What is Traumatic Incident Reduction? (www.tir.org)
“TIR is a rapid (compared to traditional therapy) method of effectively reducing traumatic stress from emotionally and/or physically painful events in the past. It involves re-experiencing past traumas in a completely safe environment, free of distractions, judgments, or interpretations.”
When something happens that is physically or emotionally painful, one has the option of either confronting it fully and feeling the pain, or trying in some way to block one’s awareness of it. In the first case, the action of experiencing (perceiving and understanding) what has occurred is allowed to go to completion and the incident becomes a past incident. However,
in the second case, the action of experiencing that incident is blocked. That is, one represses the incident, and the incident (together with the intention not to experience it and any other intentions and activities present in the incident), continues to exist as ongoing unfinished business. Such traumatic incidents may continue to exert negative effects. We say such incidents carry charge defined as “repressed, unfulfilled intention”.
This blocking activity is a self-protective impulse. It “works” to a certain extent, but it can cause us to have attention and awareness tied up in incidents from the past. This has a dulling effect on our ability to perceive, to respond intelligently in the present, and to enjoy our current environment. Unexamined, unresolved past events tie up our energy and intention. Traumatic Incident Reduction provides a safe space and the means to fully examine that which had been blocked. A past incident loses its ability to hurt us at the point where we have looked it through and through. In the process, we release our resistance and the painful emotion and negative thought patterns contained in that past trauma.
At the point where the incident has been fully viewed, we feel our attention become un-stuck from it and often have some realization. This is called an end point.
The idea that present difficulties may be caused by past traumatic incidents is not a new one, but the recognition of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as a major difficulty for many returning Vietnam vets, gave it a higher profile. Once the phenomenon was clearly recognized, PTSD was easily identifiable among other populations, such as rape survivors and victims of natural disasters. People with PTSD are severely incapacitated by ongoing, uncontrolled remembrances of their traumas. In effect, they are continually reliving these
incidents. Although survivors of all kinds of traumas with PTSD and flashbacks offer perhaps the most dramatic example of living in the past, the phenomenon is quite common to people in general. In normal life, most people can be triggered into momentary or prolonged reliving of past traumas of varying degrees of severity, with attendant negative feelings and behavior. TIR is a technique designed to examine the cognitive, emotional, perceptual, or other content of past incidents, to reduce or eliminate emotional charge contained in them, and thus to relieve the person of their negative consequences, whether or not a diagnosis of PTSD applies to this person.