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April 14, 2024

Making a Difference in Chronic Pain: Therapeutic Principles and Hypnotic Strategies

Minnesota Society of Clinical Hypnosis

Virtual workshop

Organization: Minnesota Society of Clinical Hypnosis

Website: https://www.msch.us/education/2024-shep-myers-memorial-workshop-with-suzanne-candell/

Event Title: Making a Difference in Chronic Pain: Therapeutic Principles and Hypnotic Strategies

Dates: 04/14/2024

Location: Virtual workshop

CE: 6

Contact: Jennifer Stoos, jstoos@rekindlethespark.com

Abstract:
Making a difference in chronic pain requires us to become experts in mind/body re-regulation skills grounded in the research regarding the psychophysiology of pain and trauma (chronic pain is often experienced as an inescapable threat by patients). These approaches are "bottom up" and emphasize experience before analysis, sensing before intellectualizing. They allow us to help patients actually decrease pain instead of just learning to cope with it. To invite patients to experiment with these powerful but challenging strategies, we must also actively facilitate an attuned, "right-brain to right-brain" therapeutic relationship. With a foundation of an attuned, attachment-informed approach to treatment, the overarching goals of a mind/body approach to treatment of chronic pain is to create experiences that enable awareness, tolerance, and modulation of the dysregulated mind/body to decrease pain, decrease distress, and improve functioning.

This workshop will focus on hypnotic and other mind/body strategies that build awareness, tolerance and modulation of sensation to decrease pain, regulate emotions, enable an adaptive pace for living and improve capacity to engage in multi-disciplinary treatment. Strategies will include formal hypnotic tools, as well as “being hypnotic” through the use of hypnotic language, brief hypnotic approaches and mindfulness. When and why to use strategies will be emphasized, as well as how to tweak strategies to enable persistence in patients who become dysregulated while attempting them. Hypnotically-informed strategies to enable attunement will be identified and their use throughout treatment described.

Learning Objectives:

1. Provide a brief explanation of the theory of Central Sensitization in the genesis and maintenance of chronic pain
2. Explain the three key principles underpinning the treatment of chronic pain (Awareness, Tolerance and Modulation of psychophysiology).
3. Identify 3 hypnotic strategies to facilitate awareness of psychophysiology to enable the treatment chronic pain.
4. Identify 3 hypnotic strategies to facilitate tolerance to enable the treatment chronic pain.
5. Identify 3 hypnotic strategies to facilitate modulation of chronic pain.
6. Explain signs of overactivation/sympathetically-dominant responding and underactivation/parasympathetically-dominant responding and at least 2 ways to intervene in each
7. Explain two strategies to hypnotically address the patient's emotion dysregulation as an important component to treating chronic pain.
8. Describe 3 adaptations to chronic pain treatment that are useful in facilitating change in patients with histories of psychological trauma.
9. Describe at least 2 signs of patient state shifts in sessions and explain 2 ways to use these to engage in informal hypnosis to facilitate awareness, tolerance and modulation of psychophysiology in the treatment of chronic pain
10. Describe 2 ways that psychophysiological attunement of the therapist to the patient enables patient safety and enables awareness, tolerance and modulation skill building.
11. Describe three principles for how to modify approaches used in the active phase of treatment to enable maintenance of gains

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