Seminar 1: How to develop a therapeutic story – spontaneously for any situation

Therapeutic storytelling has always been a central component of hypnotherapy, systemic therapy, and many other forms of counseling. The use of metaphors and example stories is known from the ancient Orient and remains one of the most effective forms of counseling to this day. The stories are told by the counselor or brought in by the client and reinterpreted by the counselor, or they are developed jointly by the conversation partners.

But how do I discover a useful story and how do I tell it? The seminar teaches techniques for spontaneously developing individual stories in counseling and telling them in a therapeutically effective way.

The seminar provides ideas on how to...

• Spontaneously find therapeutic stories for clients at any time
• Formulate stories in a therapeutically effective way and embed them in conversation
• Transform clients' problem metaphors into solution metaphors that are spontaneously reintegrated into their reality by those being counseled
• Write stories individually for clients and their specific concerns

Seminar 2: Writing good therapeutic stories – in 10 minutes & proven narrative structures

This seminar explores different ways of constructing simple and somewhat more complex therapeutic stories for children, adolescents, and adults.

It covers both spontaneously told and written stories that can be composed from one hour to the next or for recurring situations.

It will also illustrate which narrative structures have proven effective for which age and personality groups and for which symptoms or problems.

Among other things, methods for resolving blockages, compulsions, feelings of guilt and shame through ambivalence (unresolved prioritization conflicts) will be demonstrated.

Metaphors and narrative structures are also practiced that increase the plausibility of the offer for clients and can deconstruct skepticism that counteracts the therapeutic effect in order to increase the effectiveness of suggestions.

In addition, methods are presented for illustrating solution strategies for clients and supervisees in such a way that they can subsequently be used arbitrarily and involuntarily.

Seminar 3: The Island of Love – Maps and Landscapes in Individual, Couples, and Family Therapy

The workshop illustrates how we can use inner landscapes and maps to transform problematic experiences and behaviors into helpful options. Examples of therapeutic interventions include the “Island of Love” and the creation of other symbolic maps, imagining and changing houses, villages, and landscapes that represent the client's state.

The “Island of Love” map can be used, for example, to take the bitterness and harshness out of conflict discussions with couples and to enter into conversation on a different level: “I notice that you sometimes act out your conflicts very intensely. If you take a look at this map...” Immediately, the partners are distracted from the problem discussion and focused on something creative.

The rest of the conversation then takes place “one step away from the problem,” a method that Milton Erickson has already used in many variations.

Together with the couple, the therapist can of course also create their own map – with astonishing ease and surprising results! And finally, problem-solving maps can also be drawn with individuals, families, or teams. Stefan Hammel shows how this works in this workshop.

Seminar 4: Storytelling - other brief interventions, therapeutic greetings, deals & ordeals

The seminar teaches how therapeutic greetings can be used as an alert form of ultra-short hypnosis to dissociate and resolve stressful experiences, associate and identify relieving experiences with self-experience, and transform stress into neutral or relieving experiences. It discusses how such greetings are structured, how they are embedded in therapy, how they can be developed spontaneously, and which greetings have proven particularly effective as standard interventions, for example to avoid retraumatization in therapy and to increase therapeutic efficiency.

In addition, a variety of pictorial and narrative short interventions are demonstrated and practiced, and transitions between therapeutic storytelling and therapeutic modeling as well as conversational hypnosis in the sense of Milton Erickson are clearly conveyed through demonstrations and exercises.

These include agreements with the body to reduce symptoms, ordeals, reframings, psychoeducational narratives, and other narrative interventions.