Level 2 · Advanced Workshops

Masterclass in Advanced Therapeutic Communication

In this masterclass workshop, participants will get immersive experiential training in the subtle and advanced art of therapeutic communication between client and therapist.

Because of my background in clinical hypnosis, during my workshops, the questions I most hear are variations of 'how do you know when to use hypnosis in therapy?' and 'how do you use hypnosis for X?'. While these are important questions, I think they miss the point, which should be: 'how can knowing hypnosis make me a better therapist?' and 'how can I be hypnotic in therapy without doing formal hypnosis?'.

During this training, participants will learn the core elements of advanced therapeutic communication; how they are derived from the process of hypnosis and content of hypnotic suggestion; and how to masterfully utilize and integrate these techniques.

This involves learning how to track ('attunement') essential and subtle client communication - verbal, non-verbal and embodied - and how to better understand what this communication might mean about our clients' issues, personalities, and unique needs and resources for healing.

Critical to this process is understanding how - after we have carefully and accurately 'tuned in' - to utilize our client's communication in the service of their healing. Utilization is about 'reading the room' and channeling it in therapeutic interventions. The literature of hypnosis has much to teach about how we can become highly skilled in this process of utilization.

At the core of communication is suggestion. Here hypnosis has much to teach us as well. Therapists are always making suggestions - direct and indirect, formal and informal, authoritative and permissive. Suggestions can come in the form of stories, metaphors, truisms, questions, and embedded interpretations. Language (what we say) of course is an important part of offering suggestions. But so is how we say it - what syllables, words, and sentences we highlight; and what pauses and pacing we use to accentuate the suggestions that are most important. Often, when we are at our best as therapists, we are 'being hypnotic without doing hypnosis.'

Participants will learn important distinctions about when and how to practice hypnosis informally (embedded within therapeutic communication) and formally as a therapeutic modality.

The highlight of the training will be several experiential simulated role plays of therapy interactions between therapist and client, using Spiegel's immersive group consultation (IGC) method. Each role play will last approximately 90 minutes and feature a volunteer 'therapist' and 'client'. Participants volunteering as the client will role-play a current client with whom they are working with in their therapy practice; the volunteer therapist, on the other hand, will step into the shoes of the first volunteer (who in real life would be the therapist). In the first role play, Dr. Spiegel will take the 'therapist' role to demonstrate the method. More details about this method are available upon request, and will be available in the secure dashboard post-registration.