Please join the Minnesota Society of Clinical Hypnosis in welcoming Suzanne Candell for our 9th Annual Shep Myers Memorial Workshop via Zoom on Sunday April 14, 2024, as she presents “Making a Difference in Chronic Pain: Therapeutic Principles and Hypnotic Strategies.”
This event is being recorded, and will be available for two weeks to those who register.
April 14, 2024
9 AM – 4:30 PM CST
Making a Difference in Chronic Pain: Therapeutic Principles and Hypnotic Strategies
The following program offered by the Minnesota Society of Clinical Hypnosis has been submitted for 6 CEUs towards ASCH membership and/or certification
Description
Sometimes with chronic pain patients, we may feel we can do little more than help them cope with symptoms that seem unchangeable. We are puzzled and maybe a bit annoyed that chronic pain patients can’t seem to make meaningful use of our medical interventions, self-care recommendations, or cognitive behavioral approaches to helping with pain. What we may not yet realize is that we must enable mind/body re-regulation before patients can adhere to medical recommendations or work with higher-order, cognitive and behavioral tools to help with pain.
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.
| Date | Sunday April 14, 2024 |
| Time | 9 AM – 4:30 PM CST |
| ASCH Approved CEUs – in process | 6 |
| Location | ZOOM |
| MSCH Member Cost | $85 |
| ASCH Member Cost | $100 |
| Non-Member Cost | $125 |
| Registration | Register for Workshop |
Agenda – All Times CST
AGENDA – All Times CST
| 9:00 – 9:45 AM | Introduction to psychophysiology of chronic pain, emphasizing the theory of Central Sensitization |
| 9:45 – 10:00 AM | Assessing patient beliefs/world view re: pain and pain treatment and using this information to facilitate mind/body treatment using hypnosis |
| 10:00 – 10:15 AM | Introduction to chronic pain treatment priniciples: Awareness, Tolerance and Modulation of psychophysiology |
| 10:15 – 10:30 AM | The importance of working with emotion in chronic pain patients with case examples using the treatment principles |
| 10:30 – 10:45 AM | BREAK |
| 10:45 – 11:15 AM | Key considerations for treating complex chronic pain patients with psychological trauma histories, with case example emphasizing adaptation of treatment strategies and progression |
| 11:15 – 11:45 AM | The importance of working with common comorbidities of chronic pain (eg, insomnia) with case examples using the treatment principles |
| 11:45 – 12:00 PM | Introduction to case |
| 12:00 – 12:15 PM | Differences and similarities of building and maintaining rapport with chronic pain patients in multi-disciplinary and private practice settings |
| 12:15 – 1:15 PM | LUNCH |
| 1:15 – 2:00 PM | Introduction to hypnotic awareness strategies and application to case with a group experience of deconstruction of sensation |
| 2:00 – 2:45 PM | Introduction to hypnotic tolerance strategies and application to case with a group experience of toggling to neutral |
| 2:45 – 3:00 PM | BREAK |
| 3:00 – 4:00 PM | Introduction to hypnotic modulation strategies and application to case with a group experience of hypnotic modification of pain sensation |
| 4:00 – 4:15 PM | Watching for and addressing normative anxiety as the patient improves (the change is welcome, but unfamiliar) |
| 4:15 – 4:30 PM | Touchstones for maintenance of treatment gains |
| 4:30 – 4:45 PM | Closing Information |
Objectives
Making a Difference in Chronic Pain Objectives
- Provide a brief explanation of the theory of Central Sensitization in the genesis and maintenance of chronic pain
- Explain the three key principles underpinning the treatment of chronic pain (Awareness, Tolerance and Modulation of psychophysiology)
- Identify 3 hypnotic strategies to facilitate awareness of psychophysiology to enable the treatment chronic pain
- Identify 3 hypnotic strategies to facilitate tolerance to enable the treatment chronic pain
- Identify 3 hypnotic strategies to facilitate modulation of chronic pain
- Explain signs of overactivation/sympathetically-dominant responding and underactivation/parasympathetically-dominant responding and at least 2 ways to intervene in each
- Explain two strategies to hypnotically address the patient’s emotion dysregulation as an important component to treating chronic pain
- Describe 3 adaptations to chronic pain treatment that are useful in facilitating change in patients with histories of psychological trauma
- 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
- Describe 2 ways that psychophysiological attunement of the therapist to the patient enables patient safety and enables awareness, tolerance and modulation skill building
- Describe three principles for how to modify approaches used in the active phase of treatment to enable maintenance of gains
Biography
Suzanne Candell, PhD, LP is a clinical psychologist in private prac:ce in Minneapolis. She specializes in health psychology, specializing in pa:ents with chronic medical condi:ons such as pain, func:onal G/I disorders, and incurable illness. She has a par:cular exper:se in addressing the unique needs of chronic medical pa:ents with psychological trauma histories. Dr. Candell is an approved consultant in Clinical Hypnosis through the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis. She has presented on a variety of hypnosis topics to health care professionals locally and na:onally.
Registration
Workshop Registration Closes on April 12, 2024 at 5 PM CST. If you are a member of MSCH and do not see the member registration below, please log in or renew your membership. If you have logged in and do not see the member price below, please refresh your browser (reload the page). After you have entered information on the registration below, you will be redirected to a page where you will be able to enter your credit card information.
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