"Making Hostile Words Harmless contains skills that change lives. Everyone who reads this book will wish they had read it years and years ago. Highly recommended." --Stephen R. Lankton, MSW, DAHB, DCSW, Editor, American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis

"Ancient wisdom and sound therapeutic practice meet current challenges for making the hostile harmless. In this book, Kate Cohen-Posey provides a pragmatic therapeutic posture illustrated by heaps of helpful one-line examples with potential benefits for clients and therapists alike." --George W. Burns, Clinical Psychologist Director, Milton H. Erickson Institute of Western Australia

"Kate Cohen-Posey has written a delightful book to help clients create reframes, positive responses, and alternative perspectives to the negative comments of others. If people read this book, who knows, maybe civility with a touch of humor will break out." --William J. Matthews, PhD, Editor, Current Thinking and Research in Brief Therapy

A GROUNDBREAKING NEW GUIDE INTRODUCING A CREATIVE AND POSITIVE APPROACH FOR DEALING WITH DIFFICULT PEOPLE

Making Hostile Words Harmless creatively offers therapists and their clients a unique collection of effective exercises and bully-busting responses guaranteed to defuse difficult exchanges.

Based on the martial art of Aikido-- the "way of harmony"--as a model to teach the verbal arts of confirming, inquiring, understanding, and evoking, this unique book:

• Helps professionals and their clients learn empowering skills that will enable them to deal with negative verbiage and hurtful words
• Presents an easy-to-remember acronym, 'AAAH, ' for neutralizing negativity: Acting-as-if, Asking questions, Active listening, and Hypnotic and humorous responses
• Offers sample dialogues, case vignettes, and other tools for using this approach

Infused with wisdom and a strong dose of humor, Making Hostile Words Harmless presents a unique combination of ancient philosophy and current psychology that offers antidotes to venomous communication with the goal of ending word warfare.