Plan A and Plan B in TIFT®

Down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass

Conceptual TIFT® document | September 2026

TIFT® Trauma Integrating Flow Therapy (TIFT) understands Plan A and Plan B as two configurations of one continuous living template. Plan A expresses organisation that supports differentiation, connection, protection, exploration and ongoing transformation. Under heightened attachment constraints, this template folds over itself and develops the reversed relations characteristic of Plan B.

Lewis Carroll’s two Alice books offer a precise imaginative geometry for this transition. The rabbit hole reveals a hidden dimensional organisation. The looking glass reveals the reversal of relations within that organisation. The folded crêpe makes their continuity tangible.

Down the rabbit hole

Alice first falls down the rabbit hole. A familiar surface opens into another dimensional organisation with its own relations, proportions and rules. The visible world has contained more dimensional depth than its surface allowed her to perceive.

The movement resembles the transition from the observable manifestations of complex trauma to the hidden configuration that organises them. Symptoms, relational patterns, bodily states, upper and lower branches, and dissociative transitions become expressions of one underlying organisation. A twodimensional view separates them. A higher-dimensional view reveals their continuity.

The rabbit hole therefore represents access to the configuration folded beneath the visible clinical surface. It opens perception toward the space in which apparently separate manifestations belong to one whole organism.

The zero point beneath the structural deficiencies

At the threshold of Stage III, the configuration can begin to unfold from within, like a flower opening under sufficiently supportive conditions. Unfolding and reorganisation occur together: as the form opens, the deeper constrained folds manifest and gain space to breathe. This is the two hands clapping: what can now be held meets what can now emerge, closing the gap that had kept those folds enclosed. As the adaptive holding configuration loosens, the client may enter a period of disorientation, void and non-knowing. The previous coordinates lose organising power; knowledge, direction and available movement can temporarily disappear.

This is the tumble down the rabbit hole: a passage beneath the structural deficiencies and through the organisation that had compensated for them. Like a body inside a forward roll, the client leaves the familiar ground and is carried through a movement whose direction cannot yet be seen.

The therapist enters non-knowing with the client. The architecture remains held through presence, boundary, rhythm and connection, while the form that will emerge remains open. No push, no pull: the therapist meets the client inside the zero point and accompanies the transition without determining its outcome.

At the level of experience, movement can appear to have ceased. Beneath this perceptible stillness, the living system is reorganising. The former organisation has released its hold while the emerging configuration is still acquiring stability.

The person emerges on a new inner and relational ground from which movement, connection and growth can resume. The passage can be experienced as a form of dying and rebirth, while continuity remains preserved throughout the transformation.

The therapist holds the architecture while releasing knowledge of the form that must emerge.

Through the looking glass

Alice later passes through the looking glass. The elements remain recognisable while their direction, sequence and relations are reversed. This second movement corresponds to the structural reversal created within Plan B.

Under constrained attachment conditions, the child turns toward the parent whose state must be continuously read and regulated. The child protects the parent, adapts to the parent’s needs and organises connection around the parent’s available conditions. Loyalty turns away from the child’s own needs. Danger can carry the meaning of connection, while vitality, self-expression and differentiation can acquire the meaning of threat.

The looking glass makes the torsion perceptible. The components of the living template remain present, while their relations have changed orientation.

The rabbit hole reveals the hidden dimension. The looking glass reveals the torsion.

The folded crêpe

Plan B mirrors Plan A because Plan A has folded over itself like a crêpe. Folding changes which surface is visible, what touches what, and how the whole occupies space. The same material continues throughout the fold. The living template remains active within its altered relation to itself.

This image gives Plan B its full structural intelligence. The fold preserves attachment, continuity and survival under the conditions available to the child. Each later configuration builds upon this existing template as circumstances change. The original fold becomes recognisable across bodily, relational, emotional, cognitive and temporal organisation.

Within the fold lies the opening for transformation. Its continuity allows movement to travel through the configuration. Each present moment offers a new initial condition in which the existing relations can reorganise.

Clinical consequences for TIFT

TIFT begins with the person’s present configuration. The most recent foot caught in the carpet contains the history of the preceding folds. Two or three recent points of activation provide sufficient access to the organisation currently available within the client’s integration window.

The therapist meets the fold through a held and active encounter. Architecture, inner holding and exploratory attention operate together. The session sequence, MEET, small cycles, interruptions, differences and pauses modulate the conditions around the configuration.

The first part of the session meets the constrained invariant in the direction of its existing organisation. Rhythm, containing and carefully adjusted interruptions warm the compressed configuration. The reiterated cycles then allow the invariant to re-enter movement without releasing its accumulated energy all at once.

During the cycles, activation and change move within the client, the therapist and the field between them. The pauses provide settling, horizontal connection and reorganisation. The emergent quality indicates the direction of movement: toward greater dissipation and closure on the red wing, or toward integration, connection and increased degrees of freedom on the green wing.

The opening inherent in Plan B

Plan B carries Plan A within its present configuration. The clinical opening is therefore already present inside the fold. Transformation proceeds through conditions that allow the living template to regain mobility, reorganise its relations and express a wider range of possibilities.

The process preserves continuity while form unfolds. The person remains whole throughout. The same living organisation that generated the folded solution also carries the capacity for further transformation.

In the final undoing of the twist, the folded crêpe can open. Both sides can be true within one continuous whole; neither must remain enfolded and hidden.

TIFT restores movement to the fold. Continuity is preserved. Form unfolds.