About us

TIR UK offers training to counsellors, psychotherapists, coaches, social workers and educators. Our training provides professionals and trainees with effective methods for facilitating stress reduction and personal growth, employing TIR (defined below). We also offer coaching and counselling to individuals.

What is Traumatic Incident Reduction (TIR)?

Traumatic Incident Reduction (TIR) is an integrative mindfulness-oriented approach to counselling, best known for addressing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The broader subject of TIR and Life Stress Reduction provides a well developed, thorough and coherent model for mindfulness-based case-formulation and integrative mindfulness-based counselling.

TIR, Schema and LSR Trainer:

Henry J. Whitfield MSc (CBT/REBT) MBACP, Accredited Advanced TIR trainer and TIR practitioner (TIRA)

Henry founded Mindfulness Training Ltd in 2006. His research interests include the theoretical and practical integration of mindfulness with cognitive behavioural theories, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy processes and in case-formulated applications of mindfulness. After 4 years as a trauma specialist for Victim Support Lambeth, Henry is now conducting empirical research for City and Hackney Mind, investigating the process of values within different approaches to trauma counselling. He also works in private pratice, and teaches widely on the subject of Mindfulness-consistent therapies.

Recent publications:

Towards case-specific applications of mindfulness-based cognitive-behavioural therapies: A Mindfulness-Based Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy - Counselling Psychology Quarterly June; Vol 19(2): 205-217. Routledge (2006).

Traumatic Incident Reduction: Operationalising Rogerian theory in Brief therapy practice. Chapter 4 in Tudor, K. Brief Person-Centred Therapies. Sage (2008).

Bringing Mindfulness into the therapeutic relationship. Healthcare Counselling and Psychotherapy Journal. April, Vol 10. BACP(2010)

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More on TIR:

TIR and its related techniques provide a highly coherent approach to integrative and case-formulated mindfulness-based counselling. Many of the tools consist of repetitive exercises, practiced in the absence of judgment, that train the client to better focus his/her attention on mental pictures, thoughts or other 'private events'. The continuous focus of attention, intensified through repetition and a suitable environment, can lead to the reduction and even 'extinction' of specific unwanted psychological phenomena. TIR counselling can achieve such an 'extinction' or resolution even with severe trauma symptoms. This is usually accomplished within a small number of sessions.

The broader subject of TIR-LSR (Life Stress Reduction) is a systematic approach for enabling detached, non-judgmental observation of almost any inner or outer world event, whether cognitive, emotive, physiological, behavioural or other.

Tools are varied, person-focused and applied in order to:

maintain congruence with the client's own experience.
to maximize client engagement moment to moment, and
to cater to the client's mental resources and problem type at a given time.

The approach also consists of useful strategies for accessing awareness the client was previously unable to access. The broader subject of metapychology is also multimodal, consisting of coaching methods for affecting behavioural changes in the service of specific values (c.f. ACT).

All tools enable the client to achieve greater equanimity* with respect to his/her mental and physical environments. Go to training page.

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