Five pedagogical approaches are used when delivering PS-R.

1. Individual Sessions: Supporting youth healing from trauma requires safe and supportive confidential communication to promote health and well-being. It is imperative that all communication meets Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requirements ensuring data privacy and security provisions for safeguarding mental health information.

2. Motivational Interviewing: This is a collaborative conversation style for strengthening a person’s own motivation and commitment to change (Miller & Rollnick, 2013). It provides a foundation for optimally engaging participants and communicating effectively. All facilitators are expected to demonstrate competence in this philosophical approach.

3. Role Modeling: Children learn what they live. When facilitators model health, well-being, self-care, and warm, nonjudgmental, empathic, and genuine communication young people are more likely to mirror such behavior.

4. Affect Regulation: A trauma-informed approach for adolescent sexual health is predicated on affect regulation. Affect regulation has five core components: thoughts (cognition), feelings (affect), physiological reactions, behavior, and outcomes. The first three are internal processes people learn to mindfully observe as they experience external stimuli (arousal [not necessarily sexual]). These three internal elements influence decision-making that in turn influences behavior and outcomes. While cognition and behavior play a part in all therapy this approach is not limited to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). This model reflects tenets of trauma-informed interventions promoted through the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN).

5. Skill Practice: People are most likely to remember what they directly experience and practice. Neuroscience indicates that humans thrive in settings that provide a variety of stimulating, engaging, and increasingly challenging experiences with enough repetition to solidify desired outcomes (Steinberg, 2014, van der Kolk, 2014). Opportunities to practice personal ideas for change allows for mistakes and poor judgment to be self-corrected with support and encouragement (Steinberg, 2014, van der Kolk, 2014).