Using Hypnosis with Children: Creating and Delivering Effective Interventions

How to create and deliver effective hypnotic interventions with children.

From the initial interview to creating the best metaphors, Using Hypnosis with Children is a practical, step-by-step guide that shows health care providers (including therapists, nurses, pediatricians, dentists, and educators) how to create and deliver hypnotic interventions that are customized and effective into their pediatric clinical work, with utilization and flexibility as key components to an overall treatment approach. Using case examples of language for all age groups, readers learn first how to identify the salient targets or themes, deliver a session that hits these targets with precision, and then connect the session to the child's everyday experience. More broadly, readers learn to use hypnosis as a way to help create new neural pathways, teach self-regulation, introduce a more internal locus of control, and develop positive interpersonal experiences.

Chapters focus on the most common issues that children face, including anxiety, depression, medical procedures/pain, and sleep.

Lynn Lyons, LICSW, has been a psychotherapist for 25 years and specializes in the treatment of anxious children and their parents, with a special interest in interrupting the generational pattern of worry in families. In addition to her private practice in Concord, New Hampshire, she presents internationally to mental health and medical providers, educators, school nurses, and parents on the topics of anxiety, pediatric hypnosis, and the importance of experiential strategies in therapy. She is the co-author with Reid Wilson of Anxious Kids, Anxious Parents: 7 Ways to Stop the Worry Cycle and Raise Courageous and Independent Children and the companion book Playing with Anxiety: Casey's Guide for Teens and Kids.

Michael D. Yapko, PhD, is a clinical psychologist residing in southern California. The author of fifteen books, including Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis (SCEH) Arthur Shapiro Award for Best Book on Hypnosis winners Process-Oriented Hypnosis and Mindfulness and Hypnosis, as well as leading hypnosis textbook Trancework (now in its 5th edition), Dr. Yapko has taught in more than thirty countries and received numerous awards for his contributions. He has also received lifetime achievement awards from the International Society of Hypnosis and The Milton H. Erickson Foundation.