Less Stress ... Please!
For most clients, there is too much stress. Issues with relationships, money, jobs, an accident, health ...The list goes on.
The clients understandably focus on and present these situations, or external factors, that bring stress. But there are also internal factors that influence how clients experience these situations. When it comes to trauma, different people will often experience and react to the same situation in distinct ways. These differences relate to something in each person’s personality, internal factors, and past experiences.
Enter Traumatic Incident Reduction (TIR), an effective tool for addressing the internal factors of stress that are often hidden from our awareness. By finding these hidden factors, TIR lessens emotional and bodily distress. It can also reduce the negative aspects of one’s personality.
Many clients come complaining of too much stress in their lives. However, it is often found that their current stress is connected to other incidents, or traumas.
We can call the major traumas, large-T traumas, which include natural disasters, combat, serious accidents, catastrophic illnesses, and loss of a loved one. Life is also filled with lesser upsets, which we can call small-t traumas, those more- common experiences that make us feel unsafe, unloved, or out of control. These can be humiliations, failures, or losses of any kind. For children, they can include being bullied, excluded, some moment of shame, or just falling off their bicycle.
While TIR excels at reducing the negative effects of traumatic incidents, there is an entire family of techniques for reducing the effects of other types of stress. An additional collection of techniques is the Life Stress Reduction (LSR) program. This program reduces the effects of the large-T and small-t traumas. Clients are often surprised at how much “brighter” they feel, mentally and emotionally. One person, “Roland”, felt depressed following his divorce. After receiving TIR and LSR techniques, he changed from being withdrawn and suicidal to someone who eagerly set goals for his life and is actively pursuing them.
Freed from the weight of stress, clients are more able to communicate their needs and to handle the challenging aspects of their lives. If you notice that stress is weighing your clients down, consider exploring TIR and LSR.
There are regularly offered trainings for those interested in becoming TIR facilitators. Feedback is very positive. One participant comment, for example: “The experiential part was excellent; I felt the power of the techniques (and) I will use this technique for sure.”
By Margaret and Harry Nelson