Enhancing Hope through Strategic Hypnotic Suggestion (MSCH)

Organization: Minnesota Society of Clinical Hypnosis MSCH 

Website: https://www.msch.us/education/2025-rosenthal-retreat/ 

Event Title:  Enhancing Hope through Strategic Hypnotic Suggestion 

Agenda: 

Dates: 11/22/2025 

Location: Virtual 

CE: 6  

Contact : deb@msch.us — Deb Schrobilgen 

Abstract: Workshop is designed to enhance the participants’ understanding of the nature of suffering and grief in the face of persistent physical and/or psychological distress, and employ skillful hypnotic strategies to foster hopeful expectancy. The nature of ongoing symptoms and distress often result in a ‘negative set’ that of itself impairs the ability to fully engage in therapy and limits hope for lasting improvement. We will explore the model of pain, discuss the nervous system’s response to ongoing distress, and offer a model for hypnotic suggestion to strategically alter perception and meaning-making involved in this process. Specific methodologies to ‘deconstruct’ the negative mental set that commonly accompanies chronic and intractable symptoms such as pain, anxiety, and depression will be discussed, including specific hypnotic approaches to challenge negative self-talk, to interrupt negative loops in thinking or feeling states, and to offer greater distance from or qualitative awareness of such perception. This stepped approach enhances self-efficacy and offers opportunities to significantly improve one’s mental set, which can enhance therapeutic progress and foster a more hopeful and engaged patient in the healing process. 

Learning Objectives: By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

1. Describe the difference between acute, chronic, and intractable
2. Describe critical components of a biopsychosocial assessment approach to chronic pain and illness
3. Identify hypnotic approaches for chronic pain that provide strategic support for hope when cure is no longer thought to be possible
4. Describe four hypnotic approaches to strategically reinforce and/or redefine hope while also addressing chronic symptoms and illness
5. Describe the current concepts of the unconscious that apply directly to hypnosis in order to facilitate the making of meaning in order to lessen suffering 

Speaker info: DAN HANDEL, MD Dan_Handel__MD_Bio