1. Specific Interaction: Identify the specific interaction or behavioral sequence you intend to change.
2. Rationale: provide a rationale for this specific sequence--e.g. why are you selecting this sequence for use with this particular treatment approach. Be sure you identify the intended effect. Identify the potential adverse reactions and what you will do to prevent them. If one of the adverse reactions were to occur, explain what you will do to place the therapy back on track.
3. Environmental Climate: Explain how you will establish a climate of receptivity for your intervention. Describe what you will say/do.
4. Intervention: Describe the intervention, the shift you expect to occur, and the changes you expect in each family member. Describe how you will deliver the intervention. Using a dialogue, say what you would actually say when delivering the intervention and how you imagine family members responding. Say how you will language it. Describe the persons to whom you will present the intervention (e.g. whole family, parents, siblings alone, etc.). If you are constructing one intervention for a person or subsystem and a different intervention for another, explain the safeguards you will use to prevent contamination from one to the other, and what you will say/do if your different assignments are shared.
5. Contingency Plans: Describe what the clients would be likely to say/do in response to your intervention (resist, intensify symptoms, agree with you, become emotionally reactive to you, cognitively reflect on the nature of your intervention, etc.) then describe what you will say/do.
6. Maintaining the Shift: Assuming that the intervention is successful, explain what you will say/do to ensure that the change is maintained. "We can't assume that everyone "lives happily ever after."