Stanley Gross, Ed.D., instructor

Impulses, flooding, and worried thought are common in hot button reactions, but they are not innocuous.  These reactions to social events serve as the leading edge of personal pain, social fractures, and mental health problems.  Few who experience these urgent reactions understand how they originate or what to do about them.  Hot buttons also fly under the radar for clinicians, researchers, and policy makers.  This workshop is based on clinical experience and a review of related literature.  It offers a way to understand and harness these urges in order to improve stressful choice.  The workshop introduces the hot button reaction with an experiential exercise followed by a review of the intervention model.

Specific learning objectives:

• Develop a greater sensitivity to the implications of hot buttons for work with clients

• Discuss the origin, significance, and persistence of hot button reactions

• Describe interventions in psychotherapy and psychological education

Program Code: HMIB
6 CE Credits MFT
Location: at William James College, Newton

Stanley J. Gross, Ed.D., recently retired after twenty-five years of clinical practice in Quincy and West Roxbury, MA.  He is Professor Emeritus of Counseling Psychology at Indiana State University, Terre Haute IN.  Dr. Gross authored Of Foxes and Hen Houses:  Licensing and the Health Professions (1984) and Pathways to Lasting Self-Esteem (2004).