This program focuses on enabling the client to break the trauma bond, which has controlled the client's thoughts, feelings and behaviors. They then process and face fears which can eventually result in relief of trauma-related symptoms, as well as integration of dissociated aspects of the experience and of self. For trauma victims, dissociation often results in memory disturbance. While dissociation is adaptive at the time of the trauma, it can later become maladaptive by causing an inability to recognize the underlying causes of current distress. The individual becomes numb, stops thinking and feeling, and feels like an object. Bonding to others is disrupted, as are object relations, self-esteem and trust. Often the individual experiences chronic depression, repetitive self-destructive behaviors, and even apparent hallucinations. Many individuals are erroneously diagnosed, and typically they do not respond to treatment.

The program addresses the dissociative state by utilizing the grief model called "Reliving, Revising and Revisiting." After forming a trusting, safe relationship with the primary therapist, the individual addresses core trauma issues. As they begin to feel the trauma, reassociating the cognition and the affect, information reprocessing techniques are utilized to restructure their sense of self in relation to "what was done to them." The adult's capacity to reason and the victim's capacity to feel are slowly integrated, resulting in diminution of destructive =behavior and enhanced capacity to relearn a constructive sense of self, the ability to socially interact competently, and the ability to solve problems.