Crucible® Neurobiological Therapy (CNT)
Intensive Workshop Series
Mind-mapping lets you intuit what other people are thinking and feeling, what they want, and what they are likely to do. Mind Mapping also lets you know yourself and understand your own feelings and motivations. It’s at the heart of self-awareness, introspection and how we come to understand ourselves.
Mind Mapping greatly determines how people act in relationships. Mind-mapping helps you create or improve good things like:
- Intimacy and sex
- Effective parenting
- Effective leadership
- Teaching and training
- Empathy and compassion
- Encouragement and emotional support
- Pleasant surprise
Mind mapping also underlies the worst parts of relationships: People who repeatedly do cruel, unhelpful, disappointing and/or hurtful things succeed because of their mind-mapping ability–rather than their lack of it. This workshop offers new ways of addressing:
- Lying and deception
- Manipulation
- Bullying
- Emotional abuse
- Extramarital affairs
Mind-mapping changes your view of relationships: It’s much easier to accept a dysfunctional relationship when you think your partner is socially inept or mind-blind. People who repeatedly do cruel, unhelpful, disappointing and/or hurtful things succeed because they have mind-mapping ability, not because they lack it. When you realize your partner is tracking your responses, mapping your mind, and using this against you, stuck relationships quickly reach critical mass for change.
Another critical piece involves recognizing mind-masking, the brain’s ability to ward off being mapped by someone else. Good mind-maskers can make you think they completely lack mind mapping ability. Understanding mind masking will completely change your view of your personal relationships. If you’re a therapist, it will change your picture of your cases too.
Mind-mapping-based Crucible Neurobiological Therapy creates entirely different treatment dynamics and closes the loopholes clients escape through. People make difficult self-acknowledgements they would otherwise reject, and self-confrontations they would usually avoid, because the data stream and therapy process is unanticipated. These rapid developments de-escalate hostility and encourage positive brain plasticity in long-troubled couples.
Crucible Neurobiological Therapy also focuses on interpersonal neurobiology: the physiological processes of traumatic mind-to-mind contact. It is based on 12 years of clinical innovation and case study research using mind-mapping therapy with highly-troubled clients from around the world. The most complete description of Crucible Neurobiological Therapy is the book, Brain Talk: How Mind Mapping Brain Science Can Chance Your Life and Everyone in It by Dr. David Schnarch (2018, Sterling Publishers). The underlying brain science is also fully referenced there.
Traumatic mind-mapping. Crucible Neurobiological Therapy focuses on how traumatic mind-mapping profoundly impacts your brain. Traumatic mind mapping occurs when successfully mapping out someone else’s mind blows your mind and impacts your brain. Repeated traumatic mind-mapping, especially during childhood, creates short-term and long-term negative brain impacts that surface as neurobiological problems (e.g., holes in autobiographical memory, gaps in mind-mapping ability, impaired cognitive and emotional functioning.)
Understanding traumatic mind mapping revolutionizes your picture of how emotional trauma and sexual abuse occurs. The vast majority of sexual abuse occurs via traumatic mind mapping rather than physical contact. Traumatic mind-mapping dramatically impacts therapists and clients alike. Every therapist sometimes gets “spaghetti brain” from upsetting realizations about clients or hearing their terrible experiences.
Brain-to-Brain Therapy. Crucible Neurobiological Therapy is designed to resolve the negative interpersonal neurobiological impacts of these and other subtle traumas. In CNT, the mind/brain of the therapist is a primary treatment tool. CNT is “brain to brain” therapy, involving intense mind-mapping between client and therapist throughout the therapy session.
Crucible Neurobiological Therapy Workshop Series
The Crucible Neurobiological Therapy workshop series gives you a functional understanding of brain science that can make you a better therapist. It shows you practical methods to harness interpersonal neurobiology through the clinical application of mind-mapping in therapy and daily life.
Right-brain learning. These workshops develop your clinical abilities to use mind mapping in therapy through extensive use of audio/video recordings, detailed case material, and personal application. These modalities maximize practical application and intuitive learning.
The Four-day Crucible Mind Mapping Therapy Workshop teaches the rudiments of mind-mapping-based therapy, as applied to conventional therapy or Crucible Therapy (our unique differentiation-based therapy for couples, individuals and families). It shows you how to:
- Introduce mind mapping into your psychotherapy sessions, and
- Use it to accelerate treatment and enhance outcomes.
- Break through couple’s emotional gridlock and collusive alliances.
- Produce intensely intimate psychotherapy sessions.
- Develop new pictures of what’s going on.
It covers critical topics like:
- Who has mind mapping and who doesn’t?
- Impact of troubled home-life on developing mind-mapping ability.
- Introducing mind-mapping in sessions: best practices.
- Using mind-mapping to analyze clients’ self-report and turn them into far-reaching insights and effective interventions.
- Detecting client’s mind-mapping and mind-masking abilities.
- Recognize traumatic mind-mapping in clients’ reported experiences and identify short and long term neurobiological impacts.
- Impacts of repeated disgust reactions on autobiographical memory, mind mapping accuracy,
- Become more resilient to traumatic mind-mapping during therapy sessions.
- Empathy, antisocial empathy and compassion.
- Childhood traumatic mind-mapping in likely-to-fail clients
The Six-Day Crucible Neurobiological Therapy Workshop focuses more specifically on the impacts of traumatic mind mapping. It teaches about (1) interpersonal neurobiological problems resulting from traumatic mind mapping and repeated involuntary disgust reactions, and (2) treatment of these problems through the methods of Crucible Neurobiological Therapy.
This six day program utilizes a complete emersion experience to facilitate intuitive learning and nuanced appreciation of brain function, and create a more transformative process for participants. The one goal of the CNT Therapy Workshop is for participants to learn enough to begin applying these methods in their current clinical practices.
The 2017 Intensive Workshop taught participants about:
- Detecting subtle neurobiological shifts in clients’ brain function during psychotherapy sessions.
- Recognizing traumatic mind mapping episodes and their impacts in clients
- Types of interpersonal neurobiological problems and their symptoms
- Basic CNT methods
- Maintaining ongoing intense “brain-to-brain” contact with clients
- Using visualization to resolve traumatic mind mapping experiences
- Written mental dialogues by clients interacting with their antagonist
- Dealing with antagonists in real life
- In-session psychophysiological monitoring of clients and therapist
The 2018 Intensive Workshop taught participants about:
- Identifying the interpersonal neurobiological impacts of traumatic mind mapping and repeated disgust reactions.
- Becoming more resilient to experiencing traumatic mind mapping (“spaghetti brain”) in psychotherapy sessions.
- Basic CNT methods
- Using visualization to resolve traumatic mind mapping experiences
- Deconstruct clients’ written mental dialogues and make productive written comments to clients about their written mental dialogues.
- Handle common problems in working with clients’ visualization and written materials.
- Apply the methods of Crucible Neurobiological Therapy to yourself.
The 2019 Intensive Workshop taught participants about:
- Resolving emotional dysregulation.
- Treating Inner Mental World problems.
- Treating borderline personality clients.
- Treating acute and chronic regressions in the therapy room.
- Using written masturbatory dialogs as a means of treatment in neurobioligcal impairments
