Mindful Happiness

Anthony Quintiliani, Ph.D, LADC

  • Home
  • Dr. Anthony Quintiliani
    • About
  • Mindful Happiness
  • Mindful Expressions Meditation CD
  • Contact

January 26, 2017 By Admin

Enhancing Hope in Psychotherapy

Enhancing Hope in Psychotherapy

The enhancement of personal hope is a key part of successful psychotherapy practice. Some view this requirement as a foundational aspect of the therapeutic alliance; others do not hold the same view.  In the case of serious co-occurring disorders, especially trauma and substance misuse, initiating, developing, and sustaining a hopeful future-view is highly important in client motivation and faith in beneficial change. In the client’s personal world of hopelessness (possibly helplessness), pain and suffering, a common expectation is that this “hell realm” will not end.  Therefore, to enhance hope in the intersubjective space of psychotherapy, therapists need to implement certain on-going hope-based strategic interventions.  Here is a list to consider.  Do you routinely do these things in your sessions?

  1. Be highly mindful of maintaining a strong therapeutic alliance, and counteracting our own conscious countertransference. To understand your unconscious countertransference, mindfully notice your emotional and behavioral reactions to your clients.
  2. In gentle and hearable ways, reframe psychological suffering as challenges and possible opportunities for creative experimentation. Use of metaphors may be helpful.
  3. The reality that suffering and non-suffering are both aspects of the same consciousness may be helpful here. Gently encourage the client to practice being more conscious of times when suffering may be less dominant and, especially, any times when it is non-existent in consciousness.
  4. Promote positive self-understanding through careful uses of attachment history and the client’s pros/cons of their attachment experiences with parents/care-takers, etc.
  5. Help the client understand the nature of their suffering.  Some of it may be based on their attachment history, and some of it may be based on their habitual habits in life – as ways to escape/improve the outcomes of their attachment history. Often self-medication is an example of self-defeating behavior in the client’s effort to improve the moment.
  6. Maintain a positive presentation of healing from suffering; do so without making any promises you cannot keep.
  7. Reinforce and celebrate concrete symptom reduction as experiential episodes of self over suffering. The augmented identity of a “healing self” is important here.
  8. Teach and practice in-session various intervention skills for stress reduction. Mindfulness-based stress reduction is a good starting point. Use SUDs scores (0-100) for changes in levels of suffering/stress reactivity as the client learns and uses these skills. The scores should go down! Celebrate positive improvements.
  9. Be a model for paying attention to positives – any small significant “difference that makes a difference” in one’s personal experience of suffering.
  10. Cooperate openly in-session with the client to foster positive expectancy (some placebo here) about any and all improvements in the present moment.  Help to extend these practices/experiences into the client’s life beyond their therapy time. Admittedly, this is difficult to do.
  11. Specific mindfulness-based practices have been shown (when practiced regularly) to improve emotion regulation (reduce reactivity) and open up sense-doorways to pleasant bodily experiences – even more happiness. Learn and practice forms of self-regulated calm breathing, brief meditation, yoga or stretches, tai chi, qi gong, and walking meditation as part of your hope-enhancing practice. Note and discuss any client responses to practice that may enhance hopefulness.
  12. Guide clients with guarded optimism. Practicing the above-noted interventions and skills may produce inner, more intrinsic, self-healing. Enhanced HOPE is our target.
  13. For most (not all) psychotherapists, using cognitive-behavioral therapy may be the most common approach to integrate hopefulness into clinical practice.
  14. If you consider yourself an advanced psychotherapist, you may want to take each area of my CABS-VAKGO-IS-Rels system and practice your own creative hopeful interventions for each area of human processing.  Note: CABs = cognition, affect, behavior – sensory-based; VAKGO = visual, auditory, kinesthetic, gustatory, and olfactory sensory processing – all sense doors that may be opened via hopefulness interventions.  CABs-VAKGO-IS-Rels mechanisms operate in past, present, and future orientations. Use intuition and spirituality when possible and appropriate. And, keep in mind that all these human functioning pathways operate in a relational sphere of being. These are complex formats for psychotherapy. Outcomes are worth the effort.

For more information refer to Briere, J. N. and Scott, C. (2015 End.). Principles of Trauma Therapy: A Guide to Symptoms, Evaluation, and Treatment. Washington, DC: SAGE Publications, pp. 101-102. See also Quintiliani, A. R. (2014). Mindful Happiness…Shelburne, VT: Red Barn Books, pp. 3-9, 20-34,  75-81.

Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, VermontChiYinYang_EleanorRLiebmanCenter

Author of Mindful Happiness  

Mindful Happiness cover designs.indd

New Edition of Mindful Happiness in Production…Coming soon!

Filed Under: Activities, ANTHONY QUINTILIANI, Featured, Psychotherapy, Therapist, Therapy, Training Tagged With: ANTHONY QUINTILIANI, HOPE, MINDFUL HAPPINESS, PSYCHOTHERAPY

Twitter

Mindful Happiness -Currently in Production

Mindful Happiness Posts

Buddhist Thought on Joy and Suffering 1) You actually DO have some control over your emotional destiny. 2) The core “conceptual” view of reality is that your inner emotional experience – especially negative afflictive emotional states related to people, places and things you REACT to – are perceived as totally true. 3) In a non-conceptual […]

A Primary Source of Unhappiness Self-medication to reduce or avoid pain and suffering is a major unhelpful habit in the United States. It is a desperate human effort to reduce pain and suffering in physical and psychological experiences. Therefore, we humans may be hard-wired for it. When we suffer and do not utilize effective wise […]

From The Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation We humans have a unique way of perceiving and processing emotional experiences.  Years ago I developed a formula to understand the perception and  process of emotional experiences: CABS-VAKGO-IS/Rels.  The C stands for cognition; we spend a great deal of time thinking about pretty much everything we […]

Looking at Early Judeo-Chrsitian Meditation Practice An early description of enlightened liberation in Buddhist meditation practice reads like this: Birth is destroyed, the spiritual life has been lived, what had to be done has been done. There is no more coming back to any state of being.  Ignorance was banished and true knowledge arose, darkness […]

Emptiness – Meditation Practice The Brahma-Viharas (higher abodes) include four powerful meditation practices ( Loving Kindness/Maitri or Metta; Compassion/Karuna; Sympathetic Joy/Mudita; and, Equanimity/Upekkha) that involve boundless radiation outwardly all the way into the infinite universe. These boundless or infinite space meditations, working with deep absorption and projecting kindness outwardly, may lead to positive changes. Experienced […]

Failure and Success: After We Fail, We Succeed Humans tend to get very discouraged when things do not go our way. This may be especially true for younger people, who have grown up attached to their instant gratification digital devices. Below I will list several highly successful people, but I will also note their many […]

“Ignorance” of Requirements Could End Your Clinical Career Recently various insurance, Medicaid, and Medicare fraud cases have been in the national headlines. Although these fraud cases grab headlines, the truth is that many clinically licensed helpers still do not understand clinical/legal documentation requirements.  In Buddhism, “ignorance” gets in our way; we never approach true liberation […]

Gurdjieff’s The Fourth Way Meditations: A way of Being and Knowing Although Gurdjieff developed a whole way of being and knowing, including attentional practices, dance/body movements, group processes, and meditations here I will focus only on some of the suggested meditations.  In particular, I include the meditations noted by his primary student (J. DeSalzmann, 2011). […]

Mindful Walking Meditation: How to Walk by Thich Nhat Hanh – A Powerful Short Book of Wisdom In my opinion, Thich Nhat Hanh and The 14th Dalai Lama are the two most important and wise teachers of mindfulness, meditation, compassion, and Buddhism in the 21st century.  Below I will offer my interpretation of Thich Nhat Hanh’s […]

A major part of suffering comes with the inability to shift unhelpful, negative focus on troubling thoughts and feelings.   This cognitive reality is common in all the major mental health problems people suffer from: anxiety, depression, trauma, substance abuse, and eating disorders. Due to the lack of “wise-mind” skills most people suffering from these […]

Understanding Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy? Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (or Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, hereafter CBT) has been noted as the most common evidence-based therapy approach used in the United States.  That said, the most common “therapy” approach used here remains generic talk therapy with more or less psychodynamic characteristics. Given the absolute limited level of outcome-based evidence for effectiveness of […]

From The Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation, Monkton, Vermont – Five Breathing and Meditation Practices – Attention and concentration on the breath are common practices to attune meditation capacity. We use the breath as an object of attention in our mind training.   The better your quality of attention and concentration, the better […]

Mindful Loving Can Improve Relationships The 14th Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso), Pema Chodron, David Richo and many others have provided us with helpful advice about improving the quality of our significant relationships.  The Dalai Lama in various writings reminds us that to have true compassion for others – including those we love – we must […]

Basic Self-Compassion Process Practice: To practice self-compassion as needed, follow these specific self-compassion steps. Sensitize your mindfulness skills to become aware of your immediate experience of suffering. Hold a strong intention to respond with self-kindness. Use self-talk to be kind to yourself. Begin by softening your body. Relax your muscles, tendons, joints. Hold a natural […]

Practice:  Mindful Actions to Improve YOUR Self-Esteem Improving Your Awareness with Practice Remain mindfully aware of the content and meta-cognition regarding the “speaking” of your inner, self-conscious critic.  Note what trends appear in the conversation. Remain mindfully aware of the reactions your mind and body experience regarding the activity of your inner self-critic in dealing […]

Subtle and Direct Experiences of Happiness Khenpo Sherab Zangpo’s 2017 publication The Path: A Guide to Happiness, Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications has much to offer about how to become a happier person.  Read over the listing below and see what you may be missing. Try this mantra: “I am happy the way I am.” “I am happy […]

Advanced Meditations – Middle Way -Wisdom Path Between Extremes These meditation practices are advanced, and combine complex ideas from Nagarjuna (Indian Master), T’ong-Kha-Pa (Tibetan Master), and The 14th Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso).  In keeping with the mixed secular nature of my meditation center, I have decided to present these complex ideas with several of my […]

Mindful Leadership Skills: How to Lead in Wise Mind Ways Researchers dealing with leadership skills have noted several acquired characteristics of effective leaders.  These same skills may be used in spreading “the word” about how mindfulness and wise mind practices reduce stress reactivity, enhance compassion, and expand the possibilities for human happiness, inner peace and […]

Spirit Wars and “Spiritual Warfare” This post will discuss the topic and personal strategies.  Most content will relate to both physical realities and metaphorical meanings and categories. Since a person viewing their self as fighting a spiritual war most likely holds onto certain parts of self in this endeavor, it is highly unlikely that the […]

Beyond MBSR – Quick Start Skills Self-calming for counselors and other helpers is one of the most important survival practices to master.  Self-calming consists a set of basic mindfulness skills, all of which must be practiced regularly to achieve desired emotion-regulation effects. The utility of these skills is well established in clinical research, and not […]

Mindful Happiness Tags

BRAIN PSYCHOTHERAPY MINDFUL TRAINING VIPASSANA CONSCIOUSNESS VERMONT CLINICAL SUPERVISION SUFFERING HAPPINESS MINDFUL MEDITATION MINDFULNESS TRAINING ELEANOR R LIEBMAN CENTER SELF ESTEEM SELF CARE SELF MEDICATION DR ANTHONY QUINTILIANI EMPTINESS BREATHING MEDITATION MBSR ADDICTION MINDFUL TRAUMA COMPASSION ACTIVITIES EXERCISES COVID-19 BUDDHISM ANTHONY QUINTILIANI PRACTICE MINDFULNESS MEDITATION PRACTICE PRACTICES SELF COMPASSION ENLIGHTENMENT WISE MIND ACTIVITY JOURNALING MINDFUL HAPPINESS THICH NHAT HANH TRAINING SELF VIPASSANA MEDITATION THERAPY. WALKING MEDITATION

Mindful Categories

Mindful Happiness Pages

  • About
  • Contact
  • Dr. Anthony Quintiliani
  • Mindful Expressions Meditation CD
  • Mindful Happiness
  • Site Map

Copyright © 2023 · Mindful Happiness