Footnotes:

¹   TIR facilitators operate under strict guidelines, or Rules of Facilitation - which employ the Rogerian client-centered concept of unconditional positive regard - as well as communication techniques which greatly enhance not only any therapeutic process, but also everyday relationships.

²   Professor Charles Figley is the Director of the Florida State University Psychosocial Stress Research Program and Clinical Lab; Editor of The International Electronic Journal Traumatology; Director of Green Cross Projects and the Founding President of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. You may also be interested in his intoduction as the Series Editor fot the recent book Traumatic Incident Reduction (TIR), by Gerald French and Chrys Harris.

³   TIR was one of four new approaches to trauma investigated and emphatically endorsed by Drs. Charles Figley and Joyce Carbonell in their ground-breaking study at Florida State University, "The Active Ingredients in Efficient Treatments of PTSD." See the article in the July/August, 1996 issue of The Family Therapy Networker, " Researching PTSD - Going for the Cure."

⁴   The "reciprocal inhibitory response" derives from recent research on the neurophysiology of trauma, depression and PTSD. It has well been established that there is a neuro/endocrinological response to trauma - related to the "fight or flight" mechanism that Pavlov originally studied - that often leads to severe pathologies, including chronic depression, PTSD and dissociative disorders. It has been shown that traumatic events have significant impact on neuronal pathways, and in the case of children or adolescents, can actually change the physical structure of a developing brain, particularly the hippocampus - the seat of many of our emotions. It is hypothesized - and clinical research is now being conducted - that therapies such as TIR can also possibly reverse this neurological "conditioning" as well as greatly providing for significant cognitive restructuring of impairing belief systems and patterns of behavior. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk of Harvard University is one of the leading researchers in this area, and some of his research articles as well as links to his text, Traumatic Stress, may be found on this website. A recommended book, written for the layperson, on the neurophysiological aspects of trauma and stress is Robert Sapolsky's delightful Zebras Don't Get Ulcers.

⁵   Dr. Lori Beth Bisbey, in her introduction to a section of an Advanced TIR Training Workshop, says "In some cases, clients seem to build a main identity around the trauma and become survivors and work needs to be done around these issues for their PTSD to fully resolve. In terms of trauma, being stuck with survivor as a main identity can have many liabilities depending on the way this identity is constructed and what it contains. To clarify the issue, we need to examine definitions of resolve . In TIR, resolve is defined as when the trauma is no longer a central feature in the clien'ts daily life and it has moved into the client's past as part of the fabric of his/her life. That means that the trauma no longer becomes triggered even when the same subject arises."

⁶   Please see our section on Indigenous Cultures, graciously donated by Dr. Beth Stamm at Dartmouth University, and one of leaders of the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder there.

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Speaking of Trauma, please see my progression below: For further details, you are welcome to read my Foreword to the book, Traumatic Incident Reduction (TIR), by Gerald French and Chrys Harris.

 

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TIR...   ...Insight

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