An Introduction to STAIR Narrative Therapy

A clinical quick-start guide to the phase-based treatment developed by Marylène Cloitre and colleagues for adults with Complex PTSD. This book walks licensed and license-eligible clinicians through the eighteen-session second edition protocol, session by session, in accessible clinical language. It covers assessment and case conceptualization, the ten-session skills training module, the eight-session narrative therapy module, fidelity and flexible adaptation, ethics, and clinician self-care. Each chapter includes composite case examples, worked clinical decisions, common beginner errors and how to recover from them, and references for continued study. The material is grounded in more than two decades of randomized trial evidence on STAIR and its adaptations, including recent work on Enhanced STAIR for ICD-11 Complex PTSD. For clinicians ready to add a structured phase-based approach to their work with complex trauma, this is a practical place to begin.