Table 1. Key characteristics of the storytelling intervention.

What it is	What it is not
An elicitation of the surrogate's story of their own experience of the patient's illness and death in the ICU. The elements of the story include: the illness that brought the patient to the ICU the ICU experience, including the decision* to limit life-sustaining treatment and the ensuing death the other people involved, including an exploration of who the patient was as a person and how the subject made decisions* with the patient's values as a guide the aftermath Elicitation involves active, empathic listening skills, including: Open-ended questions / probes Reflective summary statements Emotion-handling statements (NURSE) Elicitation focuses on the “hot cognitions” – i.e., those areas of the story that appear to generate strong emotion, as reflected by verbal and non-verbal signals from the subject. At these points, the SUDS are assessed.	Psychotherapy. Empathic listening is a necessary but insufficient component of all forms of psychotherapy, including interpersonal psychotherapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, and problem solving therapy. Our intervention will not involve the other key components of psychotherapy: A longitudinal relationship; Guidance or intent regarding changing behavior, thoughts, or feelings. The intervention does not seek to cause the subject to reconceptualize what happened to them.

^*Do not assume the subject conceptualizes the process as involving active decisions