The aim of counselling is to open up a situation. Trauma work is completely different. The aim is for the individuals to make sense of the incident, and then to move on from their initial trauma response and resume a normal life. The most important thing about a trauma debrief is to ensure that people do not feel worse. Effective trauma debriefing demonstrates to the participants that their response to the trauma eg. nightmares, flashbacks, is their brains' way of helping them get over the traumatic experience and is a normal short-term response. However, if it continues, it can develop into complications. Good debriefing can help to prevent this.

Individual
Most individuals want to get over the trauma and return to their pre-trauma lives. Debriefing, sometimes also involving the Rapid Trauma Cure, a tried and tested successful de-traumatising procedure, can speed them towards that goal.

Groups
Where the trauma has affected a group, a group debrief can help the individual members enormously by providing a more complete picture of events. The rationale for this is that, while we remember an event and parts of it are missing in our memory, we continually revisit the experience in an attempt to fill the gaps, and thus find it more difficult to move on. A group debrief can enable each individual to complete the picture of what happened so they can make sense of it and move on to full functioning.