Ericksonian Hypnosis: Strategies for Effective Communications

Special Smashwords Edition

ERICKSONIAN HYPNOSIS:

Strategies for Effective Communications

by

Stephen Paul Adler, Ph.D, CGP, B.C.E.P.T.S.

ERICKSONIAN HYPNOSIS Strategies for Effective Communications

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ISBN: 978-1-942899-97-6 (eBook)

Version 2018.03.19

Praise for

ERICKSONIAN HYPNOSIS

Strategies for Effective Communications

Rich in inspirational quotes, solid principles and practical examples, Stephen Paul Adler's book Ericksonian Hypnosis: Strategies for Effective Communication captures both the genius and humanity of Milton Erickson in a unique and engaging style.

Stephen has clearly personally mastered the methods and techniques he presents in the book. As a practitioner and teacher of Erickson's work, I highly recommend this book to anyone who wishes to capture both the genius and humanity of Milton Erickson in a unique and engaging style.

I would have loved to have a resource like this when I was first learning hypnosis and therapy.

—Robert Dilts is the author of Changing Belief Systems with NLP, From Coach to Awakener and Sleight of Mouth: The Magic of Conversational Belief Change.

With integrity, grace, wit, and true inspiration, Stephen Paul Adler eloquently describes and competently embodies Milton Erickson's compassion and empowerment-based approach to healing and transformation.

This is a must-read for anyone, client or therapist, who is seriously engaged in understanding the depths of the human journey and who wants to learn more about this collection of time-honored wisdom.

Full of fine-tuned, clear practical guidelines and applications of Ericksonian hypnotherapy, communications skills and the fine art of change, this book provides concise how to do it instructions embellished with relevant clinical applications to streamline the learning curve and improve results.

I love the book, I love the inspirational quotes, I love the transformational empowering process, I love the applications and suggestions! Read it!

—Diane Poole Heller, PhD is a Trauma Recovery specialist and Author of Crash Course: A Self-Healing Guide to Auto Accident Trauma and Recovery and founder of DARE: Dynamic Attachment Refastening Experience.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PREFACE

OVERVIEW OF ERICKSONIAN STRATEGIES

The Invitation

Corner of Wisdom

Franz Anton Mesmer

James Braid

James Esdaile

Pierre Janet

Emile Coue

Sigmund Freud

School of Hypnosis, Nancy, France

Liebeault (1823–1904) and Bernheim (1840–1919)

World War I

Milton H. Erickson—An American Healer

Hypnosis

Classical

Hypnosis as Defined by Erickson

ERICKSONIAN PRINCIPLES

Contextualization

Ericksonian Principles - Listed

TWELVE MYTHS AND MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT ERICKSONIAN HYPNOSIS

Ericksonian Hypothesis and Brief Therapy

Boundaries

ERICKSONIAN STRATEGIES

Pacing

Leading

Establishing Resources

At a Snail’s Pace (story)

Anchors

Induction – Building on Internal Resources

Post-Hypnotic Suggestion

Indirect Suggestion

Examples of Indirect Suggestion

Frogs and Cream (story)

Hypnotherapeutic Measures For Panic Disorders

Zebras on the Serengeti Plains (story)

Direct Suggestion

General Induction

Non-Directive Trance

Direct Trance

Broccoli Story

Deepening

Trance Or No Trance, Deeper Or More Complete?

Conversational Trance or Naturalistic Trance

Early Learning Set

Induction of the Early Learning Set

Healthy Dissociation

Metaphors and Storytelling

Metaphors

Story/Metaphors

How to Collect and Remember Stories and Metaphors

The Mouse That Would See The Sea (story)

The Apple Tree (story)

Indirect and Direct Metaphorical Interventions

Metaphors and Storytelling: The Ericksonian View

Evolving Metaphors and Therapeutic Stories

Some Useful Themes to Consider

Aspects to Incorporate in Your Metaphors and Stories

Remember

Seeding

Time Distortion

Case Report: The Woman Who Was Considering an Affair

Early Learning Sets

Indusction of an Early Learrning Set

Conversational Trance

Age Regression

Age Progression

Methodologies

Truisms

Ratification

Glove Anesthesia

Olfactory Hallucinations

Eye Catalepsy

Bring the Client Out of Trance State

Arm Levitation

Yes Set and No Set

For the oppositional client

Pattern Interpretation

Help is on the way

Confusion Techniques

Reframing

Case Report: Overwhelmed By Beauty

Utilization

Humor

Apposition Of Opposites

Phrasing

Wordplay

Weight Loss

Trance-sending

Riddles

Self-hypnosis

All Hypnosis is Self-hypnosis

Accessing Our Inner Resources

Symptom Prescription

Posthypnotic Suggestions

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS COLLECTED FROM VARIOUS TEACHES OVER 25 YEARS

Ericksonian Hypnosis - Some Questions, Answers and Commentaries

Using the Past

Conversational Trance

Positive Psychology

Metaphors

Coaching

Past Lives

NLP

Becoming an Ericksonian Hypnotherapist

CASE PRESENTATION: ERICKSONIAN HYPNOSIS

Core Inductions

Story

We Have Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself

Eduardo’s Three Rs About Obsessions

The Saddest Man In The Whole World

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

READING LISTS

What Book Would I Read First?

Short List

Long List

Required Readings

Recommended Readings

Additional Readings

Complementary Readings

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

You already possess everything necessary

to become great.

- Crow proverb -

It is with profoud appreciation and gratitude that I thank the many people who kept reminding me that I had accumulated enough life experience to say something that can contribute to the well-being and healing of others. To my wife, Dina, for giving me courage and the faith to be, thank you. To all my friends and dedicated students who encouraged me, thank you. To my clients who educated me, thank you. To the Patucks who have loved me as family, thank you. To Brazil, China, Guatemala, India, Italy, Mexico and Portugal for expanding my horizons, thank you.

In particular I want to thank my surrogate son, Andres Carrillo Perea, who nagged me (to the point of utter frustration) into putting my experience down on paper. I want to thank Eduardo Rene Trigo for believing in me. Nicolai Cursino for pushing, always with kindness, but pushing me. Eduardo Vasquez, a beloved client who taught me to see in new ways, and Eduardo Rivera who supported me through dark times. My sister Beth who has always been there for me. Betty Alice Erickson, a friend and colleague who has inspired me. The Universe and my guardian angels that have guided me and been so very, very kind to me, thank you. To all of you I say, THANK YOU—which is, in any language, the simplest and yet most beautiful prayer in the world!

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind do not matter, and those who matter don’t mind!

- Dr. Seuss -

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen Paul Adler, Ph.D, CGP, B.C.E.P.T.S. has been a Senior Control Psychoanalyst, in New York City for 50 years. Certified in 19 different types of therapy he has been on the faculty of the New School for Social Research, New York University, the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis, the National Institute for Psychotherapies, to mention a few. A former Director of International Programs for the New York Milton H. Erickson Society for Psychotherapy and Hypnosis, International Trainer Ericksonian Hypnosis, EMDR, and founder of ACT Institute and The Global Institute for Trauma Resolution he has focused on Ericksonian Hypnosis and Psychological Trauma for the past 25 years. He holds the highest status of certification that the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis (ASCH) offers, Approved Consultant and is a Fellow, National Board of Certified Clinical Hypnotherapists (NBCCH).

As a recognized expert dealing with kidnapping, physical and sexual abuse, acts of terrorism, natural disasters, addictions, and chronic disease, (Cancer, HIV, Diabetes, etc) he has conducted trainings in Brazil, China, Guatemala, Italy, India, Mexico, Portugal and the United States. He is an Interfaith Minister and creator of Systemic Healing a summary of his 50 years of clinical cross-cultural work and Neurobiological Trauma Resolution a special technique for healing psychological Trauma. He is the author of several books and numerous professional articles.

Dr. Adler is the author of Uma abordagem ERICKSONIANA para um inconsciente informado: Histórias, metáforas e citações que curam and is a contributor to the book entitled, Coaching e Psicologia.

Visit our website, www.actinstitute.org, for additional information on Ericksonian Hypnosis updates and free downloads in English and Portuguese.

ERICKSONIAN HYPNOSIS:

Strategies for Effective Communications

PREFACE

There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking.

- Alfred Korzybski -

I sat staring at the wall; the doctor was droning on. I was hearing, hearing nothing—except that my wife of many years, Dina, had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. We both fought back tears. Finally he finished and left—leaving us together—thank God, together and alone in her hospital room. She was told that she had less than a year to live; that would later turn into five years. The diagnosis connected us to each other as nothing else had in our lives. Dina decided to live regardless of what she had just heard. She—we—would stand and fight. We stood together, learned to love in the deepest of ways and grew over the next five years. We fought the good fight.

A year after the doctor’s pronouncement, Dina came to me. I knew that look in her eyes oh, so well. We were about to have a talk. She proclaimed her love for me and ever so quietly asked that we go into couples therapy. I listened, thought, cried and then behaved very badly. WHAT! What! We were both psychoanalysts! We were dealing with everything very well. WHY would we need a couples therapist? Besides, I knew and she knew so many therapists! Most of them I would not send a dog to, even if we owned a dog, and we did not, and it needed to go! I yelled, slammed doors, and retreated to another room. Believe me that, when I say I behaved badly, I did. I am sparing you the ugly details. After a few hours I timidly asked her why? What was wrong? Dina replied, Our relationship is wonderful, our love for each other is clear, a given, your support enables me to continue to fight, fight to live and yet, yet, her voice lowered, we may not win this battle. I know that I will be healed—spiritually—however, I may not be healed physically. We both know this and both of us are protecting ourselves. We are both closing down, little by little. I feel it happening in us. Little by little, closing down. I want us, both of us, to be open, open, totally open to each other. Open to each other, win or lose. Open to the last moment of my last breath. I stood in stunned silence. She was right, so right. We were cutting off our feelings tiny piece by tiny piece, day by day. I could not respond. We held each other. Each of us cried. The next morning as we had breakfast I, while holding her hand, asked her to find the right therapist to help us to stay awake to each other as we struggled on. I only asked that the therapist she found was not afraid to face that Dina might die, as that was one reality. The therapist she found would have to be able to stand in the fire with us. The therapist need not be brilliant, just willing to challenge us as we both could over-intellectualize almost anything we needed to face! Lastly, the therapist would have to trust that once we were challenged, we would do the rest. We would find our own resolutions.

Within the week Dina had found a therapist specializing in Ericksonian Hypnotherapy, based on the work of Milton H. Erickson, and we began to meet. We met every week for over three years, until the last six weeks of Dina’s life. Indeed, we achieved the goal, we stayed open to each other on every level until she drew her last breath.

After my wife’s passing, I continued to stay with the therapist, as I wanted to make sure I did not avoid my grief. I wanted to feel, process and accept my loss so I could, in time, find my way back into my life.

Although I had been psychoanalyzed for 13 years and been in treatment and trained in 15 other kinds of therapy, I had noticed a very important difference when working within an Ericksonian framework. Both Dina and I had accepted our peculiarities and remaining neurotic responses. We had both had copious amounts of therapy and learned to live with and appreciate who we were, warts and all. But the Ericksonian work was shifting many aspects that we both thought were the result of just the way we were. Old patterns began to change and dissolve and new, more effective and positive ways of being, responding, experiencing began to appear. Oh, my god, maybe you could teach an old dog new tricks!

After my wife’s death, the work with my therapist continued to evolve and transform me. I was so impressed I decided to train in Ericksonian Hypnosis. I attended the New York Society for Ericksonian Psychotherapy and Hypnosis for two years and received my certificate in 1996. I was invited to join the faculty, did, and later became Director of International Programs for NYSEPH. After graduation I entered into weekly supervision for a number of years, and attended many workshops with noted Ericksonian practitioners (Stephen Gilligan, Daniel Brown, Corydon Hammond, Betty Alice Erickson and others). I completed an additional 100 hours of training at the Jane Parsons Fein Institute for Psychotherapy and Hypnosis, focusing on the work of Erickson and its application to the work of Virginia Satir and family therapy. I accepted an invitation to join the faculty. I began to travel as an international trainer in Ericksonian Hypnosis and was the first to bring Milton’s daughter Betty Alice Erickson, a colleague and friend, to Brazil, Guatemala and Mexico. I founded my own training institutes in Mexico, Guatemala and Brazil. The more I taught—especially in languages I did not know, working with translators—the more I knew I did not truly understand Milton Erickson’s work. In my own native tongue, I could use my intellect to hide my deeper ignorance behind my words. I could not, however, hide from the looks of confusion on my students’ faces or my own confusion when I was unable to explain a concept or strategy in another language. I immersed my intellect, heart and soul into my studies and clinical use of Ericksonian Hypnosis. I fully accepted the challenge of my foreign students’ confusion and dug deeper until I could explain, clarify, and experientially demonstrate what Erickson was talking about. I learned, this time from the inside out, Ericksonian Hypnotherapy. I decided to write this book.

Never let formal education get in the way of your learning.

- Mark Twain -

This book is a work in progress. Hopefully it best represents a clear, productive, useful and simple sense of Milton H. Erickson’s philosophy, context and strategies. I have