BT12 Short Course 53 – What to Expect When Your Patient is Not Expecting – Helen Adrienne, LCSW

Description: This short course gives therapists a clear window into the emotional, medical and relational upheaval of infertility and how to support clients through it. Helen Adrienne outlines the biopsychosocial-spiritual impact of treatment, the strain on couples, and the intense anxiety, grief and self-blame many patients carry. Participants learn mind-body skills, hypnotic strategies, and practical tools that help clients regulate stress, reclaim agency, and navigate complex decisions with more steadiness, clarity and compassion.

Syllabus Description: The number of those who are struggling with infertility in the United States is 7.3 million and growing. If you have not yet encountered this in your practice, you are likely to sooner or later. Working effectively with this highly stressed population requires awareness of the unique profile of patients suffering with the unmet longing for a baby. This workshop will be an opportunity for you to gather the understanding you need in order to attune yourself to the challenges these men, women and couples face and to learn brief therapy, mind/body interventions that will make a difference. Infertility is also a state of mind. Learn how you can adapt the skills you will develop to other people in your practice who are infertile in other ways in their life.

Educational Objectives:

1. Construct a protocol for ego strengthening in the face of the devastating diagnosis of infertility.
2. List and be able to utilize three mind/body coping skills that can serve to reverse the physiology of stress.
3. Identify two ways that you can adapt a larger understanding of infertility to other patients in your practice.

*Sessions may be edited for content and to preserve confidentiality*