What is Trauma?

During ordinary, day-to-day events, both sides of our brain process and store what we experience. However, when you have a life-threatening experience or you witness another person in such circumstances, your verbal brain can be overwhelmed and your executive function (the ability to think your way out of the trauma) fails. You can no longer organize your experience in a logical way. The parts of the brain that deal with survival take over. If you cannot fight or flee the situation you will go into the freeze. The body and brain are hardwired to help us survive. This is called the Instinctual Trauma Response (ITR).

The ITR components occur in order for almost any overwhelming or life threatening experience. Some experiences may have several components over again as the event goes on over a period of time. Many people get “stuck" in one of the aspects for an extended period of time. This is known as a 'fixed state."

ITR Components:

Startle, Thwarted Fight/Flight, Freeze, Altered State of Consciousness, Automatic Obedience, and Self-Repair

Going into the ITR affects your memory for the event. You may feel that the fragmented memory is “stuck” in the non-verbal parts of the brain, where there are no words and no sense of time. We call these fragments “mental shrapnel.” These bits and pieces of the trauma then become triggers that intrude into life at unexpected times. The result can be bewildering and can change how an individual views him/herself, others, and the world at large.

“" Trauma is the biggest mental health problem of the 21st century and it is the most treatable." Dr Louis Tinnin, Pschiatrist and Co-Founder of ITR“

Help For Trauma Education and Research is getting research underway! We are partnering with several organizations and implementing an assessment tool for Intensive Trauma Recovery to be able to track the intensive clients. We are always looking to work with organizations interested in PRACTICE-BASED EVIDENCE. This is the key to changiing the mental health field. Clients tell us all the time that the Evidence-Based therapy approaches they have used barely work if at all. Its time to pull the curtain back and expose the lack of efficacy in the filed for most of the trauma approcahes bneing used today.

RESEARCH 2021

Social Services:

Baltimore County Deptartment of Social Services has ITR® research that needs to be complied. Help For Trauma Education and Research has the right people, we just need to fund them. $5000

Help For Trauma Education and Research is actively supporting Dr. Terri Strodthoff from Alma Center and Dr. Dimitri Topitzes from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee to conduct a proof of concept research study using the ITR® approach. This research is crucial in spreading the word about traumatic stress and how it affects people and how to resolve it in a time-limited fashion. The Alma Center works with men from the Criminal Justice System, its re-entry program structure, and the results of that implementation effort. A group of 20 men on parole will have a 20-hour intensive program using the ITR model in addition to the traditional program reentry program, and a comparison group of men will only receive the traditional program.  $30,000

Children's Group Homes:

 looking to partner with University of Maryland and research using Instinctual Trauma Response® to start providing the new standard of a Quality Residential Treatment Program, not a warehouse. This work is crucial to do as soon as possible. Children are being warehoused and released right into hands of  sex-trafickers every day in all our cities.

First Responders:

Help For Trauma Education and Research is looking to partner with a hospital to bring trauma psychoeducation and time-limited treatment to the staff. Using the ITR intensive program would radically change work quality of the medical and administartive staff and flow doen to the patient satisfaction. Traumatic Stress effects everything!

Help For Trauma Education and Research wants to partner with police, firefighters and militry to establish and train their Health and Wellness programs. Trauma psychoeducation with strategies to work in the middle of trauma and debrief in a healthy way. Intenisive time-limited treatment should ne available. The mental health providers working with them need to learn how to help them effectivelyl

More research projects are in the works!

What is the Mental Health Emancipation Movement?

Dr. Tinnin and Dr. Gantt always have had empowerment (self-help and prevention) as a major part of their work. They joined the Hearing Voices Movement in Europe in the '80s and now it has grown into the Mental Health Emancipation Movement (MHEM) worldwide. The focus is taking back control and accessibility of our mental health. The MHEM is a grassroots movement of trauma survivors and supporters rejecting the medical-model's initial step of heavy psychotropic drugs, and the broken 50-minute-hour-once-a-week-insurance-supported business model.  

ITR recognizes “voices" or “parts" are natural consequences of trauma and are easily dealt with, including the suicidal voice/part. 

Drs. Tinnin and Gantt said well over 50 percent of their trauma clients had “voices" or “parts." It was really perfectly normal and after the event is finished with Graphic Narrative™, they are easily dealt with through a task called Externalized Dialogue™. 

The ITR motto has always been: “Resolve the trauma first and see what's left."

Instinctual Trauma Response educates a person as to what actually happens to their body and brain during an overwhelming or life-threatening experience. The ITR program allows a person to quickly, gently, and effectively resolve their lifeline of events within a few weeks. ITR is being introduced to the world and will revolutionize how we deal with traumatic stress. ITR is a leading approach for the Mental Health Emancipation Movement. Psychoeducation, services, and training to any and all.