It is common to see clients who present with complex arrays of symptoms. These symptoms can be persistent or "mutate" unexpectedly, leaving patient and therapist feeling confused, frustrated and helpless. In this presentation, we will see how states of unresolved stress and trauma can be the underlying force that drives multiple elusive symptoms. These include panic, depression, insomnia, migraines, severe PMS, chronic pain, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue.
Patients enter therapy trapped in games far too complicated to solve by themselves. The therapist offers insights by simplifying the double and triple roles in the Drama Triangle, and offers clear choices by simplifying the possible escape routes to use. An experiential exercise is included.
Someone with a flashback experiences an intense traumatic memory as if it were happening to them again. Learning how to view the same memory as if it were happening to someone else on a small, distant movie screen eliminates the intense unpleasant feeling, while preserving important learning. There will be a live demonstration.
What are the differential impacts of divorce on children? This workshop will consider the thoughts, feelings, behavior, issues, concerns and needs of children in different age groups, from birth to 50 years, within the framework of the stages of the divorce process and for years afterwards. Lecture, discussion, clinical examples and role plays will be interspersed as efficacious interventions are considered.
Changing mood and perspective is central in brief therapy. Experiential methods can be more immediately effective than traditional didactic approaches. All art is, by definition, "experiential." Altering mood and perspective is the point of it - whether drama, painting, literature, dance or music. Movies use multilayered methods for change. The viewer is often unaware of the intricate dramatic, experiential techniques that filmmakers use to exert influence. Social psychology studies the way in which people are influenced outside of awareness.
Inclusive Therapy is a new model of therapy designed to deal with the ambivalence to change clients often bring to the therapy process. Participants will learn a gentle way to approach conflicted clients to dissolve resistance, binds and dissociation. This method can be especially useful in dealing with borderline or hostile clients.
A key idea in Milton Erickson's work was that a person's problematic experiences and behaviors can be skillfully accepted and utilized as the basis for therapeutic change. Self-relations psychotherapy develops this idea further, emphasizing symptoms as indicating the death of an old identity and the impending birth of a new identity. Thus, we don't try to "get rid of" depression, anxiety, or other "acting out/acting in" expressions, but instead invite them into a human relationship of "sponsorship", where their healing and helpful nature may be realized. In this workshop, we will see how a therapist can generate a ritual space where symptoms and other disturbing experiences can be "midwifed" into new identities.
Many therapies involve brief lengths of treatment. A structure will be presented for organizing the tasks and skills involved in different phases (pre, early, middle, late and follow-through) of therapy. Numerous case examples, including video, will illustrate brief therapy techniques both in initial sessions and in the course of longer treatments.
The challenge of personal transformation is faced differently in the East and West. Typically, Eastern meditation emphasizes how to cultivate higher states of consciousness that "go beyond" ego identifications, while Western therapy focuses on how to "work through" problematic states. This workshop explores an integrative model that suggests how to use both approaches in a complementary way: sometimes "transcending, sometimes "transforming", and often doing both at the same time. The connection between meditation, generative trance, and selfrelations will be a central focus.
The field of hypnosis has moved to the forefront of objective research in striving to understand the role unconscious processes play in mindbody healing, automatic (reflexive) cognitive and behavioral responses, and the utilization of attentional mechanisms in problem-solving. In this workshop, participants will both learn and experience the merits of integrating hypnosis into goal-directed psychotherapies.