Workshops

The workshop, Recrafting a Life, is aimed toward social workers, nurses, psychologists, counselors, psychiatrists, physicians and other health care professionals who care for patients experiencing chronic illness or chronic pain. The workshop presents our general model for addressing chronic pain and illness, a variety of clinical tools, self-care instruments for patients to use to construct a unique resource base, and numerous technologies that enable therapists to aid their patients to begin to start living their lives again. 

We begin by using Daniel Defoe’s story of Robinson Crusoe as a metaphor to explain the series of events that individuals experience in relation to a long term and seeming intractable medical condition. We then proceed to the protocols outlined in the book – Solution focused therapy, clinical, Ericksonian hypnosis, and self-care. As in the book these protocols are supplemented by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s pioneering Flow model, and Ernest Rossi's brilliant naturalistic Ultradian Rhythm applications which are superb at illustrating the creative self-care opportunities presented in everyday life.

The book,the clinical approach, and the workshop, Recrafting a Life: Solutions for chronic pain and illness, are designed to provide "user friendly" applications for healthcare professionals and their patients suffering from chronic pain and chronic illness. Using a variety of original assessment instruments and interview strategies, patients are empowered to develop their own unique strategies for symptom relief, improved health, and increased healing while avoiding the "one size fits all" interventions that are offered by so many traditional health care systems.

Below is a brief outline of the topics presented in the workshop:

 Solution Focused Therapy

• The five Stages of Recrafting a Life
• Constructing hope and orienting toward the future
• Solution building - Interviewing for solution states using the EARS process
• Using the Solution Identification Scale for Health™
• Enhancing and expanding coping strategies
• Relapse Recovery and management
• Experiments and homework assignments

Recrafting Consciousness - Ericksonian Hypnosis for Chronic Pain and Illness

• Principles of  Ericksonian Hypnosis
• Eliciting formal and informal altered states for healing
• Utilizing hypnotic phenomena to address chronic pain and chronic illness
• Taking therapy home-Self-hypnosis and Ultradian rhythms
• Suggestive therapeutics – Hypnotic and posthypnotic suggestions for chronic pain and chronic illness
• Integrating Solution focused therapy with Ericksonian clinical hypnosis
• Experiments and homework assignments

 Self Care

• Caring and self-care models
• Developing self-care knowledge and resources
• Solution focused and goal-oriented self-care
• Creating a meaningful life – Conscious raising, focusing, and expanding
• Experiments and homework assignments
• Putting it all together - Integrating self-care with Solution focused therapy and  Ericksonian clinical hypnosis