Trauma inventory for partners: what it measures and how it is used

A trauma inventory answers a specific question: which trauma symptoms are you carrying right now, and how intense are they? It is a structured set of questions a clinician uses to map the symptom picture after betrayal. It is not a test you pass or fail, and it does not decide anything about your relationship.

Many partners say they don't recognize themselves after discovery. They can't sleep, they replay images they never saw, they check, and they feel either flooded or numb. A trauma inventory puts those experiences into a shape your clinician can work with.

What it measures

The inventory follows the four symptom groups clinicians use to describe a trauma response:

• Intrusion: images, thoughts and replayed conversations that arrive uninvited, nightmares, and the sense of reliving the moment of discovery. Intrusive thoughts covers these.
• Hyperarousal: being on alert all the time, startling easily, scanning his phone, his face or his schedule, trouble sleeping, irritability. See hypervigilance and sleep disruption.
• Avoidance: steering clear of places, songs, shows or conversations that bring it back, or shutting down feelings altogether.
• Changes in mood and thinking: shame that isn't yours, doubting your own memory and judgment, feeling detached from people, losing interest in things that used to matter. Reality-testing erosion covers the "am I going crazy?" experience.

It also asks how much these symptoms are getting in the way of daily life: work, parenting, eating, sleeping and friendships.

How it fits with the other measures

The trauma inventory is one of two core partner measures. The other, a partner-impact self-assessment, looks at breadth: how far the betrayal has reached across emotional, physical, relational, sexual, financial and spiritual life. The trauma inventory looks at depth: how loud the trauma symptoms are.

Broader screening for depression, anxiety and sleep is added when the picture calls for it, because all three often show up alongside betrayal trauma and are treatable in their own right. Betrayal trauma assessments explains the full set.

When it is repeated

At intake, at week four, at week eight, and at the six-month follow-up. A single score is a snapshot; repeated scores show a direction. Recovery is not a straight line, and a hard week months in can feel like you are back at the start. Seeing the numbers move over time is often what helps partners trust that something is changing.

What your clinician does with it

• Decides where to start. Acute symptoms that need calming come first. Currently, the Partner & Family Program focuses on the first phase of the APSATS model, safety and stabilization, before deeper trauma work.
• Picks the loudest symptoms to work on first. If sleep is gone, sleep is the starting point. If intrusive images are taking over the day, that's where the first tools go.
• Reviews it with you. Results are explained to you, not filed away. You are entitled to know what your own clinical picture says.

What it does not do

It does not diagnose you. Betrayal trauma isn't a separate diagnosis in the DSM-5-TR or the ICD-11; betrayal trauma vs. PTSD explains the difference. The inventory describes the pattern and its severity. It does not produce a label.

It does not judge the relationship. No score tells you whether he is trustworthy or whether to stay. That question belongs in should I stay or leave, and it isn't a scored one.

It does not measure what you contributed. Nothing in it is built on the old codependency framework. You are assessed as a person responding to an injury.

A high score is not damage. It means you are carrying a great deal right now. A lower score doesn't mean your experience doesn't deserve care.

Privacy

Your answers and scores are part of your own clinical record, separate from his. He doesn't see them, and completing the inventory puts nothing in front of him.

If something urgent comes up

Some answers change the plan straight away, such as thoughts of self-harm, heavy drinking or other substance use, or not feeling safe at home. Your clinician will raise it at the time, not at the next appointment.

Getting started

The trauma inventory is completed with a clinician as part of intake into the Partner & Family Program. You have your own intake and your own clinician, and you don't need him to be in treatment or to agree.

Call (512) 877-8616, or request a confidential consult.

If you are in immediate danger or thinking about harming yourself, call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, available 24 hours a day, or call 911. If you do not feel physically safe at home, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233.