NICABM – How to Work With Clients Who Are Stuck

Description Of How to Work With Clients Who Are Stuck

How to Disrupt the Powerful Barriers That Keep Your Client Stuck
Why do clients get stuck?

To fully understand what keeps our clients at a standstill, we need to look deeper at what causes the neurophysiological patterns that lead to gridlock, and how the unconscious brain creates biases that keep our clients immobilized.

And we need to look at new ways to approach the core fear that traps our clients inside a holding pattern of stagnation.

So we sat down with 15 of the greatest experts in our field to ask them how they work with clients who are stuck. This is what they told us. . .

What You’ll Learn In How to Work With Clients Who Are Stuck

How to Work With Clients Who Are Stuck

How the Unconscious Brain Can Create 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

• 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 that cognitive therapy can’t reach
• The procedural patterns of trauma vs. attachment: why they require two different approaches
• How to help clients become aware of their unconscious patterns.

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 Change the Way Clients Relate to their Body
Peter Levine, PhD Ron Siegel, PsyD Bill O’Hanlon, LMFT

• How unconscious reactions to trauma can keep clients stuck
• Why trauma survivors often get stuck in a brain-body feedback loop
• The key factor that can help clients process and recover from traumatic memories.

How to Work With the Behavioral Patterns That Suppress Growth
Richard Schwartz, PhD Ron Siegel, PsyD Kelly McGonigal, Phd

• One Powerful 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

About NICABM

We proudly provide continuing education for practitioners who are dedicated to being the best in their craft. Our goal is to develop programs that connect you with the top experts and the latest strategies in the field, to help you achieve better outcomes, more quickly with each of your clients.

About Course Director: Ruth Buczynski, PhD

Dr. Ruth Buczynski is a licensed psychologist and founder and president of The National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine (NICABM). NICABM helps physicians, nurses, psychologists, social workers, and counselors – practitioners who have some of the most significant and life-changing missions on the planet – provide cutting-edge, research-based treatment strategies to their patients. For more than 25 years, NICABM has offered accredited training and professional development programs to thousands of practitioners worldwide.

More courses from the same author: NICABM