The concept of “therapeutic window” is discussed in detail in Principles of Trauma Therapy: A Guide to Symptoms, Evaluation, and Treatment by John N. Briere and Catherine Scott. The therapeutic window, as presented by Briere and Scott, refers to a psychological midpoint between the inadequate and overwhelming activation of trauma-related emotion during treatment. It is a hypothetical target where therapeutic interventions can be most helpful. Psychotherapeutic interventions within the therapeutic window are neither so trivial that they provide inadequate memory exposure and processing; nor so intense that the client’s balance between acceptable memory activation and overwhelming emotion is tipped towards the latter. In other words, interventions that take into consideration the therapeutic window are those that trigger trauma memory enough to promote processing but do not overwhelm internal protective systems such that untoward avoidance responses take over.

To put it another way, interventions that “undershoot” the therapeutic window are ineffective and a waste of time. Those that “overshoot” the window constitute re-traumatization. In the former, the client may avoid returning for further treatment because they feel nothing is being accomplished. In the latter, the client may avoid returning for treatment because, having been retraumatized, they are frightened.

The therapist must remain completely attuned to the client, their verbal, emotional and physical presentations give you the keys to see how far to go and how not to go farther. Each encounter between the therapist and client should be more powerful than the titrated exposure to the trauma within that therapeutic window. In that way, each time a client comes to therapy they will leave feeling just a little bit better than when they came in. This is critical to encouraging their hope for recovery and their further establishing of a therapeutic alliance with the therapist