American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis最新文献

People struggling with depression are burdened by losses they can't and won't accept. They find themselves at odds not only with their circumstances, but also with symptomatic expressions of their exhausting efforts to shelter from, gird against, and contend with their pain and desolation. Their embattled sense of self gets no respite: Everything, including the depression itself, feels threatening, a violation, other. This article investigates why, and demonstrates how, hypnosis is particularly well suited for treating such self-referential, adversarial entanglements. Fundamentally associational in both structure and function, hypnosis resonates with other long-established, connection-based traditions for altering suffering. In keeping with Taoist, Sufi, and Buddhist ideas and practices, hypnosis introduces a quality of acceptance into the relationship between self and other, between self and pain. Clinical hypnosis establishes and maintains a context of interpersonal and intrapersonal security, a protective space and a relationship in which avolitional experience is not felt to be out-of-control or uncontrollable, but rather not-in-need-of-being-controlled. It thus becomes safe for clients to become curious about, approach, and engage with what in other settings would have the potential of producing a fearful, even panicky, reaction. By altering the boundary between clients and their suffering, clinicians facilitate an effortless rapprochement, making possible the shifting, repurposing, and unraveling of symptoms.

Helplessness and hopelessness are common key dynamics of depression that often inhibit therapeutic progress and client recovery. Based on a case example, this article examines the processes for effectively communicating therapeutic interventions aimed toward building hope when other approaches have failed. It explores the use of therapeutic metaphors including assessing for positive outcomes, building the PRO Approach for creating therapeutic metaphors and using Hope Theory as an example of an evidence-based process for facilitating both hope and enhanced treatment outcomes. It concludes with an illustrative metaphor within a hypnotic model and a step-by-step process for building your own hope-enhancing metaphors.

This paper brings together concepts, tools, and case examples that provide guidance for ways to use process-oriented clinical hypnosis to shift perfectionistic tendencies to help resolve depression and enhance well-being. Perfectionism is a transdiagnostic risk factor for clinical and subclinical suffering of many types including depression. Over time, perfectionism is becoming more widespread. Perfectionism-related depression can be effectively treated when clinician attention is directed toward core skills and themes. Case examples illustrate how to help clients moderate overly extreme thinking, create and use realistic standards, and develop and apply a balanced self-evaluation. A variety of clinician styles and approaches, especially when tailored to individual client characteristics, preferences, and needs, are compatible with process-oriented hypnotic interventions for perfectionism and depression.

It is a fundamental truth in living that the quality of your decisions shapes the quality of your life. One's cognitive style determines whether one is more likely to be detailed and linear in thinking or more general and impressionistic, obvious influences on the way experiences are interpreted and reactions formed. Global thinking, also referred to as over-general thinking, has been linked to depression for several reasons. These include the lack of detail in making important discriminations that would reduce or eliminate the kind of self-injurious and depressogenic decisions described in the "stress generation" model of depression. The importance of having meaningful strategies for making effective decisions on a situation-by-situation basis cannot be overstated. Cognitive psychologists and cognitive neuroscientists use the term "discrimination" to describe the process of making distinctions between different situations that give rise to one's reactions. In this article, hypnosis is described as a vehicle for teaching global thinkers to be more skilled in making important discriminations. A sample hypnosis script is provided to illustrate the process.

This paper reviews: The neuroscientific features of inner consciousness, including its role in suffering and in accessing states of mind that relieve suffering; details salient meditative and hypnotic approaches appropriate for palliative settings of care; discusses core principles and orientations shared by effective approaches; and proposes early integration of hypnotic training as a coping skill and a platform for spiritual exploration, as desired.