A Life in Crisis
27 Lessons from Acute Trauma Counselling Work
Michael Tunnecliffe

Crisis has been a common theme through Michael Tunnecliffe’s professional life.  As a Clinical Psychologist, he has spent many hundreds of hours working with victims of numerous crises, including the murder of a family member, robbery, violent assault, random shootings, home invasion, suicide of a colleague, workplace fatalities and the variety of tribulations inflicted by nature, such as flood, fire and cyclone.       

A Life in Crisis presents 27 key lessons learnt from working in the area of acute trauma counselling, including: 

• Good intentions don’t always result in good practice
• Perception determines severity
• Blame is an easy way to express emotion
• The body expresses what the mind cannot manage
• Disturbing discoveries create secondary stress
• It’s OK not to get over it. 

These lessons, and others, are clearly illustrated in a manner which takes the reader into the world of the trauma counsellor, removing the myths and outlining the realities of trauma practice.