safe place or container exercise)
3. Emotional regulation tools:
Review emotion wheels
Identifying and naming emotions
Creating a “calm-down toolbox” or “coping skills cards”
4. Creative expression:
Art therapy: drawing emotions, masks, or timelines
Writing exercises: journaling and writing letters to your past/future self
Music or movement: drumming, gentle yoga, or dance/movement therapy
5. Sharing and storytelling:
Discussing shared themes (grief, loss, betrayal, safety)
Optional storytelling in a safe, nonjudgmental environment
6. Values and strengths work:
Exploring identity beyond the trauma
Strengths-based affirmations and reframing
7. Boundary and assertiveness skills:
Role-playing
Exploring boundaries, like saying no and setting limits
Learning assertive communication strategies
Recognizing healthy vs. unhealthy relationships
Understanding fair fighting rules
8. Building safety plans:
Creating personal coping/safety plans
Support system mapping
Safety check-ins (What do I need when I feel triggered?)
How to use the trauma group therapy worksheets
You can download and use the trauma group therapy worksheets in several ways.
Trauma group therapy worksheets can be used individually or in group therapy sessions. The “What is trauma?” worksheet can be used to provide psychoeducation in sessions.
Therapists can also provide the worksheets or list of trauma group therapy activities to supervisees or coworkers to use in their practice.
Another way to use the trauma group therapy worksheets is to give them to clients in the group and work through the trauma group therapy activities together.
Then, ask clients to reflect on a specific activity worksheet as homework and report their progress at their next therapy appointment.
Sources
American Psychological Association. (2019). PTSD Treatment: Information for Patients and Families.
American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Trauma.
Bremner J. D. (2006). Traumatic stress: effects on the brain. Dialogues in clinical neuroscience.
Center for Substance Abuse Treatment. (2014). Trauma-informed care in behavioral health services (Treatment Improvement Protocol (TIP) Series, No. 57). Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
Griffin, S. M., Lebedová, A., Ahern, E., McMahon, G., Bradshaw, D., & Muldoon, O. T. (2023). PROTOCOL: Group-based interventions for posttraumatic stress disorder: A systematic review and meta-analysis of the role of trauma type. Campbell systematic reviews.
Morey, R. A., Gold, A. L., LaBar, K. S., Beall, S. K., Brown, V. M., Haswell, C. C., Nasser, J. D., Wagner, H. R., McCarthy, G., & Mid-Atlantic MIRECC Workgroup (2012). Amygdala volume changes in posttraumatic stress disorder in a large case-controlled veterans group. Archives of General Psychiatry.
National Institute of Mental Health. (2025). Traumatic Events and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
National Institute of Mental Health. (2025). Coping with traumatic events.
Ulman, K. H. (2004). Group Interventions for Treatment of Psychological Trauma. Module 1: Group Interventions for Treatment of Trauma in Adults. American Group Psychotherapy Association.
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