OFFICE OF TRANSITIONAL CONTACT
First-Moment Encounter Guidelines, Revision 7
For distribution to licensed contact facilitators
This document supersedes Revisions 1 through 6. It does not supersede the encounter itself.
Section 1: What Is Known
Approximately thirty-four percent of individuals who experience a qualifying transitional event report encountering a self-presentation during the first moment. First-moment encounters are typically brief. Duration of fifteen to forty-five seconds is most commonly reported. Longer encounters have been documented. Durations shorter than eight seconds are also on record.
The self-presentation appears to have knowledge of the individual's life up to the moment of transition. It does not appear to have knowledge beyond this point.
Section 2: What Is Not Known
The nature, mechanism, or cause of first-moment encounters is not established. Whether they are a feature of consciousness, an artifact of trauma, or something else is not resolved in the current literature. This document does not attempt to answer these questions.
Section 3: Guidance for First-Moment Encounters
3.1 You will have approximately thirty seconds.
3.2 We are not able to prescribe what you should say. No two encounters proceed identically.
3.3 Some individuals report wishing to ask questions. Others report that questions were not useful.
3.4 The self-presentation may speak first.
3.5 It is not useful to introduce yourself.
3.6 In the majority of reported cases, both parties already know the relevant things.
Section 4: What to Do Afterward
If you are a facilitator accompanying someone through a qualifying event, please complete Form TC-002 (First-Moment Encounter Report) within forty-eight hours.
If you are the individual who has had the encounter: there is no required form. Optional reflection resources are available through the Office. Facilitators have been trained to provide these.
We acknowledge that no document we can produce is adequate to what you have been through. We have been trying, across seven revisions, to write something adequate. We have not succeeded. We have produced something useful, which is different.
Date of issue: March 2024. Supersedes TC-001-R6 (September 2022).