The Experts Biggest Mistakes – NICABM

How to Work With Clients Who Are Stuck

How the Unconscious Brain Creates a Holding Pattern of Fear

Bessel van der Kolk, MD      Joan Borysenko, PhD Bill O’Hanlon, LMFT

• How chronic trauma changes the brain (and why it keeps patients stuck)
• How specific neural changes alter the way clients build connections
• How one practitioner shifted himself from fearful avoidance to spontaneity

How to Train the Rigid Mind

Rick Hanson, PhD      Kelly McGonigal, PhD

Joan Borysenko, PhD      Bill O’Hanlon, LMFT

• The “mo-betta” approach to positive neural linking
• How to increase a client’s learning rate from positive experiences.
• How the “dreaded experience” can make your client stuck
• How to pick out the subtle ways your client is stifling self-expression

One Practical Skill to Locate Where Your Client is Stuck

Marsha Linehan, PhD       Joan Borysenko, PhD

• What happens when practitioners mistake impulse for choice
• The analytical technique that motivates a client to change
• How to focus an assessment to help clients identify their own stuckness

How to Work With Procedural Memories Keeping Your Clients Stuck

Pat Ogden, PhD      Joan Borysenko, PhD

• How to access specific memories in the body that cognitive therapy can’t reach
• The procedural patterns of trauma vs. attachment: why they require two different approaches
• How to foster integration between the explicit and implicit selves

How to Help Clients Defuse Limiting Ego Strategies

Tara Brach, PhD      Ron Siegel, PsyD Kelly McGonigal, PhD

• The “Spacesuit Self”: why clients put it on (and why it’s so hard to take off)
• How to approach stuckness when it’s layered with shame
• The “stop signal” that can disrupt anger and invite choice

How to Sell Your Client on Change

Marsha Linehan, PhD      Ron Siegel, PsyD Kelly McGonigal, PhD

Joan Borysenko, PhD      Bill O’Hanlon, LMFT

• The one critical part of therapy where many practitioners fall short
• The one emotion that you need to reframe as your client’s worst enemy
• One practical skill that can break clients out of negative patterns

How Post-Traumatic Memories Can Hold the Body Hostage

Peter Levine, PhD      Ron Siegel, PsyD Bill O’Hanlon, LMFT

• How the body’s unconscious reaction to trauma keeps clients stuck
• Why trauma survivors often get stuck in a brain-body feedback loop
• The key factor that helps the body release stuck trauma and restore itself

How to Work With the Behavioral Patterns That Suppress Growth

Richard Schwartz, PhD      Ron Siegel, PsyD Kelly McGonigal, Phd

• The Internal Family Systems model for helping clients get unstuck
• How to help clients form corrective relationships with their extreme sub-personalities
• The important negotiation process that allows you to reach a client’s stuck parts

How to Use Neuroplasticity to Overwrite Negative Beliefs

Rick Hanson, PhD      Bill O’Hanlon, LMFT

• 12 seconds that can make a difference for positive brain change
• Why positive experiences alone are insufficient (unless you follow them up with this one step)
• The important phase of brain change that practitioners routinely overlook

How to Motivate Clients to Push Through Self-Imposed Boundaries

Kelly McGonigal, PhD      Ron Siegel, PsyD Bill O’Hanlon, LMFT

• The cocoon effect and how it keeps clients stuck
• How to use the “missing zero” strategy to motivate change
• How to help clients assess the real cost of avoidance

Why Your Client May be Feeling Constrained and How to Help Free Them

Jack Kornfield, PhD      Ron Siegel, PsyD

Kelly McGonigal, PhD      Joan Borysenko, PhD

• How to adjust an intervention when arousal overwhelms the client
• A strategy to help clients make more empowering decisions
• How to help clients regain a new sense of self after trauma

How to Help Clients Rewrite Their “Stuck Story”

Joan Borysenko, PhD      Bill O’Hanlon, LMFT

• One of the most powerful patterns that keeps people from change
• The 10,000-hour plan to becoming stuck
• One way to help clients escape the prison of their grievance stories