Easy Ego State Interventions: Strategies for Working With Parts

by Robin Shapiro

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Author: Robin Shapiro

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Hardcover:
ISBN 10: 0393709272
ISBN 13: 978-0393709278

Quick, essential techniques to practice ego state therapy, a popular therapeutic approach.

Most of us have different aspects, “parts,” or “ego states” of ourselves―the silly and imaginative five-year-old part, for example, or the depressed, anxious, or angry adolescent―which manifest as particular moods, behaviors, and reactions depending on the demands of our external and internal environments. “Ego state therapy” refers to a powerful, flexible therapy that helps clients integrate and reconcile these distinct aspects of themselves.

This book offers a grab bag of ego state interventions―simple, practical techniques for a range of client issues―that any therapist can incorporate in his or her practice. In her characteristic wise, compassionate, and user-friendly writing style, Robin Shapiro explains what ego states are, how to access them in clients, and how to use them for a variety of treatment issues. After covering foundational interventions for accessing positive adult states, creating internal caregivers, and working with infant and child states in Part I: Getting Started With Ego State Work, Shapiro walks readers step-by-step through a variety of specific interventions for specific problems, each ready for immediate application with clients. Part II: Problem-Specific Interventions includes chapters devoted to working with trauma, relationship challenges, personality disorders, suicidal ideation, and more.

Ego state work blends easily, and often seamlessly, with most other modalities. The powerful techniques and interventions in this book can be used alone or combined with other therapies. They are suitable for garden-variety clients with normal developmental issues like self-care challenges, depression, grief, anxiety, and differentiation from families and peer groups. Many of the interventions included in this book are also effective with clients across the dissociation spectrum―dissociation is a condition particularly well suited to ego state work―including clients who suffer trauma and complex trauma. Rich with case examples, this book is both a pragmatic introduction for clinicians who have never before utilized parts work and a trove of proven interventions for experienced hands to add to their therapeutic toolbox. Welcome to a powerful, flexible resource to help even the most difficult clients build a sense of themselves as adult, loveable, worthwhile, and competent.

Review

“[P]articularly useful for therapists who have patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or find that their patients seem untreatable. Ego state work serves as another tool in the box a therapist can use in tough situations, and Shapiro does a great job in making ego state work compelling and understandable both for the layman and the professional.”
- Somatic Psychotherapy Today

“Grounded in the science of current, state-of-the-art treatment approaches, this book takes the reader directly into therapy sessions and explains theoretical concepts in everyday language. Readers will learn invaluable concepts and methods, made richly practical through close-up case examples, for the assessment and treatment of complex human problems. Robin Shapiro is a highly respected therapist and innovative thinker, particularly with regard to the treatment of trauma. In Easy Ego State Interventions, her deep insights and creativity are evident in every chapter.”
- Jim Knipe, PhD, author of EMDR Toolbox

“Robin Shapiro has delivered again. Easy Ego State Interventions is sharply organized, theoretically sound, and eminently practical. It clarifies theoretical concepts with vividly illustrated case examples, making the difficult subject of therapy for complex trauma and dissociation interesting, creative, and do-able. I hope all therapists who have complex trauma clients in their practice will read this book.”
- Carol Forgash, LCSW, BCD, co-author and editor, with Margaret Copeley, of Healing the Heart of Trauma and Dissociation with EMDR and Ego State Therapy

About the Author

Robin Shapiro, LICSW, is known for her clear, accessible, and practical style in writing, teaching and clinical consultation. She edited and contributed to EMDR Solutions: Pathways to Healing (Norton, 2005) and EMDR Solutions II: Depression, Eating Disorders, Performance & More (2009) and wrote Trauma Treatments Handbook (2010), and Easy Ego State Interventions (2016). She loves her work: writing, presenting about ego states, EMDR topics, and suicide prevention, doing clinical consultation, and thirty-eight years of psychotherapy practice, especially around issues of trauma, anxiety, and attachment.

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Easy Ego State Interventions: Strategies for Working With Parts