Level 1 · Advanced Workshops
Attachment-Focused Hypnosis in Psychotherapy
Relational Strategies for the Developmental Repair of Complex Trauma
This is a workshop for therapists who enjoy the subtle, nuanced, and beautiful complexities of therapeutic work, and want to practice rich, integrative psychotherapy that incorporates clinical hypnosis with a relational treatment approach. In this workshop, we address how relational and experiential facets of treatment can be incorporated with sophistication in the treatment of trauma. The workshop leader will teach an attachment-focused relational method and help participants learn how they can evoke hypnosis as part of this approach. In addition to becoming more grounded in the principles of such an approach, participants will learn specific skills of how to utilize relational hypnosis in the treatment of attachment trauma.
Although this is an advanced workshop, participants of all experience levels are welcome. For example, you might be experienced with hypnosis but want to learn more about working with pain & trauma. Alternatively, you might be a skilled practitioner in one or both of those treatment areas, but want to learn more about hypnosis and how it could be integrated into the treatment you provide.
The three days
Day 1 · 4.5 CEs
Attachment and Mentalization in a Relational Context: Hypnosis, Psychotherapy, and Developmental Repair (Level 1)
In this session, we will review the literature on attachment theory and mentalization; examine how trauma disrupts individual development in a relational context; discuss how relational psychotherapy heals trauma with relationship; and consider how hypnosis, an inherently relational process, accelerates therapeutic healing of trauma. This session will culminate in an introduction of the ARM (attunement, representation, mentalization) model of attachment-focused hypnotherapy.
Learning objectives
- Define mentalization and explain how it develops during a healthy attachment process.
- Differentiate between contingent and marked mirroring.
- Integrate polyvagal and neurological phenomena into a conceptual framework for how trauma disrupts development.
- Define hypnosis as a state, procedure, and relational experience.
- Conceptualize the use of hypnosis from a relational model.
- Summarize how hypnosis can be incorporated into trauma treatment by theoretical orientation & by phase of treatment.
- Match each of the 3 phases (attunement, representation, mentalization) of the ARM hypnotherapy model with the appropriate developmental function(s) being repaired.
Day 2 · 7.75 CEs
Attunement, Representation, and Mentalization: The 3 Phases of the ARM Hypnotherapy Model (Level 1)
In this session, participants will learn each of the 3 phases of the ARM Model: attunement, representation, and mentalization. In addition to didactic instruction on the attachment and hypnosis literature underpinning each of these 3 phases, participants will learn associated hypnotherapeutic strategies. There will also be opportunities for demonstrations and small group practices for each phase.
Learning objectives
- Articulate how the hypnotic elements of attunement, representation, mentalization can be used to facilitate developmental repair.
- Explain how the 'symbiotic alliance' in the attunement phase of hypnotherapy augments the 'working alliance' in psychotherapy.
- Formulate and deliver 2 hypnotic suggestions for enhancing attunement in the hypnotherapeutic relationship.
- Describe the 3 types of representational hypnotherapeutic approaches.
- Formulate and deliver 2 hypnotic suggestions for developing mental representation of a secure attachment figure or ego state.
- Formulate and deliver 2 hypnotic suggestions for increasing self & object constancy across divergent experiential, mental, and ego states.
- Offer an indirect and direct hypnotic suggestion for the purpose of developing mentalization.
- Formulate and deliver 2 hypnotic suggestions for increasing the capacity for reflective awareness about mental states in developmentally arrested patients.
Day 3 · 7.75 CEs
Hypnotic Strategies for Evoking the Therapeutic Relationship / Diagnostic Applications of Hypnosis & Relational Psychotherapy
In the first half of today's workshop, we will examine how hypnosis can be strategically utilized to evoke the three components of the therapeutic relationship: transference, the contemporary ('real') relationship, and the therapeutic alliance. We will review hypnotic strategies from each of these three components with the goal of differentiating when and how to elicit affect, create containment, and utilize rapport from the relationship to guide the treatment process. Participants will learn how hypnosis can serve as an 'in-between' state in which elements of this relational matrix can be utilized to great effect in advancing treatment process and outcome.
In the second half of the day, we will review applications of hypnosis in attachment-focused relational psychotherapy when working with personality and dissociative disorders.
Learning objectives
- Understand how hypnosis hastens the development of new perspectives, realities, and understanding in the 'in-between'.
- Formulate 2 hypnotic strategies for evoking transference.
- Formulate 2 hypnotic strategies for evoking the contemporary (real) relationship.
- Formulate 2 hypnotic strategies for evoking the therapeutic alliance.
- Conceptualize and implement a relational approach featuring hypnosis for the purpose of treating narcissistic wounds.
- Utilize 2 hypnotic interventions to regulate affect during “triggers” of narcissistic wounds.
- Develop a hypnotic scene that addresses narcissistic spectrum presentation (e.g. false self) and facilitates developmental repair.
- Utilize principles of attachment & relationship to create a hypnotic scene for working with parts.
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