| In my 35 years of practice, I've developed scores of powerful psychotherapy techniques, but one has stood out as extraordinarily important in working with every patient and critically important with more challenging patients who don't respond to our best efforts to help. I call this technique Paradoxical Agenda-Setting (PAS). In this workshop, I’ll show you exactly how PAS works and how to use it with patients struggling with depression, anxiety disorders, relationship problems, and addictions such as binge eating, drug and alcohol abuse, and procrastination.
What exactly is Paradoxical Agenda-Setting? This is the most difficult part of the workshop to describe – to some extent it must be experienced to be really understood. First, you establish and maintain the deepest possible therapeutic alliance. Then, in the most graphic, pragmatic fashion, you help the client explore the tremendous ambivalence that nearly everyone feels about change, whether they're conscious of it or not. This process is the heart of the workshop and is the point where the science and art of psychotherapy come together, where strong, conflicted emotions are frequently expressed, and where the real magic of therapy occurs.
This is not a cognitive therapy workshop. PAS is a fundamental and powerful technique that can easily be integrated with any therapeutic style or orientation. PAS is, essentially, psychotherapy on steroids. This workshop is for any therapist who wants to jump to the next orbit in his or her clinical work. You’ll learn how to motivate your most resistant and oppositional clients, dramatically enhance your clinical effectiveness, and speed up the recovery process, no matter what your therapeutic orientation may be, and no matter what types of patients you treat. Specifically, I'll show you how to:
· Pinpoint the eight most common forms of therapeutic resistance
· Become the “voice” of the patient’s subconscious resistance
· Defeat outcome resistance with the Magic Button and the Magic Dial techniques
· Defeat process resistance with the Gentle Ultimatum and Paradoxical Cost-Benefit Analysis
· Paradox habits and addictions with the Devil’s Advocate Technique
· Learn the art of acceptance, so you can “hold with open hands” (like the Buddha)
· Utilize future relapses as opportunities to maximize clinical gains
Therapists who have attended my two-day workshops and intensives may already be familiar with PAS. However, this technique is so challenging to learn, and so powerful, that I felt it warranted a full-day program to give you the chance to focus on it specifically. Many trainees have said this single technique has transformed their clinical work. This is a workshop I've been looking forward to for a long time. I hope you can join us!
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