From Real Life To Cyberspace
Helping Our Young Clients Develop a Strong Inner Selfie
by Tobi B. Goldfus, LCSW-C
Type: eBook
Format: .epub
“Tobi Goldfus tackles a challenging topic — how to reach young people who have embraced the digital age and help them develop a strong inner “selfie.” She begins with an excellent assessment tool (the Social Media Assessment Form) to evaluate the impact of the digital world on an individual client. The major pathway of this book involves using this information to help her young clients develop a strong, resourceful, core self. She offers highly effective tools to achieve this goal, including practice of the relaxation response, identifying resources available in real life as well as in cyberspace, and introducing brief trances called “trancettes” to help access down-regulated states. Of particular interest are Goldfus’ “7 stages of smartphone attachment” and her strategies to improve self-regulation and sharpen an observer self. There is a well-crafted chapter on using hypnosis as the lens for work with “parts” or ego states to achieve “cyberpresence,” and throughout her book, she is masterful at utilizing and including agendas and practices of young digitized clients, while deftly dealing with ethical issues. I strongly recommend From Real Life to Cyberspace (and Back Again): Helping Our Young Clients Develop a Strong Inner Selfie to practitioners who are mystified and even resentful of youthful preoccupation with the digital world. This is a valuable resource to bring the increasingly important connection of young people and cyberspace into therapy as a catalyst for change.”
— Maggie Phillips, Ph.D., Healing the Divided Self (with Claire Frederick) and
Finding the Energy to Heal, Reversing Chronic Pain, and Freedom from Pain (with Peter Levine)
“Tobi Goldfus, LCSW-C, has bravely taken on one of the toughest challenges therapists treating young people can face: restoring common sense and a sense of humanism to those who are spending (too) much of their lives living in an untamed cyberspace. Goldfus rises to the challenge by providing insight and supportive practical advice that every therapist trying to re-direct their young clients’ attention away from a screen temporarily will appreciate. Put down your smartphone for a while and read this book!”
— Michael D. Yapko, Ph.D., clinical psychologist and author of The Discriminating Therapist and Depression is Contagious.
“With the same empathy and encouragement that she offers adolescents and young adults in her practice, Tobi Goldfus helps therapists to value and utilize the ever-influential cyberworld of our younger clients. This book is rich with concrete ideas that help us combine all we know about connection, boundaries, intimacy, and development with the complexities and benefits of the digital world. If you want to better understand how to use experiential and hypnotic approaches to teach young adults the need for balance and authenticity, then this is the book to read.”
— Lynn Lyons, LICSW, author of Anxious Kids, Anxious Parents and Using Hypnosis with Children: Creating and Delivering Effective Interventions.
“I saw Tobi Goldfus teaching about the world of kids and adolescents a few years ago and immediately invited her to present at two major congresses in Germany. Now her excellent book upgrades the knowledge of therapists toward a better understanding of the (cyber)world that adolescents are living in. Tobi Goldfus’ idea of developing the “inner selfie” of her young clients is a stroke of genius. Therapists from all backgrounds will enjoy and benefit from this perspective.”
— Bernhard Trenkle, Dipl.Psych., President-Elect International Society of Hypnosis ISH.
“The book and accompanying Social Media Assessment tool teaches the clinicians how to join young clients in assessing where they are on a continuum from healthy use of social media to more compulsive, addictive online behaviors. The therapeutic approach outlined in the book is both multidimensional and flexible in order to help bring clients into the space of being present IRL, building internal awareness, and guiding them in self-regulation skills and relationship building with others and themselves. The goal: integrating their digital and real-world selves by finding and making friends with their Inner Selfie.”
— Linda Thomson, Ph.D., APRN, Past President of ASCH, NESCH, NMSCH, author of Harry Hypnopotamus Tales and creator of Stress Free Surgery.
About the Author: In addition to her active private practice, Tobi B. Goldfus presents nationally and internationally on the impact of cyberspace on young people and finding a healthy balance between online life and real life. She has served on numerous faculties, including: the Society of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis the American Association of Clinical Hypnosis, the European Hypnosis Society, the International Hypnosis Society, the Milton H. Erickson Foundation of South Africa, the Brief Therapy Conference(s), the Ericksonian International Congress(es), and the Center for the Advancement and Training of Clinical Hypnosis. She has served as a guest lecturer at the University of Johannesburg Department of Psychology, Johannesburg, South Africa.
