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Utilization involves applying a patient’s interests within the therapeutic process.

Play therapy allows the clinician to follows a child’s lead while they are playing.

Characters and events within videogames can serve as hypnotic metaphors.

When I recently led a consultation group about the use of clinical hypnosis, one of the participants, a Gen X counselor of children and adolescents who is new to hypnosis, confessed that she had little knowledge of the videogames played by her patients such as Minecraft, Roblox, and Fortnite.

Thus, when she has taught them how to employ imagery to calm themselves, she has suggested using images that she herself has found to be calming including scenes from the beach, mountains, or forests.

I reminded the consultation group of Milton Erickson’s concept of utilization (1959), which can be defined broadly as applying an individual patient’s interests, experiences, and response patterns within the therapeutic process.

Such an approach enhances rapport between clinicians and their patients because their interactions occur in a world that is familiar and comfortable to the patients.

Thus, the effectiveness of their therapy is enhanced, as opposed to offering a technique with which a clinician might be comfortable but is of little relevance to a patient.

I suggested that the........

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