Bill O'Hanlon's Writing and Publishing Site

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Bill's newest book!

A rich menu of do-it-yourself change-inducing startegies, bringing together seven major ways in which people change. 164 pages.

New! Downloadable Book
Whether you are motivated by a need to communicate and contribute or to supplement your income now or in later years, this book will give you what you need to get started self-sponsoring to getting hired by national or international sponsors. It also details how to get over stage fright, how to focus your topic, what equipment to use and how to make money even when you get no fee for speaking. 71 pages.

New! Downloadable Book

Sell your book before you write it. Most nonfiction books are sold by proposal these days. Learn how to prepare one so that it is more likely your book idea will get you an agent and a publisher. A short book chock full of useful information, including a sample proposal that sold to use as a model. 63 pages.

Downloadable Book
Burned out? Exhausted? Overworked? Underpaid? Frustrated or tired of doing clinical work? Want to find new passion for your work? Want to find new sources of income for now and your later years beyond the clinical work you do?

30 possibilities for expanding your practice and income beyond the therapy room
Stop being a victim of managed care, attorneys and of all those years and all that money you have invested in your education and training. Discover 30 innovative ways to take back your power and increase your income.

Downloadable Book
Complete set of handouts from all of Bill's workshops, covering such diverse topics as brief therapy, spirituality, hypnosis, and forms for therapy. Downloadable PDF file that you can print and use for yourself, colleagues or clients.

Downloadable Book
This wry, irreverent, unfettered little book tells you in 60 pages everything its undisciplined, flaky, formerly-shy author has learned about how to succeed. Through exhaustive and humiliating personal research, trial and error, he has made almost all the mistakes and come up with simple to understand, easy-to-use strategies for how to succeed in spite of your limitations. Not just for the lazy, but also for perfectionists, procrastinators, people who are clueless about what to do with their lives . . .

Downloadable Audio Program
Bill challenges the myth that all trauma leads to post-traumatic stress, and shows ways to turn crisis and trauma into positive growth and change [14 minutes]

Downloadable Audio Program
Meetings with a Remarkable Man: Reflections, stories and memories of Milton Erickson, M.D.
A fun and fascinating journey through the life and work of Milton Erickson, eccentric psychiatrist and therapist extraordinaire. Bill was one of his students in the 1970s (he was Dr. Erickson's only work-study student, trading gardening for Dr. Erickson's tutoring). Lots of stories, both personal and clinical, to enchant and educate you about Erickson's creative and unusual approach to life and therapy. [45 minutes]

Downloadable Audio Program
Learn the difference between positive thinking, which Bill says is often delusional and unhelpful, and the possibilities stance. A fun and empowering discussion on how to approach life, difficulties and change in a realistic and hopeful way. [9 minutes]

Downloadable Audio Program
Why Tom Cruise was right and why he was wrong: Thoughts on psychiatry as a pseudo-science and on the effectiveness of anti-depressants [12 minutes]

Keep Your Feet Moving

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A lively audio program filled with engaging stories from a master storyteller. Bill's favorite teaching tales. Available as a downloadable audio or compact disc.

Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot

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In this one-hour audio program, Bill O'Hanlon will tell you how to recognize and follow the four soul signals that tell you what you are meant to do in this life. Filled with stories and clear guidelines. Available as a downloadable audio or compact disc.

Calm Beneath the Waves

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Looking for relief from panic, anxiety, hopelessness and desperation? Better than Valium, this 41-minute audio program will help you find immediate relief and comfort and even provide you with new possibilities for how to handle these feelings. But like Valium, it is probably best not to drive or operate machinery while partaking of this product.

Beside Yourself with Comfort

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Life can be a pain in the neck sometimes, but if you have unremitting acute chronic physical pain that hasn't been relieved by standard medical intervention, this 30-minute hypnotic program can help. Even though this program may provide tremendous relief, please refrain from driving or operating bulldozers, cranes or other heavy machinery while enjoying your audio program.

Moving On 1

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A healing hypnotic program for sexual abuse survivors. This 30-minute audio program is empowering and permissive and designed to help listeners reclaim their lives and move on to vibrant futures.

Moving On 2

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More of the same, only better. Moving On I was so popular Bill recorded a second 30-minute hypnotic program with all new material.

How to access spiritual resources in therapy without imposing on clients. Released March 2006.

Therapist Bill O'Hanlon shows how to not only survive a crisis, but thrive beyond it. There are ways to use crises and problems as opportunities for midcourse corrections and growth, but this growth is not guaranteed. If you or someone you love is facing an ordeal, this book will give you a road map through the treacherous land of crisis to emerge with a better life.

An easy-to-read introduction and overview of Bill’s latest development--inclusive therapy. This is an approach that can enhance any method of therapy and is compatible with psychodynamic to Zen philosophies. Organized, like the Guide to Possibility-Land, into bite-sized digestible chapters and sections, with whimsical illustrations.

This is the book that got Bill on Oprah! Written for a general audience, it’s based on the concept that simple and small actions can create powerful change. Bill’s Ten Solution Keys provide direction for how to start a cascade of change that will put you back in control of your life and your emotions. No problem is too big or too small and the book includes sections on spirituality and sexuality.

A spunky and easy-to-read guide to solution- and post-solution approaches to change. The book is organized into 51 bite-sized methods. Each method is defined, explained, and whimsically illustrated all in a page or two. This technique-driven book is perfect for training programs and skill development.

This book offers an alternative to traditional, long-term and pathology-based approaches to treating trauma. The book gives therapists the tools to help clients form a resilient thread and weave a new fabric of self in which every aspect of one’s personality is recognized, valued and cherished. The approach is respectful, collaborative, flexible, and in most cases, mercifully brief.

Try and Make Me! offers a commonsense approach to dealing with challenging kids that ends the madness, stops tantrums in their tracks, can prevent future escalation and violence, and helps create a context for cooperation. Written for a general audience. Learn how parents may unwittingly create defiance and how they can put the ball back in their child’s court when he or she misbehaves. For kids from toddlers to teens.

A comprehensive guide to the latest in constructivist, strengths-based therapies (including narrative, solution-based, collaborative, possibility, inclusive and language-based approaches). Provides a philosophical introduction, with basic assumptions, as well as practical methods to this cutting-edge trend in the counseling and therapy fields. Can be used as an introductory textbook or just a good read.

The first book on solution-oriented therapy, co-authored by Bill and Michele Weiner-Davis. It is a classic and as relevant today as when it was first published. Complete guide to first and subsequent sessions, material about using solution-oriented language and assessment, and assumptions of a solution-oriented approach, with numerous case studies and vignettes. Now in paperback with new material.

All the homework assignments you would need for couples therapy. Information on how to use homework assignments in couples therapy as well as techniques for maximizing follow through. A wide variety of special topic areas are covered, including: communication, finances, parenting, and sexual issues. The book is formatted both to provide copier-ready exercise sheets as well as providing a computer disk so exercises can be easily modified or personalized.

The idea of brief, solution-oriented therapy flies in the face of conventional wisdom. But now, in the first practical guide to use this approach with severe mental illness, the authors acquaint readers with the core principles of the solution-oriented model. With the help of many case examples, Bill and Tim Rowan describe proven strategies and techniques for treating clients suffering from schizophrenia, severe depression, borderline syndromes, and other severe, chronic and persistent mental illness.

Original hardcover title: Love is a Verb. Written for a general audience. Presents a fresh, new approach to relationships by going beyond analyzing them to changing them, even if one partner isn’t interested. Shows readers how to: break free of old patterns quickly; improve their sex life; increase feelings of love and closeness; and get over past hurts.

A clear guide for therapists to resolving couples issues using a solution-oriented model. Includes issues of sexuality, resolving conflicts, more effective communication, keeping a relationship going, resolving affairs and other relationship traumas and keeping couples together when they are on the verge of breaking up.

This engaging book offers and overview of the history and theory of brief therapy from its beginnings in the research of Gregory Bateson through the seminal therapy of Milton Erickson and John Weakland to contemporary theorists and practitioners such as Steve de Shazer. Bill and co-author Brian Cade, from Australia, concentrate on ways of working with clients that are common to all brief therapies, including framing, pattern, paradoxical, metaphorical and systems interventions. An important addition is the discussion of the ethics of brief therapy, the abuse of power by therapists in directing outcomes, and more.

This comprehensive introduction to hypnosis based on the pioneering work of Milton H. Erickson Demystifies the concepts of “trance” and “hypnosis.” Readers are invited to attend one of Bill’s workshops as he takes participants through the basics of trance induction and explains the how, what, and why of hypnosis. Each individual element of trance induction is explained clearly, through the use of case examples, demonstration, and audience participation exercises. The only of Bill’s books to be taken directly from a workshop, this captures the live, irreverent presentation style he has.

This volume offers a unique behind-the-scenes view of Bill O’Hanlon’s way of making sense of psychotherapy. Grouped into four major sections: Ericksonian/Strategic Approaches; Solution-Oriented Therapy; Possibility Therapy; and Inclusive Therapy. These twenty chapters let us bear witness to the evolution and transformation of one of our most creative therapists practicing today. With hard to find and unpublished papers and book chapters included, this book offers a refreshing open look at the style and thought that goes into each one of Bill’s creative concepts of how to be a better therapist.

Now you too can experience first-hand Bill at one of his exclusive week-long training sessions that is limited to only ten participants. On an intimate, almost one-to-one relationship, he shares stories, metaphors, interchanges with participants, transcripts of therapy consultations and many more teaching points that allow this book to read like a novel. The book explores many current issues facing therapists and offers the reader a chance to experience an in-depth training session where everything and anything is discussed including hypnosis, brief therapy, Ericksonian techniques, solution-oriented therapy, narrative therapies and the use of language in therapy.

This book provides an excellent framework for understanding Erickson’s complex and sometimes confusing approach to therapy and hypnosis. Its clear and concise explication of strategic and hypnotic patterns will blow away the smoky confusion that often surround the work of this master therapist.

This video illustrates Bill’s solution-oriented approach with a lesbian couple. It includes introductory and explanatory material as well as excerpts from both individual and couple treatment. It’s a lively session, clearly documenting a brief, respectful approach to helping couples resolve their conflicts rapidly. Bill’s additional commentary and on-screen notes assist the viewer in understanding the process of this therapy. An explanatory b