Helping Employees and Employers Through Difficult Times
Employees who have unresolved traumas can find it difficult to be fully productive in the workplace. Common issues that affect employees include depression, relationships, addiction, assertiveness, stress, anger and health. Traumatic Incident Reduction (TIR) can reduce distress in all these areas. Quality of life improves for the employee both at home and at work.
One form of TIR, called Thematic TIR, is appropriate when an employee is experiencing unwanted symptoms of depression. Working with a trained TIR facilitator, the employee first focuses on a particular feeling or attitude connected with the depression. In one situation, the feeling was one of being useless. The employee was asked to find an incident that could have caused him to feel useless. He started out talking about a recent incident when he was turned down for a car loan. Next, he recounted an earlier incident involving his parents telling him that he was no good. He reviewed that incident four times before he recalled a much earlier incident at five years of age, when he witnessed his father beating his mother. As he reviewed this incident he sat rigid, wringing his hands and clenching his jaw. This was evidently the most traumatizing event for him. After several reviews of this incident, the employee moved out of past memories and back into the present. He declared “I am not useless! I was only a child then and couldn’t have done anything differently. Now I can do things differently.” He physically relaxed and said, with a smile, “I am in control of my life.” He had not totally blocked the memory, but had not been aware of how much emotional power it contained. Reviewing the event in a safe environment made the importance of the memory clear. The TIR technique allowed him to process his experience in a way that brought resolution and relief. The employee has not experienced significant depression again.
Another area in which TIR can be helpful for work issues is assertiveness. Employees sometimes feel unable to say No to others. Thus, they end up doing work that rightfully belongs to someone else, while their own work suffers. One employee felt that his inability to say No was damaging his work relationships as he had a lot of resentment toward people who asked for his help. In a TIR session, he looked at parts of his adult life and then went back to a childhood incident in which he was punished for saying No. His end point (a realization that he gained from looking at these incidents in a safe and controlled way) was “I’m living out my past. I’ve been scared that my mother would disapprove of me saying No but that’s ridiculous as she isn’t even alive anymore! She probably would have said No to some of the things herself if she’d been asked to do them!” He started laughing, a real deep laugh and said, “I can’t believe I actually needed help to look at this,” shaking his head and smiling.
Workplace anxiety is usually caused by issues that occur at work. But each of us also brings to work our fears, anxieties, and worries from both present and the past. Current world events may also create fear for our jobs, our futures, and our children’s security. All of these may impact our ability to perform consistently. If enough employees are having difficulties performing, the workplace itself may be in trouble. It is better to address and resolve emotions as they occur. In the above examples, TIR techniques were able to rapidly release employees from the burden of past traumas. They returned to work (and life) more productive and were more congenial with their colleagues. TIR has been shown to be time and cost effective, both for the employee and employer.
Proactive employers are offering employees confidential referrals to TIR professionals. Some organizations are even training their HR staff to use TIR techniques. This a win-win for everyone!