All Transformation All The Time!

Answer Within Book Title The Answer Within:
A Clinical Framework of Ericksonian Hypnotherapy

In this book, Carol Hicks and Stephen Lankton present the structure of Erickson’s hypnotherapeutic work and illuminate his genius as a psychotherapist. They demonstrate diagnostic assessment leading to treatment plans based on Ericksonian principles. Clinical examples highlight multiple embedded metaphor as a modality to communicate therapeutically with the client. Originally published by Brunner/Mazel in 1983, it has been republished as the first volume to appear in the Crown House Classics Series with new introductions by both authors. (purchasing information, New paperback volume available from Crown House Publishing.)
Enchantment and Intervention Book Title Enchantment and Intervention in Family Therapy:
Training in Ericksonian Approaches

This book by co-authors Stephen Lankton and Carol Hicks provides a broad systemic framework to make sense of Ericksonian interventions and weave them together in a coherent strategy for effective work with families. Enchantment and Intervention is a transcript of a five day professional training workshop in which this framework was presented and practiced by mental health providers. It contains many specific interventions that are described in detail and then built systematically into ever more complex combinations of interventions. It is the next best thing to taking the workshop. 324 pages, published by Brunner/Mazel, 1986. (purchasing information)
Tales of Enchantment Book Title Tales of Enchantment:
Goal-Oriented Metaphors for Adults and Children in Therapy

This book by Carol Hicks and Stephen Lankton is a compendium of psychotherapeutic metaphors that help individuals become motivated for action, question long-held attitudes and embrace new ideas, bring out emotional experiences, and enrich and invigorate the entire therapy process. The authors present a broad array of actual examples of metaphors designed for various therapeutic purposes and problems. Tales of Enchantment presents actual pre-designed stories that were told in successful therapy in order to assist clients in their movement toward specific, co-created goals. Especially valuable is the way the stories are categorized according to the particular types of goals for which they are structured. It is 412 pages, published by Brunner/Mazel, 1989. (purchasing information)
Quickies Thumbnail Quickies: Shining Light on Intimacy and Sexual Pleasure This chapter by Carol Hicks appears in Doug and Shelly Flemmons’ Handbook of Brief Sex Therapy. Carol provides an overview of couples therapy work from her practice to illustrate principles of radically honest communication in negotiating marriage contracts that work in both the sexual spectrum and in every walk of life.
Transforming Type A Thumbnail Transforming Type A Personalities Carol Hicks examines the positive intentions behind Type A personality styles and proposes alternative methods to more comfortably accomplish these goals. It is when old habits are fed into the fires of transformation that new answers emerge.
Sleep and Hypnosis Thumbnail Using Hypnosis to Transform Sleep Disruptions with Active Intention This chapter was originally published in 2000 in the Sleep and Hypnosis journal in Istanbul. It follows the case of a woman who had chronic insomnia that she learned to overcome through active intention and self hypnosis.
Scared Speechless Thumbnail Scared Speechless
A chapter in George Burns, Ph.D. collection of Healing Stories. This chapter presents therapeutic metaphors used in a case wherein a woman’s anxiety disorder manifested in an inability to speak. Carol uses multiple embedded metaphors to retrieve resources and link them to desired contexts.
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This meditation on transforming heavy weight into lovely lightness is the latest in Carol’s ‘life in balance’ series of guided meditations. You simply read the prompts and take them to heart as you contemplate what, for you, is the right balance at all levels: mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
sunmoon1.JPG Pain Management
Gone with the wind is what became of the pain in this transcript of a hypnotherapy session conducted in a training workshop on a windswept beach. The client presents severe pain issues from several automobile accidents and a reaction to medications that created constant involuntary motion in his arm. At the end of the hour long session he was completely still and reported no pain. Readers can follow the suggestions in the italisized portion to create similar results.
Contemplate As the Smoke Clears
This transcript takes the reader on a smoking cessation meditation. Simply read the text and follow its prompts to contemplate your way to a smoke free existence. Transform yourself in the clarity that comes as the smoke clears.

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The Wellness Journey
Jerry Jackson tells his moving story of a wellness journey that began with his diagnosis of cancer. Reluctant to follow the prescribed traditional methods, he took charge of his own health through diet, exercise, and attitude. Read his inspirational account of that journey that resulted in his complete remission of cancer.
Milton Erickson Thumbnail Milton Erickson, M.D. (1901-1980) was generally acknowledged during his lifetime as the world’s leading practitioner of medical hypnosis. His unique approach to psychotherapy is now legendary. He developed effective and practical methods to elicit “common everyday trance” experiences that were strategically utilized toward the stated interest of his clients. Defining Ericksonian therapy is a challenge because Milton Erickson was known for being therapeutically diversified and intervening in unique ways in response to each client. He advanced hypnosis using indirect suggestion, metaphor, therapeutic confusion and binds, utilization, positive framing, and speaking the client’s language.In all his work, he was deeply respectful of the vast potential within clients and believed that “cure” occurs when we are able to facilitate a re-association in experiential life. That is, he believed people have psychological problems because their learning history has been inadequate in associating desired resource experiences to the necessary situations where they are needed. He never wavered from the conviction that the answers are within. The therapist was simply beneficial in accessing client’s desired experience and facilitating an association to desired contexts.www.erickson-foundation.org