Full Course Description

Chronic Anxiety: Powerful Treatment Methods to Break the Anxiety Cycle

Chronic anxiety disorders all involve a “threat” that doesn’t occur. Panic attacks don’t kill, obsessive doubts about the stove don’t cause fires, social anxiety doesn’t lead to disgrace and isolation, worry doesn’t lead to insanity. The feared outcomes recede into the future the way an optical illusion recedes into the horizon.

Why are anxiety disorders so powerfully chronic? It’s because chronically anxious clients get tricked by their own efforts to avoid, distract from, and protect against the perceived dangers. When the dangers don’t come to pass, they believe they had a narrow escape from a terrible calamity and feel more vulnerable going forward rather than less. They become increasingly afraid of more and more improbable events. What we call the “anxiety disorders” could be more accurately termed “the disorders of excessive self-protection”, because that’s how they function!

How can you help them recover? By teaching them how to disengage from the self-protective behaviors that trick them. Attend this live webcast and learn how to help your anxious clients find the evidence of this in their own lives, so you can help them approach and accept, rather than avoid and resist, the experience of anxiety.

This workshop will teach you to empower your anxious clients to see themselves as good, capable people who have been fooled by anxiety, rather than defective people who need protection. Discover how to motivate your clients to seek out, rather than avoid, the corrective experiences they need for recovery. Take home effective strategies from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Paradoxical Therapy, Metacognitive Therapy, and traditional CBT to help your clients rediscover the hopes and dreams they had for life before they were derailed by their struggle against anxiety. You, and your clients, will be glad you did!

Program Information

Objectives

Communicate how anxiety can impede clients’ ability to engage in treatment and utilize clinical strategies to alleviate this issue.
Analyze the efficacy of various anxiety treatment approaches, including CBT, ACT, Metacognitive Therapy, and paradoxical methods.
Implement clinical techniques to address clients’ thoughts, feelings, and behavior that underlie anxiety, including shame, blame, and excessive self-protection.
Teach a simple breathing technique that both decreases acute anxiety symptoms and serves as a metaphor for management of future anxiety.
Apply simple yet effective clinical interventions in sessions to help clients acquire a new perspective of chronic anxiety and a more adaptive approach to managing symptoms.
Utilize specific behavioral interventions to decrease symptoms of Panic Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and Specific Phobias.

Outline

Treatment Strategies

Prepare Clients for Treatment

Disarm the fear of treatment
Discover the Anxiety Trick
Experiment with exposure and acceptance
Empathy requires a phobic viewpoint

Schools of Treatment

CBT methods to review outcomes and plan experiments
ACT methods to promote acceptance of discomfort and action
Metacognitive Therapy methods to disengage from arguing with anxious thoughts
Paradoxical methods to encourage exposure

Use Your Body

Belly breathing the right way
Don’t take it lying down
What’s your job when you’re anxious?
Replace destructive protection with valued actions
The rules of opposites

Interacting with Your Mind

The problem with correcting thoughts
Uncle Argument at the banquet
Disengage from “what if?”
Change your relationship with worry

Train Your Brain

Work with your amygdala
The real purpose of exposure
Undoing safety behaviors
Being AWARE

Treating Anxiety Disorders

Panic Disorder

What maintains it? How to end it
Hope and help for demoralized clients
Get unstuck from the “Why?” questions
3 powerful questions

Social Anxiety Disorder

The self-centered phobia
Whose thoughts bother you?
Secrecy is a safety behavior
Would you like to try an experiment?
Compassion for self

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

The two types of worry
The Mad Libs of anxiety
Paradoxical thought experiments
Don’t even think of thought stopping
Worry appointments and exposure methods for worry

Specific Phobias

In vivo exposure for:
- Fear of flying
- Fear of public speaking

Research Limitations and Risks of Psychotherapeutic Approaches

Target Audience

Social Workers
Psychologists
Counselors
Case Managers
Addiction Counselors
Therapists
Nurses
Speech-Language Pathologists
Occupational Therapists
Occupational Therapist Assistants
Marriage & Family Therapists
Other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 09/24/2020

Stop Panic In Its Tracks: Evidence-Based Treatment Strategies for Managing and Eliminating Panic Attacks

Clients who are experiencing panic want relief from their suffering. And given that it took a mountain of courage just to show up at your door, you want to help them as quickly and effectively as you can. But without proper training, panic attacks can be very confusing and difficult to treat. It is very common that well-intentioned therapists inadvertently reinforce avoidance or escape behaviors, thereby prolonging recovery, worsening symptoms—leading to client drop out.

Watch anxiety expert and author, Elena Welsh, Ph.D., as she shares her treatment secrets that consistently improve the lives of her clients suffering from panic and anxiety. Using the best techniques from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), mindfulness, and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dr. Welsh lays out practical, step-by-step integrated treatment strategies that you can use right away, including how to:

Differentiate diagnostically between panic disorder and panic attacks
Provide psychoeducation that is non-pathologizing and immediately useful for clients
Empower clients to increase their comfort level and accept difficult/distressing thoughts, feelings, and sensations
Teach clients to preemptively catch and reframe thoughts that fuel anxiety and panic
Motivate clients to shift behaviors to reduce the severity and frequency of panic/fear reactions
Guide clients through exposure protocols to manage panic/fear reactions
Manage your own anxiety about treating panicked and anxious clients

Do not let another client walk out that door wondering if they could live without panic and anxiety.

Program Information

Objectives

Differentiate diagnostically between panic disorder and panic attacks that are secondary to other anxiety disorders.
Utilize psychoeducation as an intervention to teach clients about the physiology of fear and avoidance as well as the physical sensations that typically comprise a panic attack.
Employ tools to assess problematic thought patterns that fuel anxiety and panic.
Implement mindfulness and acceptance, and cognitive strategies to target distorted thinking.
Develop and execute graduated, imaginal and/or in vivo exposure strategies to directly reduce the frequency and intensity of panic attacks.
Design tools to track treatment progress and help clients stay on track.

Outline

Assessment: Accurately Diagnose Panic and Anxiety Disorders

Panic disorder vs. panic attacks that are secondary to other anxiety disorders
Psychosocial factors that may exacerbate panic symptoms
Impact on client’s social and occupational functioning
Is the client’s support system inadvertently reinforcing panic symptoms?

INTEGRATING ACT, CBT, & MINDFULNESS INTO YOUR THERAPEUTIC TOOLBOX

Psychoeducation: The Essential Foundation of Anxiety Treatment

Teach clients about the physiology of fear and avoidance in a non-pathologizing manner
When the body is behaving normally, just at the wrong time!
Physical sensations that comprise a panic attack
How short-term relief (avoidance, distraction, etc) isn’t enough to yield long-term wellness
Teach clients ‘the why’ of exposure before going through it

Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT): Target Cognitive Distortions that are Common in Anxiety

Catastrophizing, jumping to conclusions, tunnel vision, emotional reasoning, and overgeneralization
Tools to help clients gain awareness of and reframe distorted thinking
Disrupt the link between thoughts and unhelpful/avoidance/escape behaviors
Help clients critically examine the beliefs they hold about panic and its aftermath

Exposure Techniques: Breaking the Anxiety and Panic Cycle

The importance of client buy-in for exposure to be effective
How to develop graduated exposure plan
Subjective Units of Distress (SUDs) ratings to improve clinician-client communication
In-vivo vs. imaginal exposure
The importance of remaining in an exposure exercise until fear subsides
Modify exposure for telehealth

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): Teaching Clients to “Drop the Rope”

Values clarification
Use of metaphors
Exercises to increase comfort with difficult emotions and sensations

Tools for Calming the Body in the Midst of Panic

Breathing skills to interrupt worry thoughts and slow down physiological panic symptoms
Relaxation techniques to reduce vulnerability to panic
Grounding techniques to lower the intensity
How a daily mindfulness practice can reduce panic

Recovery Maintenance Tools: Make Sure Therapy is Working and Help Clients Stay on Track

Individualized methods of tracking success and challenges
Help clients maintain consistent skills practice and reduce avoidance behaviors
Maintain a panic attack progress tracking tool
Connect treatment to client’s goals and values

Other Clinical Considerations

Anxiety and panic during challenging times
Increased anxiety rates during public health crisis
Complicating factors of hypochondriasis and panic disorder
Limitations of the research and potential risks

Target Audience

Social Workers
Psychologists
Counselors
Case Managers
Addiction Counselors
Therapists
Nurses
Marriage & Family Therapists
Psychiatrists
Other Mental Health Professionals

Stop the Dread & Avoidance of Anxiety! How to Apply IFS Techniques for Anxiety

Teach clients to stop dreading and avoiding their anxiety! Learn from Richard Schwartz, PhD, the founder of this model that is being embraced worldwide as a cornerstone treatment for therapists. Dr. Schwartz will show you that your client's anxiety is to be comforted - not dreaded or avoided.
The Internal Family Systems (IFS) model offers a way to help clients separate from their anxious parts and then love and comfort them. In doing so, clients can also learn where those parts are stuck in the past and retrieve them from those scary times and unload the fear they carry. This is a scary present but it’s also an opportunity to help many clients do some deep healing.

Program Information

Objectives

Assess the foundational concepts of the Internal Family Systems as an effective therapy model.
Plan the IFS treatment steps to use with clients to enable them to identify and separate from their anxious parts.
Apply the concept of "multiplicity" as a model for case conceptualization of clients' presenting problem and/or symptoms.

Outline

Multiplicity & the Self

Evolution of the IFS approach
Multiplicity of the mind
Stumbling on to the self

Internal Family System (IFS) For Anxiety

Protector parts and exiles
IFS technique:
- Honoring protectors
- Dealing with the overwhelm
- Witness and retrieve exiles
- Unburden beliefs and emotion that lead to dread and avoidance

Target Audience

Counselors
Social Workers
Marriage and Family Therapists
Psychologists
Psychotherapists
Therapists
Addiction Counselors
Case Managers
Nurses