A Trauma-Informed, Multi-Lens Framework for Therapeutic Practice
Launched in 2026, the Kaleidoscope Trauma Framework™ is a philosophy-led, trauma-informed framework for practitioners, therapists and counsellors, informed by biopsychosocial perspectives and grounded in whole-self therapeutic practice.
The name Kaleidoscope reflects the understanding that experience shifts depending on context, safety, power, and relational positioning. When we change the lens, different patterns come into view none of them fixed, all of them meaningful.
This Framework is not a protocol or set of techniques. It is a way of seeing, locating, and responding to complexity in therapeutic work, particularly where trauma intersects with neurodivergence, chronic illness, and layered lived experience. The framework recognises that therapeutic understanding is never static and different aspects of a person’s experience come into focus through their journey.
Why the Framework Matters
Many people seeking support do not fit neatly into diagnostic categories or linear recovery narratives. Distress may be shaped by developmental and relational trauma, neurodivergent ways of sensing and processing, chronic illness and fluctuating capacity, and social, cultural, or systemic pressures.
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Trauma is relational, embodied, and contextual
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Distress often reflects adaptation rather than pathology
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Bodies and nervous systems carry meaning beyond words
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Neurodivergence and chronic illness are central lived experiences, not add-ons
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Ethics are enacted moment-to-moment, not only through policy
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Practitioners are part of the relational field, not outside it
Lenses within the Kaleidoscope Trauma Framework™
The Kaleidoscope Trauma Framework™ is held through changing lenses. These lenses are fluid rather than fixed, shifting in prominence depending on context, safety, relational dynamics, and lived experience. They are not applied sequentially or hierarchically, but held in relationship to one another as therapeutic understanding evolves. Different lenses come into focus depending on context, safety, relational dynamics, and lived experience.
The Body
Nervous system states, sensory processing, pain, fatigue, chronic illness, medication effects, and survival responses.
Reflective focus: What is the body responding to right now?
The Mind
Meaning-making, trauma cognition, dissociation, attention, executive functioning, and internalised narratives such as shame, responsibility, or self-blame.
Reflective focus: How is understanding being shaped by threat or safety?
The Relational Field
Attachment dynamics, power, rupture and repair, transference, projection, and parallel process within therapeutic relationships.
Reflective focus: What is happening between us?
Identity & Lived Experience
Neurodivergence, chronic illness, disability, gender, race, class, culture, and intersecting marginalisation.
Reflective focus: Whose norms are shaping this space?
Systems & Context
Services, institutions, medical and mental health systems, risk cultures, productivity expectations, and forms of gatekeeping that shape access to care.
Reflective focus: What pressures are acting on this work from outside the room?
The Practitioner
The practitioner’s nervous system, positionality, lived experience, limits, ethical responsibilities, and need for support and sustainability.
Reflective focus: What am I bringing into this space today?
Practitioners, therapists & counsellors who wish to train in the Kaleidoscope Trauma Framework™ can explore the Advanced Certificate in Therapeutic Trauma Practice, which offers in-depth, supported learning grounded in this approach as a stand-alone professional training.
The course will include:
- In-depth teaching of the Kaleidoscope Trauma Framework™
- Application of multi-lens thinking to therapeutic practice
- Integration of somatic, relational, and trauma-informed principles
- In-person training days and facilitated online supervision
- A certificate awarded on completion
Full course details, dates, and registration information are available here