The counsellor encourages the client to start from the ASSOCIATED card in order to maximise the likelihood of being able to see the disturbance from an ASSOCIATED point of view. This is likely to be somewhat different from the point of view they had when they were triggered by the original situation. The client moves from one card to another, based on the signals they notice when exploring their particular disturbance. In this way the template shows them how to sort their own disturbing signals into a framework that is easily followed and makes sense due to their ability to begin to see the situation from a present moment and childhood TRAINING context.
One starts with a single moment of disturbance and explores it in order to understand the dynamics of the disturbance in present moment context. Using simple questions and a process of elimination, the template guides the client toward the discovery of how things got this way and why they still occur. This inevitably leads toward an understanding of how patterns of insensitive behaviour, that usually date all the way back to dependence stage childhood or some later trauma, have trained parts of them to react in very prescribed, repetitive, and insensitive ways. These ways will have been effective from a survival based point of view and are unnecessary and insensitive in a present moment context.