A few years ago, I sat in a user testing workshop with a government service team redesigning part of Universal Credit. One of the participants, a single mother who had just started a zero-hours job, was trying to explain what it felt like to navigate our website after a 10-hour shift. “I read the page,” she said, “but my brain just slides off it.”

That moment stuck with me. It wasn’t a crisis. No one had died. But this was a person under pressure, mentally stretched, emotionally drained and trying to complete a form that was, to us, perfectly usable. She wasn’t traumatised in the clinical sense. But she was experiencing something I now call micro trauma, the invisible, cumulative toll of daily stress that fundamentally affects how people process content.

Since then, I’ve worked on services for the Cabinet Office, Ofsted, Cancer Research UK and the Metropolitan Police, and I’ve repeatedly seen this pattern: people freezing mid-journey, skipping critical steps or giving up entirely, not because the content was badly written but because their mental state couldn’t carry the load.

These things don’t show up in user research or testing. 

It’s why I’ve developed two new frameworks to help teams build content that doesn’t just “work” but truly meets people where they are:

• Trauma-Aware Content Strategy (TACS)

• Trauma-Informed Content Design (TICD)

These frameworks are built for designers, strategists and UX professionals who want to go beyond accessibility checklists and standard user needs. They help us design for the tired, the distracted and the overwhelmed. In other words: most of us, most of the time.

The problem with “pain points”

In content design, we often discuss pain points, which are central to user stories and journey mapping. However, pain points tend to be transactional: “This page is confusing”, “I can’t find this button”, or “the form crashes.” We diagnose and fix these.

But micro trauma is contextual. It doesn’t show up in Hotjar or Google Analytics. It shows up in the sigh before a user starts the journey. It’s the invisible fog of someone applying for benefits while fielding texts from a child’s school or trying to book a GP appointment while feeling unwell, resentful and ashamed.

Standard UX doesn’t account for this.

It assumes users are calm, focused and have the mental bandwidth to read, evaluate and decide. Real life is messier. Real users are often scared, short on time, mistrustful, distracted or just plain fed up.

This is where trauma-informed content design comes in.

Micro trauma: stress that undermines comprehension

Micro trauma isn’t a medical term. It’s my shorthand for the chronic, low-level strain of modern life: information overload, health worries, financial stress, caring responsibilities, broken sleep. The stuff that doesn’t warrant a diagnosis, but still frays your attention span and erodes your confidence.

Neuroscience backs this up. When we’re under stress, our cognitive processing narrows. We’re more likely to scan, skim or avoid complex information entirely, and our decision-making ability decreases.

This means that even good content can fail. Being clear is not enough. We must be careful.

Introducing TACS and TICD

These two frameworks bring trauma-informed principles into the heart of content work.

Trauma-Aware Content Strategy (TACS)

TACS asks us to think beyond audience segments and user goals. It asks:

• What’s the emotional state of this user?

• How can we reduce shame, overwhelm or fear in the way we structure and deliver content?

• What design decisions will build trust?

TACS works across five stages:

1. Discovery: Expand your user research to include emotional states and cognitive triggers.

2. Audit: Identify content that might alienate, confuse, or stress users. This includes tone, structure and even form logic.

3. Principles: Build design rules that reflect trauma-informed care: safety, trust, choice, collaboration, empowerment.

4. Implementation: Apply those principles through templates, guidelines, and team training.

5. Review: Monitor emotional impact through feedback, usability testing and complaints data.

Trauma-Informed Content Design (TICD)

TICD is the hands-on framework. It deals with the mechanics of writing and presenting content.

Key elements include:

• Clear structure: Use headings, bullets and short paragraphs to reduce mental effort.

• Tone of voice: Be direct, warm and respectful. Avoid passive aggression or corporate coldness.

• User control: Give users options, not ultimatums. Offer “show more” buttons and multiple support channels.

• Support cues: Embed reassurance, summaries and signposts.

• Visual clarity: Use calm design – no clutter, good contrast, intuitive layout.

TICD also encourages testing with users who are cognitively or emotionally “at capacity.” This reveals which parts of the journey collapse under stress.

The ROI of trauma-informed content

Why do this? Why go beyond standard best practice? Because:

• Users stay: People who feel safe are more likely to complete journeys and return.

• Users trust: They can sense when content respects them.

• Complaints drop: Clearer, kinder content reduces frustration and confusion.

• Equity improves: It’s a leveller, a way of including people who are otherwise excluded by cognitive or emotional load.

One of my clients, a public health service, saw a 25% drop in helpline calls after rewriting its online information with TICD principles, not by removing content but by reordering and rephrasing it so people could absorb it more easily.

Final thoughts

We spend a lot of time in this industry discussing clarity. But clarity without care can still be cruel and exclusionary.

Trauma-aware strategy and trauma-informed design are not just about accessibility or best practices. They’re about humility, about acknowledging that most people are not coming to our services at their best. They’re tired, nervous and unsure.

When our content meets them there, calmly, clearly, and with respect, we don’t just inform. We support.

And that, in my view, is what great content is meant to do.s