Audio recording

Presenter: Susan Dowell, LCSW

Anger can support or impede healthy functioning. It can motivate or inhibit behavior, empower or disempower, bond people or separate them. Anger can provide a false sense of security, self-righteousness and clarity of purpose. So too, can it be an appropriate, self-preserving response to interactions or circumstance. Anger can often be a negative trance state, with distorted perception and beliefs and hyper-arousal. Hypnosis and Mindfulness Meditation are ideal treatment modalities to work with these negative trance states. Both offer valuable experiential tools to facilitate self-observation and exploration, emotional modulation, imaginal rehearsals, and forgiveness.

In this workshop, we will open with a discussion about Anger as a negative trance state and look at relevant hypnotic tools for clinical exploration of triggers and resources, affect modulation, and imaginal rehearsal to create new neural pathways. We will next discuss Mindfulness approaches to working with anger, and participate in a Mindfulness exercise designed to re-enforce perspective, forgiveness, autonomy and grounding. In the practicum that follows, participants will take turns role playing clients, while their partner uses these Hypnotic and Mindfulness tools and exercises in a simulated clinical setting. There will be time set aside for discussion and Q and A.

"Anger is a zone of energy in us" a suffering baby we have to take care of. The best way to do that is to generate another zone of energy that can embrace and take care of our anger. The second zone of energy is the energy of mindfulness.". Thich Nhat Hang