BT12 Short Course 39 – Nightly Napping is Not Enough – Deborah Beckman, MS
Late night commercials promise to recapture a full night’s sleep. Still, we’re chronically sleep deprived, catching little more than midnight naps. Chasing “whys” distracts and delays reestablishing healthy sleep. Rebuilding the how-to’s of healthy sleep is crucial to reestablishing resilience. This protocol goes beyond good sleep hygiene and gadgets by prioritizing the physiology of sleep with components of clients’ presenting complaint(s). Clinical demonstration, case applications and discussion provide opportunities to develop specific interventions.
BT12 Short Course 40 – Brief Psychotherapy for Children and Adolescents Facing Serious Situations – Maria Escalante de Smith, MA
When children and teenagers face serious problems they experience a variety of feelings and emotions. Brief Therapy techniques can help them find solutions and explore new alternatives within a short time. Short interventions, such as brief trances and conversational hypnosis will be demonstrated. Utilization of individual’s resources, likes, and favorite activities will also be discussed as brief therapy tools will be used during therapy. Participants will be able to explore how other approaches such as Narrative Therapy can enhance and embellish Ericksonian approaches.
BT12 Short Course 41 – How Culture Impacts Communication – Sherri Reynolds, MA, MFT
Participants will identify and analyze culture using 10 dimensions to break through communication barriers. Participants will learn to assess their own and their clients’ cultural styles of communication. Participants will also learn to apply specific techniques to facilitate more effective communication with clients, allowing them to establish lasting trust and develop a deeper relationship with clients from diverse cultures.
This workshop presents the Ericksonian and Self-Relations Psychotherapy approach to human states of suffering: depression, anxiety, trauma, addiction, etc. This practical and positive approach assumes that each core human experience has equivalent potential to be positive or negative, depending on the human relationship to it; and thus focuses on how problems can be transformed into resources by skillful human connection. This process operates at two levels: (1) developing a generative state (in the therapist, client, and relationship field) and then (2) using specific methods of transforming negative experiences and behaviors.
BT12 Short Course 42 – Emotion- Focused Hypnotherapy for Coping with Pain – Jeffrey Feldman, PhD
This short course will introduce a treatment approach that targets the affective dimension of pain. The emotion specific wording and elicitation of positive state dependent learning can be used in a brief therapy approach whether or not patients’ feelings of anger, sadness, or anxiety are associated with physical pain.
BT12 Short Course 27 – Illuminating Solutions with the Trance-Sending Light of Compassionate Playfulness – Betty Blue, PhD
Participants are invited to explore and experience spiritually uplifting, trance-forming, life-affirming, compassionately bonding and solution rehearsing processes and techniques comprising Transcendence-focused Playfulness. Emphasis will be on how such processes may transform learned helplessness into personal empowerment and contribute to emotion-based neurochemical regulation, well-being, immunoenhancement and gene expression. Examples and group participation will highlight “Metaphorplay”, playful paradox, soothing and energizing imagination activation, musical catharsis and reciprocating the compassionate radiance of “natural highs”.
Each couple describes a core scene which happens over and over again from which they want relief and therapists attempt to offer it. Imago Couples Therapy posits that while each core scene is unique, the theme of each couple’s story is identical: ruptured connection and the desire for restoration. All symptoms are branches on this tree. This workshop will develop and demonstrate that theme, and describe and demonstrate a singular intervention that helps couples restore connection.
This workshop will link the work in a science of perspective taking to work in mindfulness and acceptance-based psychotherapy, drawing especially on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Dr. Hayes will show how perspective taking can rapidly overcome barriers in psychotherapy, and when to deploy these methods.
Psychotherapy is an exploration of how individuals can forge positive, therapeutic responses to life challenges. This workshop focuses on the three core connections that allow clients to do this: (1) Positive intention and goals (“towards a positive future”); (2) Somatic Centering (“embodied presence”); and (3) Field Resources (“positive connections beyond the problem”). We will see how in a repetitive problem, all three of these connections are typically absent. More importantly, we will see how clients may be helped to developed and sustain these positive connections while engaging with challenging material—e.g., a past trauma, a present difficulty, or a future possibility. Participants will be offered multiple techniques and examples, as well as several demonstrations to illustrate this positive orientation to psychotherapy.
BT12 Short Course 28 – Humor Matters: Clinical Application of Humor in Psychotherapy – Steve Sultanoff, PhD
Humor in the serious realm of psychotherapy? In this lively presentation, filled with anecdotes and clinical illustrations, we will explore the rationale for and practical application of the conscious and purposeful use of humor in psychotherapy. Humor can create change in the central aspects of human experience—cognitions, emotions, behaviors, and physiology. We will explore how humor can be a powerful tool to build the relationship, diagnose, and treat, and we will differentiate between empathic and hostile styles of humor.