Level III - Training: Clinical Applications of
IGISM
ATS/3A
- Interactive Guided Imagerysm
with Children
(6.5 hrs CE Credit) Pre-Requisite: Level
II
Children are instinctively drawn to cartoons, comic books, and story telling. They love to draw and paint, and to role play mother, father, sister and/or brother independent of gender identity.
Childhood is a time of growth, learning, and modeling. It is also a time where the risks of traumatic learning are great.
As children become exposed to the myriad of feelings and issues that accompany the sorrows surrounding the death of a pet or grandparent, the rage of family violence, the embarrassment of being caught in a lie or stealing, and the endless stream of assaults upon their self esteem, powerful images can become imprinted into the mind that continue to effect them throughout their adult life.
All children must deal with pain and stress, but they are rarely trained how to do so. Since they typically have had little prior life experience and thus only a primitive understanding of the processes involved, kids tend to be highly susceptible to feelings of helplessness and insecurity when exposed to the demands of contemporary living.
This is evident when you encounter a child under the age of six with ulcers or irritable bowel disease, and certainly in adolescents who are wrestling with alcoholism or substance dependence.
Imagery can be an excellent interventional tool in working with kids who are attempting to cope with acute or chronic stress, pain, or medical illness, and it can also play an essential role in helping children to deal with developmental crises, accelerate learning, expand creativity, and enhance self-esteem.
For this home study course, we have selected some of the best information from our prior workshops on guided imagery and kids.
Section I begins with an overview of how using imagery with kids is different from working with adults.
Section II discusses the applications of imagery in helping children to deal more effectively with pain, stress, and trauma and demonstrates how to use the Inner Advisor technique with children.
Section III reviews the uses of imagery in a general pediatric medical practice to help kids cope more effectively with developmental and behavioral issues, and to reduce anxiety associated with medical procedures.
Section IV explores the uses of Interactive Guided Imagerysm with children and adolescents, focusing on the 7 characteristics of developing children.
Ways to utilize imagery techniques to enhance learning, creativity and empowerment in children are reviewed in Section V and Section VI, reviews the applications of Interactive guided Imagerysm in family therapy.
Finally, you will have the opportunity to either listen to or participate in a practicum designed to help you see and experience the world through the eyes of a child.
Besides being effective with children, the techniques can also be extraordinarily useful with adults when working with the "inner child," “wounded child,””adaptive child,””natural child,” or the "child within."
To view the table of contents, click here.
ATS/3B - Adult Survivors of Childhood Abuse
(6.5 hrs CE Credit) Pre-Requisite: Level II
The emotional wounds which can arise from these early experiences are deep and produce a wide range of difficulties that emerge in adult life as depression, anxiety disorders, borderline personality structures, somatization disorders, and addictions to both substances and processes.
Therapy with these patients is often particularly demanding on therapists as issues of trust, intimacy, and relationship are tested time and again.
Severe regressive crises requiring extreme patience and courage on the part of the therapist often interspersed with moving evidence of growth and development allowed by the therapeutic process of revealing the truth and working through the painful feelings and memories. Working with these issues is challenging to even the most experienced therapist and is not a simple matter of imaging or visualizing any particular magic transformation.
Yet there are many areas in this work where imagery techniques seem to facilitate the healing in important ways. The frequent utilization of dissociation as a survival tool in childhood offers the opportunity to skillfully use dissociation and related trance and suggestion-related abilities to support the healing process.
Imagery can be useful in helping people to recover lost memories, to connect with and work through feeling states that have been split away, to find and strengthen inner resources, to grieve their losses, and to build new self-identities that grow beyond the limits of their woundedness.
At the same time, we believe there are special precautions that one must be aware of in using imagery with people who have poor internal organization and vulnerable ego structures, and will focus on these issues as well in this workshop day.
This program discusses special issues and how IGIsm can facilitate the healing of the "wounded child" and "present adult." It reviews techniques helpful for exploring the needs of the parts involved and explains how to help evoke the "inner healer" to stimulate the healing process.
False memory syndrome, working with strong affect and the issue of forgiveness are also addressed.
To view the table of contents, click here.
ATS/4A - Physical, Chronic & Life-threatening Illness
(6.5 hrs CE Credit) Pre-Requisite: Level II
Many of the same approaches that are helpful in working on psychological issues with people are also helpful to people coping with or adapting to physical illness, though special precautions and caveats apply.
In addition, imagery can often be helpful in relieving pain or other symptoms, helping people to tolerate difficult medical procedures, and in stimulating healing responses in the body.
The onset of serious or life-threatening illness creates a number of crises that need to be addressed by the patient and helping professional if the patient is to meet the challenge of the illness most resourcefully.
These special needs are examined and worked with in detail, with special attention to the utility of imagery in helping to meet these needs.
Special attention is also given to issues in chronic pain, cancer, and AIDS as models for some of the most demanding and enriching work one can do.
To view the table of contents, click here.
ATS/4B - Death, Dying, Loss and Transformation
(6.5 hrs CE Credit) Pre-Requisite: Level II
In our society, it’s easy to learn how to accumulate, and there are countless educational institutions and commercial organizations to help us improve our accumulation skills. But how do we learn to let go? Where are we taught the skills to deal effectively with loss?
Imagery is an excellent interventional tool in helping people move through loss and transformation. For this home study course, we have selected some of the best information from our prior workshops on guided imagery and loss.
Section I provides an overview of the nature of loss, and how the imagery skills you’ve learned so far can be helpful.
In Section II, you’ll have an opportunity to experience some of the ways we respond to loss through an imagery practicum in which participants are exposed to a gradual, simulated relinquishment of personal attachments.
This exercise is designed to evoke strong emotions, and if you are uncomfortable about participating, we suggest that you listen only as an observer rather than as a participant.
Section III discusses the importance of belief systems in patients with catastrophic illness, and how imagery is used to help people adopt more positive beliefs and attitudes.
Section IV explores the uses of Interactive Guided Imagerysm in hospice work with dying patients and their caregivers, emphasizing imagery techniques found to be effective in controlling pain, stress, and anticipatory nausea and vomiting, as well as techniques that caregivers can benefit from using.
In Section V, you will experience a brief imagery exercise designed to help identify sources of support and other resources that were helpful during prior loss experiences.
Section VI explores loss and the transformational process, and how imagery techniques can be used to help people move through the predictable stages of grieving following loss.
To view the table of contents, click here.