TEI
Traumatic Experience Inventory
This exploratory questionnaire describes the impact of one or more traumatic events: re-experiencing, avoidance, sense of threat, guilt and shame, disconnection and emotional overwhelm, and trust in relationships. It draws on the dimensions of posttraumatic stress disorder and complex posttraumatic stress disorder to clarify the clinical picture and choose treatment targets.
- Number of questions
- 24 questions
- Estimated duration
- 6 minutes
- Language
- English
- Original name
- Traumatic Experience Inventory
- Target audience
- Adults
- Category
- PTSD
- Exploratory questionnaire
- Exploratory questionnaire
Preview of the 24 questions
Scoring & interpretation
Scoring
| Re-experiencing | 11 / 16 |
Intrusive memories of the event, nightmares, the sense of reliving it, intense reactions to reminders.
Areas to explore: how often the memories occur and what triggers them, nightmares, physical reactions to reminders.
| Avoidance | 11 / 16 |
Efforts not to think or talk about the event and to avoid what brings it to mind.
Areas to explore: the places, people, activities, and topics avoided, what avoidance costs in daily life.
| Sense of threat | 9 / 16 |
Hypervigilance, exaggerated startle, the feeling that danger could strike at any moment.
Areas to explore: the situations in which vigilance rises, safety behaviors, sleep.
| Guilt and shame | 7 / 16 |
Guilt, shame, negative beliefs about oneself or the world that have appeared or grown stronger since the event.
Areas to explore: what the person blames themselves for, what the event has changed in how they see themselves and others.
| Trust and relationships | 6 / 16 |
Difficulty trusting, a sense of distance from others, a tendency to isolate oneself.
Areas to explore: the relationships affected, trusted people, the support received after the event.
See also: Loneliness Experience Inventory.
| Disconnection and emotional overwhelm | 2 / 16 |
Moments of detachment (unreality, numbed emotions) and emotions that are hard to soothe.
Areas to explore: episodes of disconnection and their triggers, the ways the person calms down, any risk-taking behaviors.
No validated clinical or psychometric cutoffs have been established for this test yet. The results should therefore be considered exploratory indicators, meant to support the clinical interview, not diagnostic findings.
Scoring
Each statement is scored from 0 (never) to 4 (very often) based on its frequency over the past month. Each domain combines 4 statements spread throughout the questionnaire, giving a score from 0 to 16.
Reading the profile
There is no total score. Domains are ranked from most to least elevated, each with a description of what it covers and points to explore in the interview. The first three domains (re-experiencing, avoidance, sense of threat) correspond to posttraumatic stress disorder; guilt and shame, emotional overwhelm, and relationship difficulties overlap with the disturbances in self-organization described in complex PTSD. The profile helps choose between trauma-focused work and preliminary stabilization work.
Clinical cautions
Completing the questionnaire may bring back painful memories, so it is best offered at a time when a conversation can follow soon after. The introduction tells the patient that they do not have to describe the events.
Limitations
This exploratory questionnaire has not undergone psychometric validation and has no cutoffs. It supports the clinical interview and does not provide a diagnosis.
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