Energy Psychology within a City’s Crisis Response System
Jim McAninch was the Practitioner
Civil bodies charged with disaster relief are increasingly developing more sophisticated psychological impact response capacities. Jim McAninch is the Industrial Coordinator for Pittsburgh’s Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) team. While most CISM programs are explicitly not meant to provide psychotherapy or to substitute for psychotherapy, their stated goals nonetheless often include therapeutic components. The Pittsburg team’s goals, for instance, are:
- To reduce emotional tension.
- To facilitate normal recovery process of normal people having normal, healthy reactions to abnormal events.
- To identify individuals who might need additional support or referral to professionals for specific care.
The calls McAninch receives generally involve fatal disasters in the workplace. McAninch, who is a member of the TFT Trauma Relief Team, has found TFT to be a powerful tool in working with individuals suffering in the aftermath of sudden trauma.
The head of Pittsburgh’s CISM Team was at first highly skeptical about having McAninch utilize TFT as part of the CISM disaster response. However, enough instances have now been logged in which TFT clearly brought about rapid and striking results in facilitating the emotional recovery of survivors of events involving fatalities that McAninch has been asked to provide TFT training to the entire Pittsburg CISM Team. Three of McAninch’s documented cases follow.
Industrial Crisis Response Case # 1
McAninch was called to a site where an employee of a small company had been electrocuted. A worker had instructed his co-worker to push a panel button, and the co-worker was electrocuted on the spot. The survivor and six others watching had to deal with the horrible scene and their unsuccessful attempts to save the man’s life. They were all traumatized by the horrific death. The intense odor of burning flesh remained vivid in each of their memories. For two of the witnesses, the death also caused past traumas to resurface. One recalled the gruesome car crash fatalities he’d witnessed as a tow truck operator for twenty years. The worker who had instructed that the button be pushed had years earlier found his wife dead in a snow bank. In the current disaster, after the electricity was no longer passing through his co-worker’s body, he had unsuccessfully tried to resuscitate the burned man, adding to his trauma and guilt. And, as a morbid reminder, he couldn’t get rid of the smell or taste of the vomit that had come into his mouth during the resuscitation effort. McAninch treated him first as the group watched. Using a TFT complex trauma algorithm, he assisted the man with his anger and guilt until the distress levels were down to “0.” McAninch then had the others get into pairs and copy the treatment on themselves and on each other, until all the trauma-related emotions were all down to “0.” A week later, when he returned to do follow-up, each of the survivors was able to recall and talk about the tragedy without experiencing retraumatization.
Industrial Crisis Response Case # 2
A man had fallen to his death at a construction site. The entire construction team had been through an interview and defusing process, but the foremen was concerned about the well-being of one of the workers. He called McAninch to the jobsite. The worker had directly witnessed the event and couldn’t sleep. He rated his anxiety level as a “10.” It was soon revealed that the man had had a near-fatal fall himself a number of years earlier, and the trauma of that experience was reactivated while watching his co-worker fall to his death. Witnessing the event had left him with visible and ongoing anxiety and agitation. Using the TFT Complex Trauma Algorithm, McAninch was able to take the trauma and the anxiety down to a “0” in a matter of minutes. The resulting relief on the man’s face was immediate and apparent to everyone.
Industrial Crisis Response Case # 3
McAninch arrived at the site within a few hours of a train conductor being crushed to death between two railcars. Both the locomotive engineer (the train operator) and the yard master had witnessed the disaster and seen the results. McAninch was able to begin applying the TFT trauma relief techniques on the spot. Within a short time, he had treated the two witnesses and the fiancé of the deceased conductor. He offered sessions as needed over the next several weeks, preparing the engineer to return to his job by taking him around the yard and treating him at various trigger locations, including the spot where he had witnessed the violent death of his long time co-worker and friend. Interestingly, though the engineer was soon trauma-free and guilt-free regarding the accident, it wasn’t until McAninch treated him for the earlier traumatic death of his mother that, as the plant manager remarked, he was again “Carrying himself with a spring in his step, looking up, and ahead.”
McAninch notes how in cases of accidental death and injury such as these, unresolved traumas from a survivor’s past are often activated. Treating these helps the present traumatic incident to be more easily and rapidly resolved. McAninch is currently working with the largest industrial union in North America in exploring the possibility of introducing TFT trauma techniques throughout the union.
Jim McAninch is a counselor with “Solutions to Stress, Anxiety & Toxins” in Tarentum, PA, and an Employee Assistance specialist for the United Steelworkers, Local 1138. He is a Certified Trauma Responder, a Certified Employee Assistance Professional, and a Certified TFT Practitioner (Diagnosis Level). He may be reached at [email protected].
