CONFERENCES & TRAININGS

MICHAEL YAPKO, PH.D.

Treating Depression Hypnotically and Strategically:
The Power of Directive Approaches in Teaching Mood Regulation Skills

A 4-Part Webinar
June 15, 16, 22, 23, 2021: 4-8p.m (Warsaw Time)
____________________________________________________________________________________

In this training program, Dr. Yapko will discuss:

• How the COVID-19 pandemic is forcing us to re-think what we thought we knew about depression and psychotherapy
• Why depression isn’t fated by brain chemistry, genes, diet, or personal weakness
• How one factor - expectancy - influences every phase of treatment
• How our feelings can misguide us when making decisions, leading to poor decisions that unintentionally make depression worse
• The importance of experiential learning in treatment, especially well-designed hypnosis sessions that target specific depressogenic patterns
• The single factor which most influences how you gauge whether your relationship with someone is good or bad, healthy or unhealthy, worthwhile or a waste of time – and how your awareness of it can ease major suffering
• How depression affects marriages and families adversely and what that implies    for effective treatment
• How to function preventively and reduce a child’s “depression inheritance”
• The dynamics of employing good task assignments to catalyze progress
• The role of focusing strategies such as hypnosis in fostering emotional self-regulation skills

     Even before the COVID-19 pandemic struck Europe, depression was already the most common mood disorder on the continent, just as it is the most common mood disorder in the world. COVID-19 has created a sharp rise in people reporting higher levels of anxiety and depression, which isn’t really very surprising given how often these two disorders are found to co-exist in people. The long-term impact of the COVID-19 world crisis remains to be seen, but already the debilitating anxiety and depression too many people are experiencing is increasing as a result of their sense of isolation, helplessness, and hopelessness.  The depression isn’t just in their neurochemistry – no, it’s point of origin is in their circumstances. This observation alone requires us to re-think what we believe about depression, who is vulnerable to it and under what conditions, and most importantly, what to do about it when trying to help others.

     Treating Depression Hypnotically and Strategically is a four-part webinar 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 determines 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, thus providing an empirical foundation for using hypnosis and strategic interventions. 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 hypnosis.

     Dr. Yapko’s well-known books on depression, which include Keys to Unlocking Depression, Depression is Contagious, Hypnosis and Treating Depression, Breaking the Patterns of Depression and Hand-Me-Down Blues, each break new ground and challenge much of the conventional wisdom therapists typically hold about depression and its treatment. In this webinar, 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.

     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,
case examples, and structured skill-building hypnosis practice sessions will be provided during the training. A primary goal is for attendees to further evolve their skills in applying hypnosis in the treatment of depression.

SCHEDULE OF TOPICS

Section 1: Developing a Realistic View of Depression and the Benefits of Hypnosis

• Check your assumptions about depression:  who, what, why, and how
• What has COVID-19 taught us about vulnerability?
• Biology and psychology on a collision course
• What psychotherapy can do better than medications
• Models of depression: How you think about depression matters a lot
• Goals of treatment: Where to focus your attention
• Depression is a global term encompassing many component structures
• What it means to be an action-oriented clinician: Addressing apathy
• The merits of focusing methods, especially hypnosis
• The role of expectancy in shaping treatment response
• Skill-building exercise:  Hypnosis and building expectancy

Section 2:  Focus on the Individual

• Individual risk factors for depression
• Global thinking and its implications
• Ambiguity and its role in anxiety and depression
• Coping styles for managing stress that make things worse
• Problem solving skills that would be good to have
• Full group exercise: Perceptions of controllability
• Skill-building exercise:  Hypnosis and tolerating ambiguity

Section 3:  Focus on Relationships

• Wired to be social but COVID-19 has forced social isolation; now what?
• Depression as a social contagion
• Socialization is a powerful force: value programming, social roles and rules
• Children and adolescents, COVID-19, and depression
• Social skills that are often missing in depressed relationships
• Social discrimination skills: how do you assess other people realistically?
• Building relationships in ways that can insulate you against depression
• Skill-building exercise: Hypnosis and building an external/social orientation

Section 4: Key Points, Key Strategies

• 10 key strategies for working with people suffering depression
• Skill-building exercise: Hypnosis and behavioral activation
• What about self-help? What about mental health apps?
• What to do when you are depressed
• What NOT to do when you are depressed
• When to seek formal therapy
• Learning to think preventively
• Summary and closure

     These include his widely used classic hypnosis text, Trancework: An Introduction to the Practice of Clinical Hypnosis (5th edition), the award-winning books Treating Depression with Hypnosis: Integrating Cognitive-Behavioral and Strategic Approaches (2001), Hypnosis and Treating Depression: Applications in Clinical Practice (2006), and   Keys to Unlocking Depression. His newest book, Process-Oriented Hypnosis: Focusing on the Forest, Not the Trees, was just released a couple of months ago (March, 2021). He has also produced many CD and DVD programs. His works have been translated into ten languages. More information about Dr. Yapko’s teaching schedule and publications can be found on his website: www.yapko.com.

     Dr. Yapko is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, a member of the International Society of Hypnosis, and a Fellow of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis.  He is a recipient of the American Psychological Association’s Division 30 Award for Distinguished Contributions to Professional Hypnosis, the Pierre Janet Award for Clinical Excellence from the International Society of Hypnosis, a lifetime achievement award honoring his many contributions to the field of hypnosis, and The Milton H. Erickson Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Field of Psychotherapy.

COST :
340 euro
Payment in euro possible by a bank transfer.


REGISTRATION:

If you are interested, please fill in the form and send it to info@p-i-e.pl

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

The congress will take place on 8-11th of June, 2022. The pre-congress workshops are planned for 7th of June, 2022.

The topic of the meeting is Cooperation in hypnosis. Challenges & Benefits. The idea of it is to promote different aspects of cooperation, between the clinician and the patient, between unconscious and conscious, between person and the system etc. Our special goal is to focus on cooperation between more experianced and young generation and between different cultures and different countries.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

We invite you to take part in an online tribute meeting  to Ernest Rossi (1933-2020). The meeting is open to everyone who had an opportunity to study with Dr Rossi and to those who want to listen to personal reflections about this unusual therapist.

WHAT: Ernest Lawrence Rossi (1933-2020) Tribute... an online meeting
WHEN: 20.11.2020 at 8 PM Warsaw Time.
LANGUAGE: English

SPONSOR: The Polish Milton Erickson Institute
CO-SPONSOR: The International Society of Hypnosis
REGISTRATION: Due to the limited number of participants, please register here https://forms.gle/zG4g45kxLbpSnQhX7

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

2019 wird das 29. Wigry stattfinden. Dieses Mal wieder im August, sodass man die Familie ebenfalls mitbringen kann nach Wigry.

Es wird wie immer einzelne 4-stündige Workshops vormittags geben (inkl. 30min. Pause) sowie Dauer-Workshops (durchgängig) wie Bühnenpräsenz lernen oder Körperselbsterfahrung oder Kunstworkshop.
Wie immer: Parallel zu den 4-Stunden Workshops am Vormittag wird auch Supervision angeboten.

Sicher ist, das 2019 wie schon 2018 wieder Laurence Sugarman, Wolfgang Wendlandt sowie Claudia Reinicke mit an Bord sind.
Dazu hat uns Eva Pollani zugesagt. Sie wird zu ihrem Spezialgebiet EMI Eye Movement Integration unterrichten. Zu den weiteren Referenten zählen Dana Juraschek, Wieslaw Karolak, Kris Klajs, Matthias Ohler, Cornelie Schweizer und Bernhard Trenkle.

Im Anschluss die Kajaktour vom 31.08 – 7.09.2019

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________