Veteran worksheets for combat trauma, MST, survivor guilt and coming home.
Military trauma rarely presents as a single memory. These printable pages map the whole load before anything is opened, hold military sexual trauma and institutional betrayal without requiring the assault to be retold, separate survivor guilt from grief, rebuild structure and belonging after discharge, and give the household a level-matched plan for hypervigilance.
Window of Tolerance
Map your nervous system zones — and what brings you back
Hyperarousal, window, hypoarousal. A trauma-informed visual that gives clients language for what their body is doing.
Hypervigilance De-escalation Ladder
Match the intervention to the intensity
A five-level ladder from baseline scanning to flooded, each with the body signal, the thinking signal and the intervention that actually works at that level — plus what to stop attempting above a seven.
Moral Injury Worksheet
Guilt, shame and betrayal rather than fear
The three routes into moral injury, then one event worked: what happened, the value it broke, the verdict reached about the self, what was known at the time, what choices genuinely existed, who else held power, and a more complete sentence about responsibility.
Combat Trauma Worksheet
Map the load before opening a single memory
A five-row intrusion log with triggers and intensity, six body-level markers to check, what is being avoided and its cost, and a pacing section requiring two tested down-regulation tools and a contact before any memory is worked.
Military Sexual Trauma Worksheet
Written to hold institutional betrayal without retelling the assault
No narrative prompt: what changed about safety and authority, what has never been said out loud, five institutional-response markers, what that response taught the client about being harmed, and what they want from treatment.
Survivor Guilt Worksheet
Separate the grief from the verdict
The comparison the guilt makes, its exact sentence and felt truth, what was actually within the client's control versus decided by chance or seconds, four functions the guilt may be serving, and another way to keep faith with the person who died.
Veteran Transition to Civilian Life Worksheet
Structure, purpose, belonging and identity, rebuilt deliberately
The four things service supplied, each rated then and now with what would raise it by one, six common transition difficulties to check, and a rebuild plan naming one anchor, one source of consequence and one group who understands.
Hypervigilance at Home Plan
Dose the skill down, do not shame it
A five-row map of settings, cues and automatic responses, four level-matched response sets from orienting at a three to safety-only at a nine, and a household agreement covering the client's exit signal, what helps, what makes it worse and the anger plan.
Map the load before opening a memory
The combat trauma worksheet is deliberately an assessment page rather than a processing one: what intrudes and how often, the trigger for each, six body-level markers, what is being routed around, and what avoidance currently costs. Only then does it ask for two down-regulation tools that have actually been tested and a contact for tonight if something opens up.
Two screens belong here. If guilt or betrayal leads the distress, add the moral injury pages. If concentration difficulties, headaches and irritability dominate, ask about blast exposure and head injury before attributing everything to PTSD.
MST: two threads, both treated
The military sexual trauma page contains no prompt asking for a narrative of the assault. Detail belongs in a paced protocol, not on a first page. What it does ask is what changed about safety and authority, what has never been said out loud and to whom in role terms, and five markers of what happened after the harm — disbelief, unsafe reporting, continuing to work alongside the person, career or discharge consequences, no one whose job it was to protect them.
Working only the assault leaves institutional betrayal intact, and that betrayal is often what maintains hypervigilance around authority and help-seeking long after the event. Name both threads in the formulation.
Survivor guilt is loyalty in the wrong shape
The survivor guilt page separates grief, which needs no reframing, from the verdict attached to it. It asks what was actually within reach at the time versus what was decided by chance, position, orders or seconds, and what the client would say to someone else standing where they stood.
Then it asks what the guilt is doing: keeping a connection alive, making sure the loss is never treated as nothing, preventing them from being someone who moved on, or punishing them so nobody else has to. Another way of keeping faith usually exists, and it does not require the client's life staying small.
Coming home is a rebuild, not a mood problem
Service supplied structure, purpose, belonging and identity simultaneously, and discharge removes all four. Waiting for motivation to return before rebuilding inverts the order; the transition worksheet rates each domain then and now and asks only what would raise it by one point.
The hypervigilance-at-home plan protects the relationships that make any of this possible. It maps where vigilance fires, sets level-matched responses, and writes down the client's exit signal, what it does not mean, what helps from the people they live with, and how the conversation resumes once the level is down.
Frequently asked questions
What is combat PTSD?+
Combat PTSD is post-traumatic stress arising from deployment and combat exposure: intrusion, avoidance, negative alterations in mood and cognition, and hyperarousal. In practice it rarely arrives as one memory. It is a load — several events, a body that still scans, sleep that never fully returned — which is why the combat trauma worksheet maps the whole picture before any single memory is opened.
How is moral injury different from combat PTSD?+
PTSD is organised around fear and threat to life; moral injury is organised around guilt, shame and betrayal, and threat to integrity. A veteran can meet full PTSD criteria and still have their worst nights driven by something they did, saw or could not stop. If guilt or betrayal leads the distress, work the moral injury pages alongside the trauma protocol rather than after it.
What is military sexual trauma?+
Military sexual trauma refers to sexual assault or repeated threatening sexual harassment experienced during military service. What distinguishes it clinically is that the harm and the chain of command often occupied the same place, so reporting, safety and career were entangled. The institutional response — disbelief, retaliation, transfer, silence — is frequently the layer that has never been named.
Why do veterans stay hypervigilant at home?+
Because vigilance was trained and reinforced under conditions where it worked. It does not switch off because the setting changed. Treating it as irrational rarely reduces it; matching the response to the level of activation does — orienting and long exhales at a three, movement before words at a seven, safety only at a nine — together with a household signal agreed in advance.
Why does transition to civilian life hit so hard?+
Discharge removes structure, purpose, belonging and a known identity at the same time, and the resulting flatness is often labelled depression. The transition worksheet rates each of the four then and now, checks six common difficulties, and rebuilds deliberately: one fixed anchor in the week, one thing that gives the day consequence, one group who understands. Structure and belonging usually move before mood does.
Can veterans complete these worksheets between sessions?+
The transition worksheet, the hypervigilance-at-home plan and the intrusion map travel well and are useful to share with a partner. The MST page contains no narrative prompt by design, but it and the survivor guilt page can activate shame and grief, so pace them with support. Every page is PII-free — roles and settings, never names, units or dates of service.
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