This workshop focuses on the specific use of cognitive-behavioral strategies as an adjunct to the many treatment modalities of family therapy. It offers a basic overview of the theories of cognitive-behavioral therapy, particularly as it applies to families. Participants will learn first-hand techniques and strategies for working with difficult families and how to ingrate these strategies with their respective modes of treatment. Role-playing and case reviews will be used. A question and answer period will follow.
Internal voices often criticize us, discourage us, and can be the source of unpleasant limiting beliefs like, "You'll never succeed" or "I'm unlovable." However, internal voices also can encourage us, offer timely information, and be staunch allies in troublesome times. In this workshop, you will experience several ways to transform troublesome voices into positive resources.
The experience of feeling "stuck" is a common hazard of our profession and leaves therapists searching for creative solutions. Clinical creativity is never a solo process but always interactive, inseparable from the imagination and creativity of the clients. It is easy for therapists to get bogged down in literal definitions of problems that go counter to clients' idiosyncratic logic. This workshop will explore different ways of breaking through impasses by looking "outside the box" and changing the frame of reference from the literal to the world of personal meaning. Video tapes will demonstrate the use of metaphors, rituals, fantasies, writing and paradox in making a creative leap.
At last count, over 400 separate models of psychotherapy have been found to exist (Garfield & Bergin, 1994). Despite the claims and promises made by the proponents of the various treatment models, 40 years of increasingly sophisticated outcome research has not found any one model or technique superior for the resolution of the problems that clients bring into treatment, Indeed, most of the research has only confirmed "common sense" (Frank 1993). In this workshop, forty years of outcome research will be translated into practical, common sense and empirically supported therapeutic skills that you can use for the efficient and effective resolution of the problems that clients bring to treatment.
Ignoring the impact of trauma on the client's family overlooks powerful dynamics that are crucial to treatment outcome. Participants in this workshop will learn how to involve the trauma sufferer's partner and other family members as resources in the healing process. Participants will learn how to better educate clients about the typical symptoms of trauma, the stages of trauma recovery, how to help family members both soothe and set limits with the traumatized person, and the typical pitfalls families encounter - including the depleting response of "enough already" as a family member tries to heal from a trauma.
An introductory presentation reviewing how our daily mental activity may turn on the activity-dependent gene expression and protein synthesis cycle to construct and reconstruct the neural networks of our mind-brain and facilitate healing of the body. We will explore innovative approaches to facilitating the four-stage creative process in therapeutic hypnosis and psychotherapy in a group process and individual demonstrations.
Based on interviews with over a hundred of the most prominent theoreticians in the field, as well as studies of famous individuals (Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Sylvia Plath, Vaslav Nijinsky, Lenny Bruce, Charles Mingus) who have had spectacularly negative outcomes in therapy, this workshop explores what can be learned from failures as well as successes. Participants will explore the nature of their own consistent errors and misjudgments, how we all tend to deny and disown these experiences, and what we can do to be more accepting of our failures and more proactive in preventing them in the future. There will be opportunities to identify personal and professional struggles that are going on right now and work through impasses and frustrations through a peer supervision model that can be applied to any work setting.
With religion as a precedent and large group formation as an instrument, Dr. Polster will show how we may address the everyday, non-pathological needs of people. A complementary offshoot of these life-long groups is the reciprocal benefits it will share with brief therapy, supplying continuity to the brief therapy experience and individual focus to the large group formations.
For therapy to have value, it must be able to activate and work with disconnected parts of a person's self-identity. We will examine different ways to access and stay connected to these "neglected selves" during therapeutic work. The clinical concept of the neglected self will first be overviewed, followed by exercises for identifying and transforming a neglected self, followed by a brief therapeutic demonstration.
Clients want changes. Dysfunctional behaviors can come from incomplete, incorrect, or unfinished learning from the past or from unproductive responses to present events. The complexities can be reduced to small "do-able" successes. Demonstrations will be given and participants will be given clear steps for practice exercises.