Treat Anxiety, Trauma, Addiction and Depression Through the Wisdom & Creativity of Story and Symbol – Sherry Reiter

Do your clients struggle to express their feelings? Are you tired of asking the same questions and getting the same constricted answers? Ordinary words are not always enough. Imagine having the power to create a new story with your client to activate their healing imagination and apply metaphor, story and symbol to move your client ahead.

In this recording, you’ll get innovative tools and interventions based in stories, writing, journaling and other expressive therapies – also known as Bibliotherapy. These evidence-based techniques will empower you to creatively and effectively treat your clients facing anxiety, trauma, addiction and depression, as well as allow you to bypass resistance to therapy, overcome your toughest client’s inability to express themselves, and make therapeutic progress where traditional techniques can fail.

Return to your practice with published writings, skill building activities, interactive exercises, key components of storytelling, detailed handouts and instruction on how to apply Bibliotherapy in treatment and inspire your clients to greater change and healing!

• Transform your difficult client into someone with whom you can make great therapeutic strides
• Guide your client through the application of simple writing exercises they can easily and naturally use
• Reinforce the concepts taught, the ability to practice what you’ve learned, and allow its immediate incorporation into your clinical work
• Help clients structure and frame their personal experiences

Leave the recording feeling confident and capable to integrate the power of symbol and story (Bibliotherapy) into your treatment and provide a safe place to hold your client’s sadness, fear and anger. No previous knowledge or background in writing is required to take full advantage of this recording.

1. Demonstrate both prescriptive and expressive techniques to treat depression, anxiety, trauma, addiction and bereavement
2. Apply the poetry prescription and journaling techniques to track and regulate your client’s emotions
3. Employ the principles of transformative writing in treatment for greater neural integration, more flexibility of thought and greater range of emotion
4. Implement simple writing exercises for treatment of emotional regulation and anchoring
5. Integrate Bibliotherapy techniques in therapy to strengthen the observing ego which leads to new perspectives, behaviors and insights
6. Articulate techniques from narrative therapy that will help your client to explore their life story and recognize healthier narratives

Bibliotherapy Incorporates Three Techniques:

JOURNALING

• Create positive neural circuitry
• Shift your client’s mood within seven minutes with transformative writing
• Utilize the Journal Ladder for successful intervention
• Distinguish between cathartic writing and writing for reflection, insight and problemsolving

STORIES

• Understand the importance of polyphony in expanding narratives
• Identify archetypes that are driving the life story
• Collaborate with your client to create a new narrative
• Use teaching tales for insight and new learning

POEMS

• Collect powerful poetry prescriptions for immediate clinical use
• Apply the “isoprinciple” and principle of opposites for emotional change
• Understand how metaphor is a catalyst for whole brain learning
• Share published literature and initiate dynamic, meaningful dialogue

Apply Bibliotherapy Techniques to Treat:

ANXIETY

• Transform anxiety into calmness:
  • Mental imagery
  • Rhythm and breath
  • Clusters, lists, sentence stems and pantoums
  • Haiku
  • Hypnotic words and mantras

TRAUMA

• Anchor clients with emotional stability and flexibility:
  • Gentle, concrete journaling techniques for calming and centering
  • Creative visualizations to relax and focus
  • Strategic problem solving that builds on client strengths

ADDICTION

• Create new neural circuitry:
  • Replace addictive cravings with new rituals and the habit of journaling
  • Decrease isolation with “communitas”
  • Transform avoidance and numbing to connection and healthy attachment

DEPRESSION

• Improve mood and instill hope:
  • “Sunbursts” and “sparkling moments”
  • Edit the negatives into positives
  • Strengthen the injured ego with “ink transfusions” from famous writers and leaders