Traumatic Incident Reduction (TIR) is a brief, memory-based, therapeutic intervention for children, adolescents, and adults who have experienced crime-related and/or interpersonal violence, war, disasters, torture, childhood abuse, neglect, emotional abuse, traumatic bereavement, or other severe or shocking events. The program is designed to resolve symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety, and low expectancy of success (i.e., low self-efficacy) by integrating dissociated cognitive and emotional aspects of traumatic memory.

Through sessions that usually run between 90 and 120 minutes, the practitioner facilitates the client’s examination and resolution of a past trauma. Depending on the incident and the symptoms experienced by the client, resolution may be achieved in one or two sessions, or it may take repeated sessions for clients who experience residual distress related to the incident. Each TIR session begins with an assessment step, in which the client identifies the most significant item to be addressed during the session. This item can be a descriptive item, which describes a particular traumatic incident, or a thematic item, which describes a particular negative feeling, attitude, or thought; if a thematic item is selected, the negative feeling, attitude, or thought is used to identify specific incidents for resolution. This step is followed by a viewing step, in which the client examines the incident, including aspects such as the time and duration of an incident, awareness of and connectedness to each incident, and a verbal report of the incident. At the completion of the session, it is expected that the client will be able to talk calmly about the traumatic incident with a sense of autonomy and without a return of the symptoms caused by the incident.