Tools & Worksheets
For the work between sessions.
Worksheets
01
Nervous System Regulation Practice
Catch it · Relax · Notice Safety · Repeat
For the moments your body gets there before your brain does. Four simple steps to move out of fight or flight and into regulation.
1 page · PDF · Differentiation · Used in trauma therapy
02
Attachment Style Characteristics
Anxious · Dismissive Avoidant · Fearful Avoidant · Secure
All four styles side by side: the wound underneath each one, what it needs, how it fights, and what it does to cope. Most people find themselves on one page and their partner on another.
Watch first: Thais Gibson
Cheat sheet and videos created by Thais Gibson and The Personal Development School. © 2022. Shared here with credit to the author; all rights remain theirs.
15 pages · PDF · Differentiation · Used in couples counseling
03
List of Core Negative Belief Wounds
Integrated Attachment Theory
When something small lands hard, it’s rarely about the thing itself. It’s what your brain decided it meant in about a second: I don’t matter. I’m not enough. I’m going to be left.
Created by Thais Gibson and The Personal Development School. © 2022. Shared here with credit to the author; all rights remain theirs.
1 page · PDF · Differentiation · Used in individual counseling
04
Survival Brain in Relationships
Fight · Flight · Freeze · Fawn · Forfeit
The five ways a nervous system protects you when it reads a relationship as threatening, mapped by whether you move toward the threat or away from it. Each quadrant lists what that state actually sounds like out loud. Most people find the one they live in, and the one their partner lives in.
1 page · PDF · Differentiation · Used in couples counseling
05
When My Nervous System Detects Threat
Recognizing protective behaviors in yourself and your partner
A checklist of the behaviors each survival state produces. Circle what you recognize in yourself, then use a second color for what you see in your partner. It’s built for spotting patterns, not assigning blame. These are strategies, not character flaws.
3 pages · PDF · Differentiation · Used in trauma therapy
06
The Autonomic Nervous System
How the body responds to threat
The physiology underneath the other worksheets: ventral vagal, sympathetic and dorsal vagal, and what each state does to your body and your thinking. Useful for understanding why a reaction arrives before you can think about it.
1 page · PDF · Differentiation · Used in trauma therapy
07
Our Cycle
Mapping the pattern we fall into together
Map the loop the two of you get into: what your partner does, what you do in response, and what each of you is feeling underneath it. Fill it out separately, then compare. The second page pulls it together: which core wound gets triggered, which protective behavior you reach for, and the whole thing reduced to one sentence: the more I ___, the more my partner ___.
2 pages · PDF · Differentiation · Used in couples counseling
08
Differentiation
Staying connected without losing yourself
Your partner’s behavior is usually about their inner world, not a verdict on yours. This one gives you a question to ask when you’re triggered (what am I making this mean about me right now?), then has you trace that meaning back to the core wound underneath it.
8 pages · PDF · Differentiation · Used in couples counseling
09
List of Tertiary Needs
Integrated Attachment Theory
The specific vocabulary for what you’re actually asking for. Five categories: connection, certainty, uncertainty, growth, significance. This is the companion to the core wounds sheet: that one names what gets hit, this one names what was missing.
Created by Thais Gibson and The Personal Development School. © 2022. Shared here with credit to the author; all rights remain theirs.
1 page · PDF · Differentiation · Used in couples counseling
10
Relational Development
The Mental Fitness of Love
Dependence, independence, interdependence: I can need you, I can be me, I can be me and be deeply connected to you. Not stages you outgrow but capacities you keep moving between, and when a relationship is struggling it’s often one of them that needs shoring up rather than the argument that needs settling.
3 pages · PDF · Differentiation · Used in couples counseling
11
Self-Sourcing
Owning what belongs to you
Before you ask a partner to help meet a need, you take ownership of it yourself: my need, my responsibility, not my need alone. Taking responsibility doesn’t mean meeting it alone; it means becoming the person who knows the need, cares for it, and participates in meeting it.
4 pages · PDF · Differentiation · Used in individual counseling
12
Updating Old Programs
Preparing for inner child healing sessions
The wounds you’ve identified work like old programs: beliefs and protective strategies your brain wrote in response to pain, often before you could consciously evaluate what was happening. A strategy that was adaptive then can be outdated now, and this one asks whether the strategies that got you through are still right for the relationship you’re trying to build.
4 pages · PDF · Differentiation · Used in EMDR therapy
If you need help right now
These resources are for the work between sessions. They are not emergency care. If you are in immediate danger, call 911.
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: call or text 988
24/7 · 988lifeline.org
Crisis Text Line: text HOME to 741741
24/7
MHMR of Tarrant County (ICARE): call or text 1-800-866-2465
Local crisis line, 24/7
National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233
Or text START to 88788
You don't have to figure this out alone.
COUNSELING IN ARLINGTON
Couples counseling · Individual counseling · EMDR therapy · Trauma therapy · Grief & loss · Christian counseling
Greater House Counseling
At the intersection of E. Randol Mill and Ballpark Way
For emergencies call 911 or visit your nearest hospital