Treating Depression Hypnotically and Strategically:
The Power of Experiential Learning in Teaching Mood Regulation Skills
Treating Depression Hypnotically and Strategically is a two day workshop that emphasizes the importance of utilizing proactive and well-targeted interventions when treating depression. How a clinician thinks about the nature of depression and answers fundamental questions – such as what causes depression – naturally determine what treatment approach he or she is most likely to take. Regardless of one’s preferred orientation, however, depression experts agree that treatment needs to be multi-dimensional and active.
Furthermore, the more we learn about the neuroscience of depression, especially neuroplasticity and neurogenesis, the more important well designed experiential learning processes become in treatment. These include the use of task assignments and focusing processes such as hypnosis.
Dr. Yapko’s well-known books, which include Depression is Contagious , Hypnosis and Treating Depression , Trancework (4 th ed.) and Mindfulness and Hypnosis , each break new ground and challenge much of the conventional wisdom therapists typically hold about depression and its treatment. In this workshop, we will pay special attention to the ways in which our social lives directly shape our perspectives and phenomenology and thereby powerfully affect the way we think and feel.
Consider these facts:
- As societies Westernize, their rates of depression go up;
- Therapeutic regimens that do not involve drugs at all have matched and, in some specific ways, even exceeded medication regimens;
- Depression’s severity increases with each successive generation; and,
- The age at which depression first strikes has been steadily dropping for more than a half century.
Our relationships can depress us and they can heal us. The cutting edge of rapidly expanding scientific evidence highlights that the more we learn about the biology of depression, the more important psychology and social life experience become in understanding and treating it effectively. How therapy, itself a social process, can teach skills known to reduce and even prevent depression will be explored in depth. Lecture, discussion, video case examples, and several structured skill-building hypnosis practice sessions will be provided during the training.