Program curriculum

The Seven-Step Recovery, Family & Personal Development System

Ericka Johnson Settles’s seven themes provide the narrative sequence. Evidence-based clinical methods, developmental adaptation, service classification, and individualized plans determine how the themes are used.

Program FrameworkAdult and youth adaptationsClinical, peer, family, and community applications

The narrative sequence

Keep the source voice. Strengthen the clinical and developmental body.

Source theme	Adult adaptation	Youth adaptation	Evidence anchor
Trust the Process	Change Has a Path	Build the Path, One Step at a Time	Motivational interviewing, stages of change, collaborative goal setting.
Don’t Stop When You’re Tired	Rest, Recover, and Finish What Matters	Keep Going, Ask for Help, and Finish the Next Step	Behavioral activation, relapse prevention, treatment adherence, safe persistence.
Self-Confidence	Strength, Worth, and Self-Efficacy	Know Your Strengths and Grow Your Confidence	CBT core-belief work, strengths practice, graded mastery.
Your Words Have Power	Speak Truth, Life, and Boundaries	Use Words That Help, Protect, and Repair	Assertiveness, DBT interpersonal effectiveness, communication repair.
Self-Sabotage	Recognize and Interrupt the Pattern	Notice the Pattern and Choose the Next Right Move	Functional analysis, behavior chains, coping and relapse-prevention skills.
Recalibrate Your Focus	Shift Attention Toward Purpose and Possibility	Refocus on What You Can Do Next	Cognitive restructuring, problem-solving, values-based activation.
Authenticity	Live From Your Values and True Voice	Be Yourself, Know Your Values, and Use Your Voice	Values clarification, committed action, identity and recovery capital.

Clinical use

The clinician identifies the assessed need, active objective, evidence-based intervention, participant response, progress, risk, and next step. The module title is not the medical necessity.

Peer use

Peers use approved prompts to support hope, reflection, self-advocacy, recovery identity, and action without interpreting symptoms or conducting psychotherapy.

Community use

Youth development, parenting, workforce, and family activities teach practical capacities in a separate nonclinical record and funding lane.

Source and rights boundaryThe program should use paraphrased themes and only short, specifically approved quotations until One Pulse holds written authority covering adaptation, reproduction, translation, training, public distribution, attribution, and revision approval. Scientific, biblical, historical, and public-figure claims require their own evidence review.

The book gives the program its heartbeat. The operating system gives that heartbeat a body capable of carrying people safely.

The Seven-Step system can appear across services without becoming the same service.

Every use must identify its purpose, qualified role, record, funding source, consent, outcome, and scope boundary.

See the adult continuum