All Articles by Robert A. Yourell, MA
Mr. Yourell's experience in the mental health and social services fields dates back to 1975. His training includes Ericksonian communication and hypnosis with John Grinder, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing with Francine Shapiro, Ph.D., Body Integrative Psychotherapy with Jack Rosenberg, Ph.D., and solution-focused psychotherapy. He provides free audio experiences on his site that include bilateral sound and Shimmering.
The Empathy and the Irony – Plastic Disc to Teach Empathy to Doctors
When one of my duties was handling complaints about clinicians in our managed care network, I got the most complaints about psychiatrists. Sorry, docs, but it wasn't because they thought you were projecting thoughts into their toasters. The biggest piece of the pie was problems with appropriate communication. These tended to boil down to neglect of what most folks would consider to be the basic stuff of humanity.
Politics of Persuasion, Persuasion in Healing
If there is anything I know a lot about, it’s persuasion. I don’t mean to say that I am a genius sales person or politician, but I had a big lesson about psychotherapy some years ago. I edited a book about persuasion and did a lot of literature research in the process. I realized just how many persuasion techniques I was using as a therapist—in addition to those that I (and many other therapists) were aware of (e.g., Ericksonian hypnotic language and motivational interviewing in particular). Of the previously unconscious (on my part) techniques, one of the most important is priming, which means activating implicit (unconscious, basically) memory, so that the person is more likely to experience a particular state, or evince a particular kind of behavior.
Domestic Violence – Understanding is Getting More Nuanced
A few years ago I brain blogged about domestic violence (DV), focusing on how ideology, politics, and stereotypes were interfering with an effective social response. It got a big response, almost entirely supportive. At that time, the tide was turning because of lawsuits and a preponderance of research that were beginning to overwhelm the dominance of old-school DV responses.
Is Trauma Victim Becoming the New N-Word?
A prevalant stereotype of trauma victims is the person transformed into a serial killer or other threat to society. The Oakland Tribune has gone over the top in reinforcing this stereotype with some truly awful journalism. They dramatically misinterpreted a highly-regarded researcher, Bessel van der Kolk, MD, in their article Scientists Seek to Treat Chronically Traumatized Brains.
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Comments
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- Alex: While we have our eyes glued t
- Richard Kensinger, MSW: Carla,You are absolutely c
- Soraya L. Valles: I'm interested in astrocytes.
- Raymond Tallis: Dear Kitty, I have come to you
- Steven: After smoking for 17 years dai
- Matt: I'm just interested in hearing
- Carla Easley: If everyone adopted the "Growt
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