Full Course Description

Overcoming Anxiety with Positivity and Hope

Anxiety can take over every aspect of our lives making even the most basic daily tasks very challenging. However, there is something far more powerful than anxiety that can have a significant positive impact on your life! In this keynote presentation national and international speaker and trainer, Elliott Connie, MA, LPC, will show exactly how to develop the positive mindset it requires so that you live your life from that perspective and no longer overwhelmed with anxiety.

Copyright : 12/01/2022

Treating Emerging Anxieties in the Post COVID World

Treating anxiety is more challenging these days... In order to more effectively help your clients, you need the latest research on how COVID was the “switch” that shone a light on emerging anxiety issues and how it triggered old or existing ones. To top it all off, existential fears have been exacerbated by years of media bombardment, constant economic, racial, and political unrest, and even the worry of large-scale war. This recorded session, with highly sought-after international public speaker Dr. Marwa Azab, will have you dive deeper into that research as she walks you through the effects of burnout, anxious fog, along with other new faces of anxiety and how they impact your treatment methods.

You’ll be able to:

Formulate more efficient therapeutic plans using your revised understanding of anxiety disorders
Differentiate client's legitimate health concerns from health-related anxieties
Assess how Long-COVID can affect anxiety and how to use that information to devise a more successful treatment plan for your client

Don’t miss your opportunity to learn how anxiety has changed and how you can improve your treatment methods with these latest developments.

Program Information

Objectives

Extrapolate the callosal impact of the pandemic on initiating, exacerbating, modifying clinical anxiety symptoms.
Evaluate anxiety about health and its links to panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, illness anxiety disorder and somatic symptom disorder.
Assess Long-COVID, differentiate among the three symptom clusters and formulate a potential treatment plan for long-COVID related anxieties.

Outline

Revise your understanding of anxiety disorders, so you can formulate the most efficient and effective therapeutic plan
Differentiate worry about health from pathological health-related anxieties that can lead to the development or exacerbation of anxiety disorders
Quantify the impact of long-COVID and devise a treatment plan

Target Audience

Counselors
Marriage & Family Therapists
Physicians
Psychologists
Speech-Language Pathologists
Social Workers
Other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 12/01/2022

Health Anxiety: Strategies for Handling the Fears and the Realities

An ache, pain, or fever can throw your health-anxious client over the edge… And researching symptoms on the internet often doesn’t help, in fact it has the opposite affect… Is this COVID? Cancer? Something else entirely? You need the proper skillset and tools be able to help clients discern the difference between a sensation and something that may be a symptom of a larger illness.

In this recorded session, Kimberly Morrow, LCSW and Elizabeth DuPont Spencer, MSW, LCSW-C will give you the essential information to diagnose health anxiety with or without physical symptoms, as well as help you to develop exposures that will help your clients change their relationship with this fear.

Program Information

Objectives

Identify treatment differences for clients who have real medical conditions vs those who have imagined medical conditions.
Develop exposure and response strategies with clients for their particular vulnerability with health.
Create and use worry scripts for health anxiety with clients.

Outline

What is Illness Anxiety Disorder? How prevalent is it and how is it defined?
Illness Anxiety Disorder and Somatic Symptom Disorder: How are they different and how does this change your approach to treatment?
Helping clients create boundaries regarding doctor visits and researching illnesses
How the appropriate mindset can help clients face new health symptoms
Developing exposures to change your client’s relationship with their illness fears
Making your health-anxiety treatment more mindful and integrating acceptance

Target Audience

Counselors
Marriage & Family Therapists
Physicians
Psychologists
Speech-Language Pathologists
Social Workers
Other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 12/01/2022

Anxiety and Stress in the Digital Era: Understanding Mental Health and Screen-time

67% of your clients are compulsively checking their smartphones for alerts, calls, and texts—even without getting a notification. Our clients are in an enmeshed relationship with their smartphones… and our clinical training never taught us how to handle this kind of relationship.

Research has started to identify the impact of smartphone and internet overuse--linking it with anxiety, depression, low self-esteem and stress. That’s why we have created a one-day live webinar packed with activities, visual tools, case studies, and experiential exercises to help your clients:

Understand connections between digital use and stress, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and more, etc.
Identify tech use risks, like digital distress and sensory overload.
Regain control of digital overuse, protect energy, and balance screen-time.
Recognize the effects of social media’s “comparison culture” and turn towards real connection.
Experiential exercises, handouts, apps, and other resources!

In this recorded session, view two industry leaders, Nina Hersher, MSW, Chief Education Officer at The Digital Wellness Institute, and Elif Balin, LPC, NCC, Certified Digital Wellness Educator who will equip you with a toolkit of knowledge and strategies to eliminate tech overuse an addiction and move clients into a healthier relationship with their devices.

Program Information

Objectives

Analyze sources of digitally based anxiety to inform clinical treatment interventions.
Conduct assessment of warning signs of technology addiction and overuse related to anxiety assessment.
Integrate strategies for the prevention of and recovery from digital burnout and sensory overload-based anxiety as related to clinical treatment.

Outline

Part 1: Foundations of Screen Time and Anxiety: Mental Health, The Attention Economy, and Digital Environments
- Understand digital wellness key terminology and industry trends related to mental health and the attention economy
- Identify the technology use risks (e.g., compulsive technology use, insomnia, loneliness, negative online social comparison) and understand how they may be linked to or exacerbate common mental health challenges with anxiety
- Identify shifting norms of connectivity and anxiety in the digital era framed through Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
- Understand and address the impact of information overload and social media on mental health to support media-based anxiety in clients
Part 2: Combating Information Overwhelm and Sources of Screen-based Anxiety
- Gain tools to model and teach the prevention and recovery of digital burnout and sensory overload related anxiety
- Identify warning signs on the spectrum of digital usage including digital distress and information overload of the news
- Utilize apps and tools to decrease technostress, protect energy, and balance screen-time
- Identify effective digital boundaries and to rude anxiety for both practitioner and client
Part 3: Optimizing Communication and Solving for Anxiety in Telehealth Environments
- Understand the impact of the digital revolution on telehealth communication and utilize trauma informed interventions to reduce screen-based anxiety with patients
- Understand and overcome anxiety distraction-based pain points with telehealth to improve engagement and wellbeing (both client and practitioner - privacy, safety, comfort, loneliness)
- Improve video calls and eye contact in telepsychotherapy incorporating considerations for psychological distance and anxiety
- Learn strategies to facilitate feeling, conveying, and being perceived as empathic in computer-mediated communication (CMC)
- Learn about written inflection and purposeful linguistics to communicate efficiently and effectively online and offline

Target Audience

Counselors
Marriage & Family Therapists
Physicians
Psychologists
Speech-Language Pathologists
Social Workers
Other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 12/01/2022

Taming Your Amygdala: Brain-based Strategies to Quiet the Anxious Mind

In this recorded session, view neuroscience and anxiety expert Catherine Pittman, PhD, as she teaches you effective evidence-based strategies for Panic, Agoraphobia, Social Anxiety, GAD, OCD, and PTSD, including:

Relaxation, exercise, exposure, and sleep interventions to calm and retrain your clients’ amygdala
Cognitive restructuring techniques to reduce cognitions and anxious responding
Methods to reduce cortex-based activation of the amygdala
Tools and exercises from her latest workbook for clients, Taming Your Amygdala

Dr. Pittman’s approach is rooted in neuroscience yet explained in ways that are straightforward and accessible. Teaching clients how to understand and retrain their amygdala increases their motivation and engagement because the focus shifts away from decreasing anxiety and towards changing the brain!

Program Information

Objectives

Demonstrate the role of the amygdala in maintaining anxiety disorders for purposes of client psychoeducation.
Defend how clients who know the language of the amygdala have improved treatment engagement and mindfulness.
Use neurologically informed strategies such as relaxation, exercise, exposure, and sleep interventions to produce changes in the amygdala.
Use neurologically informed strategies such as cognitive restructuring techniques to reduce cognitions that ignite the amygdala activation that produces anxious responding.

Outline

Key Knowledge about the Amygdala
- Help clients understand the experience of stress, anxiety, and panic
- How the amygdala learns through experience
- Why vivid experiences in therapy are needed
Essential Steps to Using the Amygdala in Therapy
- Form a strong, empathic therapeutic alliance
- How does your client experience anxiety?
- Focus on client’s personal goals
- Connect amygdala to client concerns and questions
- Change the amygdala rather than avoid anxiety
- Acceptance of limits of control using Serenity Prayer
Teach Client’s Where Their Anxiety Comes From
- Amygdala pathway – bottom-up triggering of emotion
- Cortex pathway – top-down generation of emotion
- Both pathways require the amygdala for anxiety to be produced
- Help clients recognize their two pathways
- How anxiety is initiated in each pathway and how they influence each other
Client Friendly Explanations and Examples
- Fight, Flight, Freeze Response
- The amygdala as protector
- The limits of the amygdala
- How the amygdala learns thru experience
Neuroplasticity in the Amygdala (Essential for all Anxiety Disorders, PTSD, OCD, Depression)
- Interventions that calm the amygdala
- Effective use of sleep, exercise, relaxation, yoga
- Exposure interventions that teach the amygdala
Through the Eyes of the Amygdala
- The limits of how the amygdala processes information
- The amygdala is not logical
- Amygdala’s misinterpretations
- Amygdala’s limited response set
- The language of pairing
- A better-safe-than sorry approach
Changing Client’s Relationship to the Amygdala
- Don’t trust the amygdala
- A mindful approach to the amygdala
- Mindfulness training for discomfort
Relating Client Goals to the Amygdala
- Amygdala’s misinterpretations
- Amygdala’s blocking of goals
- Amygdala’s limited response set
Relationship of Cortex to the Amygdala
- How the cortex can misinterpret amygdala activation
- How the cortex can activate the amygdala
- Neuroplasticity in the cortex
- Emphasize how cortex “constructs” reality
- The amygdala watches cortex television
- Changing the channel in the cortex

Target Audience

Counselors
Marriage & Family Therapists
Physicians
Psychologists
Speech-Language Pathologists
Social Workers
Other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 12/01/2022

Trauma and PTSD in Anxiety: Neuroscience-Informed Treatment Methods

You’re working with an anxious client, but seem to be making little progress… you could be missing some key under-lying factors like PTSD or trauma that prevent you from making any headway with their anxiety symptoms. In fact, they could be exacerbating them. You need to understand the neuroscience behind how trauma and PTSD can affect your clients anxiety and how maximizing participation in early treatment can alleviate symptoms of PTSD and trauma and let you address the root cause of their anxiety.

In this recorded session, Dr. Janene Donarski will help you apply practical neuroscience-integrated treatment models like EMDR, CBT, and Exposure Therapy to work through roadblocks with the resistant or avoidant client and help them reduce the physiological threat response that comes with anxiety.
You’ll learn skills like:

Utilizing neuroception, interoception, and self-regulation to improve symptom management and client level of functioning
Polyvagal theory, exercises, and worksheets to help clients manage freeze responses and increase body-awareness
Using exposure therapy and cognitive reframing to reduce client’s tendencies to avoid triggering situations or environments
Creating hierarchies to prioritize symptoms and organize treatment methods
And so much MORE!

Don’t miss this opportunity to integrate neuroscience-informed treatments into your practice and start making breakthroughs with your client today!

Program Information

Objectives

Determine the common elements in a clinical setting in relation to assessment and treatment planning for trauma and PTSD as it relates to clinical practice and improved treatment outcomes.
Integrate evidence-based skills for developing, maintaining, and enhancing your therapeutic relationship for more successful outcomes.
Utilize specific psychoeducation and cognitive restructuring techniques, including neuroception, interoception, and self-regulation skills, for maximizing involvement and participation in early treatment to alleviate symptoms of PTSD and trauma and interrupting physiological threat response.
Apply practical clinical neuroscience-integrated theoretical treatment models for PTSD and trauma and determine how the common elements are developed in these various models for symptom management.

Outline

Tools for Assessing and Treating the Common Elements of Trauma and PTSD
- Understanding how to use psychoeducation as a cornerstone for treating trauma and PTSD
- Neuroscience has confirmed counseling, empathy, listening and wellness are effective strategies. Adding neuroscience evidence could be helpful and enhance motivation for compliance as well as destigmatize symptoms
- Create hierarchies for treatment to build a personalized emotional reference sheet and utilize hierarchies to prioritize symptoms and organize treatment methods
- Utilizing neuroplasticity in treatment: the neuroscience of Exposure Therapy, EMDR, Cognitive Behavior Therapy and others
Motivate Clients to Enact Healthy Lifestyle Adaptations
- Helping clients make healthy choices – how the effective presentation of a healthy lifestyle impacts the brain recovery process, including essential sleep habits to promote healthy brain recovery, nutritious diet and relaxation
- Provide clients with encouragement and inspiration to exercise and engage in healthy social processes. Work with clients to promote engagement in social activities, utilize one’s social support, practice communication skills, reappraise negative cognitions about the self and others, and practice compassion for self and others
- Assist clients in becoming more engaged in self-regulation skills including diaphragmatic breathing, grounding strategies, and self-soothing techniques in order to reduce emotional dysregulation
Reduce Physiological Threat Response with Evidence-Based Approaches
- How to use polyvagal theory and trauma treatment to help clients with freeze responses and its relevance to long-term health
- Provision of exercises and worksheets to help teach body awareness and encourage clients to create a safe space
- Understanding the neuroscience behind post-traumatic growth – helping your clients to transform deep struggles to strength, regulation and wellness practices
Managing emotions through coping skills
- Using exposure therapy and cognitive reframing to reduce the tendency to avoid situations that are typically triggering and reduce environmental cues that activate negative emotions. Learn to work with your clients on reappraisal of negative cognitions
- Memory reconstruction techniques: Encourage the use of compensatory strategies (e.g., paraphrase, calendar use, mnemonic strategies). Help your clients to stay cognitively active (e.g., brain games, enroll in classes), and practice mindfulness
- Meaning making exercises - Work with your clients to engage in pleasant or reinforcing activities and use positive memories and the creation of new positive experiences to manage their anxiety symptoms. Teach your clients how to savor their current positive experiences and encourage them to engage in altruistic behaviors
- Understand the power of forgiveness, with oneself and others, to bring forward a healthier mindset

Target Audience

Counselors
Marriage & Family Therapists
Physicians
Psychologists
Speech-Language Pathologists
Social Workers
Other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 12/01/2022

Unwinding Anxiety: Can Insights from the Science of Habit Change Help How We View and Treat Anxiety?

Can anxiety and worry be perpetuated like a habit? Anxiety levels are increasing individually and collectively in modern day. Faced with uncertainty, an overabundance of information (and misinformation), among other challenges, our minds struggle to keep up. Our brains default to old survival mechanism to help us deal with anxiety, which can lead to the development of unhealthy coping habits (e.g. stress eating) and ironically feed anxiety as a habit itself.

Drawing on his clinical work, neuroscience research studies and development of next-generation digital therapeutics for habit change, Dr. Brewer will discuss the underlying behavioral and neurobiological mechanisms of why anxiety and other habits are formed and how we can paradoxically tap into these very processes to uproot them. He will also discuss how we can apply these insights to improving clinical treatments and to our own lives.

Program Information

Objectives

Determine how anxiety forms as a habit.
Demonstrate how mindfulness affects reward valuation in the brain.
Distinguish how mindfulness approaches can help change habit patterns.

Outline

How habits are formed and what you can do to change them
- Neuroscience of anxiety
- Reward-based Learning
- Model: Trigger, Reward, Behavior
Evidence-based Apps for Anxiety
- Unwinding anxiety
  - Decrease worry
  - Increase awareness
  - Decrease non-reactivity
Willpower is more myth than muscle
- Default Mode Network
- Three steps of habit change
  - Caught in the habit loop
  - Exploring results/rewards
  - How to step out of the habit loop
- Curiosity as a superpower

Target Audience

Counselors
Marriage & Family Therapists
Physicians
Psychologists
Speech-Language Pathologists
Social Workers
Other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 12/02/2022

Helping Anxious Loved Ones: Clinical Strategies for Families and Couples

Your anxious client needs relief, and they want it now! Meanwhile, their family members are becoming increasingly frustrated by the paralysis their fear causes and their relationships begin to fracture. You’ve hit a dead-end, with each party arguing that the other should just “let it go” or “you’re not taking me seriously.” You need the tools to help your clients grasp the impact of their anxiety on relationships and balance loved one’s concern for the anxious family member against the negativity of anxiety and their outright annoyance at living with anxiety on a daily basis. This recorded session with best-selling author Dr. Margaret Wehrenberg will discuss pragmatic approaches like the principle of “Right Reassurance” to reduce the impact of anxiety while the anxious client is still in the process of treating their anxiety.

You’ll learn:

Methods for showing clients how to ask for help that keeps their autonomy and responsibility for their emotions and behavior
To teach clients and their family/friends the language of helpful calming and how to describe the source of annoyance with anxiety while still supporting the anxious client
How parents can model anxiety to their children and how spouses can mitigate the impact of parental worry

This is your chance to not only help your client get control of their anxiety, but empower their loved ones to support them as well.

Program Information

Objectives

Effectively apply and teach to clients the principle of giving the ‘right reassurance’ to spouses, partner and parents of anxious clients.
Guide clients to teach their partners and friends how to step in to reduce worry without raising their own alarm.
Teach an anxious parent to avoid modeling anxiety while containing their own worry.

Outline

Anxious People need relief! And they want it now! Helping clients grasp the impact of their anxiety on relationships and learn to utilize the principle of “Right Reassurance”
- Help family and friends describe the source of annoyance with anxiety while still supporting the anxious client
- Help them to help without taking over. Teach clients and their family/friends the language of helpful calming, including teaching client show to ask for help that keeps their autonomy and responsibility for their emotions and behavior
Types of anxiety that are the hardest to handle
- Helping clients and partners/friends deal with health anxiety without giving in to fear
- Anxiety about safety, e.g., virus protection, and its impact on life within the family
- Social anxiety – when one spouse significantly limits the avenues for social activity and engagement
Getting agreement between parents to deal with parental modeling of anxiety and parental responses to anxiety
- Parents can model anxiety to their children. How to help spouses mitigate the impact of parental worry
- How to support the anxious parent without letting anxiety about safety of the children limits their activities in their world

Target Audience

Counselors
Marriage & Family Therapists
Physicians
Psychologists
Speech-Language Pathologists
Social Workers
Other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 12/02/2022

Treating Anxiety in Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) Clients Utilizing a Somatic Approach

Increased hate crimes. Fear and discrimination. Police brutality and traumatic media coverage. Higher rates of mental and physical health disorders. Just because your clients aren’t talking about racial-based anxiety, doesn’t mean they’re not dealing with it. It is critical that your therapeutic space instills a sense of safety and calm and agency and empowerment for BIPOC clients. Imagine your Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) clients leaving therapy... feeling like their traumatic experiences no longer drain or define them... having gained a sense of ownership over their story... using their trauma to help or inspire others into healthy action.

Chinwé Williams, PhD, and Licensed and Board-Certified EMDR therapist has been supporting BIPOC clients with trauma recovery for over a decade. She serves the BIPOC community as a published researcher and author, consultant, educator, and a featured expert blog and media contributor. She specializes in somatically-focused approaches to teach clients how to regulate the nervous system and safely use the body for healing racial trauma. In this summit recording, Dr. Williams will go beyond cultural competency and “top down approaches”, like CBT—because clients can’t think their way out of trauma.

You’ll learn:

Somatic, body-based interventions to heal the nervous system and target trauma at the cellular level
New exercises to explore your identity and bias
The latest ways to support racial wellness and self-care

Don’t let therapy be another space where a BIPOC client doesn’t feel safe and heard. Watch this expert-led training to grow deeper in your connections with BIPOC clients and improve clinical outcomes.

Program Information

Objectives

Apply simple, effective clinical interventions to assist BIPOC clients to regulate their nervous system after experiencing anxiety provoking physiological cues, triggers, and emotional reactivity.
Utilize 3 somatic resources that can help BIPOC clients to decrease symptoms of chronic anxiety, as well as manage emotional and physical symptoms of anxiety and panic in the moment.
Apply simple treatment interventions that will empower BIPOC clients to build creative embodied resources to respond to stressors related to personal challenges (or social injustices) in flexible and adaptive ways while uncovering their own internal growth and resilience.

Outline

Anxiety as a Physical State
- Mind-body connection
- Strategies for treating the mind-body system (vs. treating body and mind separately)
- Common physical warning signs and anxiety symptoms in BIPOC clients
- Assessment questions and clinical intake strategies for broaching race-based topics with clients
Bringing in the Body with BIPOC clients: Somatic Skills for Healing
- Resources to widen their window of tolerance
- Increasing awareness of internal cues indicating threat
- Stress-response strategies for addressing threats
- Responses to personal or systemic adversity
- Strategies to increase flexibility and resilience
EMDR-inspired Resources for Reducing Anxiety (You don't have to be EMDR Trained!)
- Resourcing early in session
- Supporting a regulated nervous system in therapy
- Integrating EMDR-inspired techniques with YOUR therapeutic approach
- Root memory recall to identify anxiety events
- Positivity resources and use of the imagination for anxiety resilience

Target Audience

Counselors
Marriage & Family Therapists
Physicians
Psychologists
Speech-Language Pathologists
Social Workers
Other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 12/02/2022

Treating Clients with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Improve Psychological Flexibility through Acceptance and Commitment Therapy & Exposure and Ritual Prevention

You can dramatically improve the lives of people struggling with obsessive-compulsive disorder by embracing the effective and seamless combination of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Exposure and Ritual Prevention (ERP). Decades of research show that ERP is impactful for folks with compulsive, clinically-relevant habits, and ACT provides support in this endeavor by helping the person broaden their lifestyle to mindfully engage in vital, valuable, purposeful actions.

Watch ACT expert Daniel Moran, Ph.D., BCBA-D, as he not only improves your OCD therapeutic toolbox, but also provides experiential exercises that will be personally impactful for you!

Program Information

Objectives

Assess the psychological flexibility of a person with OCD.
Utilize interventions related to acceptance of private events, such as urges, impulses, and emotions, while treating a person with an obsessive-compulsive repertoire.
Utilize interventions related to defusion from private verbal events, such as thoughts and obsessions, while treating a person with OCD.
Utilize exposure and ritual prevention, in a functional manner, while treating a person with an obsessive-compulsive repertoire.
Supplement exposure and ritual prevention with ACT, in order to aim to improve psychological flexibility for a person with OCD.

Outline

Assessing the Psychological Flexibility of a Person with OCD
Acceptance Interventions to Address Urges, Impulses, and Emotions
Defusion Interventions to Address thoughts and Obsessions
Exposure and Ritual Prevention, In A Functional Manner
Integrating Exposure and Ritual Prevention with ACT to Improve Psychological Flexibility

Target Audience

Counselors
Marriage & Family Therapists
Physicians
Psychologists
Speech-Language Pathologists
Social Workers
Other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 12/02/2022

Solution Focused Brief Therapy for Anxiety: Help Clients Move from Symptoms to Solutions

With anxiety rising at record rates, mental health professionals must be ready to help every client overcome their anxiety. Solution Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) is an evidence-based, straightforward, result-driven approach to therapy that helps clients with anxiety become “unstuck” by drawing on their already existing resources and personal strengths.

Watch dynamic speaker, prolific author, and SFBT trainer Elliott Connie, MA, LPC, as he walks you through the philosophical shift from problem to solution-oriented therapy that will completely change how you approach anxiety treatment. No tricks, no theoretical rhetoric that takes years to understand – just simple, practical, innovative strategies that will transform your clients lives who struggle with anxiety.

Program Information

Objectives

Utilize the Solution Focused Brief Therapy to help clients reduce anxiety symptoms.
Differentiate the benefits of utilizing a solution-focused approach versus other evidence-based treatment models.
Demonstrate each component of the Diamond Approach to SFBT as it relates to anxiety treatment.

Outline

Solution Focused Brief Therapy to help clients reduce anxiety symptoms
Benefits of using a solution-focused approach versus other evidence-based treatment models
Applying each component of the Diamond Approach to SFBT in anxiety treatment

Target Audience

Counselors
Marriage & Family Therapists
Physicians
Psychologists
Speech-Language Pathologists
Social Workers
Other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 12/02/2022

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

Copyright : 06/04/2020

The Anatomy of Our Anxiety

We will explore a paradigm-shifting approach to managing anxiety, based on the understanding that anxiety is not all in our heads, but also in our bodies. We'll discern the difference between avoidable anxiety and purposeful anxiety, learning how to help our patients eliminate their unnecessary anxiety and allow their purposeful anxiety to guide them toward meaningful action. This is essential for any clinician supporting patients who are struggling with anxiety, providing practitioners with safe, actionable, and accessible strategies for helping patients find relief from anxiety.

Program Information

Objectives

Categorize anxiety as either avoidable or purposeful.
Implement clinical strategies to reduce avoidable anxiety.
Utilize purposeful anxiety to align with goals in treatment.

Outline

Identifying Avoidable Anxiety

Sleep deprivation
Inflammation
GI disturbances
Micronutrient deficiencies
The effects of caffeine and alcohol

Actionable strategies for addressing avoidable anxiety

Ways to support early and middle insomnia
Techniques for reducing inflammation
Techniques for addressing GI disturbances
Realistic ways to promote better nutrition
Compelling reasons for reducing caffeine and alcohol consumption, and strategies for mitigating resistance and withdrawal

Target Audience

Addiction Professionals
Case Managers
Dieticians
Licensed Clinical/Mental Health Counselors
Marriage & Family Therapists
Nurses
Psychologists
Social Workers
Teachers/School-Based Personnel

Treating Panic: Balancing Crisis Interventions with Wellness Strategies

One in four adults experience a panic attack in their lifetime. This means that not matter what your clinical specialty is, you will likely see panic in your therapy practice.

View Elena Welsh, PhD, anxiety expert and author for this 90-minute talk learning evidence-based tools to help your clients cope with panic as it is happening, including:

Crisis interventions to use during a panic attack to help clients find relief in the moment
Wellness interventions clients can use in daily life to reduce vulnerability to future panic

Whenever your clients are feeling overwhelmed—whether by a panic attack or by everyday stressors — these powerful practices will help your clients find peace!

Program Information

Objectives

Differentiate between panic disorder and panic attacks that are secondary to other anxiety disorders.
Use psychoeducation regarding physiology of fear and avoidance tailored to client’s presentation(s).
Analyze problematic thought patterns that fuel anxiety and panic.
Implement clinical techniques for helping clients manage panic effectively.

Outline

Accurately Diagnose Panic and Anxiety Disorders

Differentiate between panic disorder and panic attacks that are secondary to other anxiety disorders
Factors that may be exacerbating or maintaining panic symptoms
Impact on client’s social and occupational functioning

Provide Psychoeducation Regarding the Physiology of Fear and Avoidance

Physical sensations that typically comprise a panic attack
Help clients understand what a panic attack is

Tools for Calming the Body in the Midst of Panic

Breathing skills
Relaxation techniques
Grounding techniques
Distraction

Balance Crisis Interventions with Strategies for Long-Term Wellness

Foundational health practices to reduce and manage the panic experience
Help clients become more comfortable with the physical sensations of panic
Target cognitive distortions that are common in anxiety
Exposure techniques with confidence

Target Audience

Psychologists
Licensed Clinical/Mental Health Counselors
Marriage & Family Therapists
Addiction Professionals
Case Managers
Dieticians
Nurses
Nursing Home/Assisted Living Administrators
Social Workers
Teachers/School-Based Personnel

Anxiety Treatment via Telehealth

Telehealth has burst onto the mental health scene as both a viable, effective treatment option and a source of distress for clinicians and clients alike – particularly those who experience anxiety.

Are you prepared to virtually treat your most symptomatic anxiety clients?

Join author and clinical psychologist Dr. Richard Sears in this 2-hour recording as he combines evidence-based anxiety intervention strategies with the nuanced skill of effectively providing online care therapeutically.

You’ll learn:

5 must-do’s and must-not-do’s of telehealth
How to orient and engage even your most anxious clients on a teletherapy platform
Mastery of the nuance of virtual care while avoiding common traps that accidentally reinforce clients’ anxiety and avoidance
How to transform telehealth into an effective exposure tool for anxious clients
Practical virtual strategies for anxiety management, including mindfulness, disruption of anxious thoughts, and more!

Packed with case examples, interactive discussion, analogies, and experiential exercises, Dr. Sears will have you re-thinking your conceptualization of anxiety – and how it can be treated.

Purchase today!

**BONUS** All purchasers will receive FREE handouts to share with clients about stress, anxiety, and working with anxious thoughts

Program Information

Objectives

Apply clinical interventions to help clients distinguish realistic from excessive anxiety.
Modify traditional exposure therapy techniques to be efficacious via telehealth.
Demonstrate three methods for disrupting anxious thought patterns.

Outline

Telehealth: Providing Quality Care from a Distance

5 must-do’s and must-not-do’s of telehealth
Know your platform – limitations, troubleshooting, and more
Helping anxious clients adjust to virtual sessions

Anxiety: Treatment Considerations for Every Client

The “science 101” of the anxiety response
Benefits of anxiety (and the problem with avoidance)
How anxious thinking gets negatively reinforced
Collective v. personal anxiety

Screen-Friendly Anxiety Interventions

Separating realistic concerns from paralyzing anxiety
Decentering & distancing vs. disputation of thoughts
Do’s and don’ts of online mindfulness techniques
Interoceptive exposure; walking clients through the extinction burst
What to do with the client who stays “busy” to avoid anxiety
Unhooking rumination from thoughtful planning
Helping clients find meaning, purpose, and value
And more!

Target Audience

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

Anxiety Disorders Using the DSM-5-TR™: Assessment, Differential Diagnosis, and Comorbidities

This presentation will enhance your ability to effectively assess and diagnose anxiety disorders. Anxiety Disorders, the most common category of mental disorders in the US, are difficult disorders to accurately diagnose. During this presentation you will learn:

Current DSM-5-TR™ diagnostic criteria for the nine specific anxiety disorders plus other mental disorders that present with anxiety symptoms
How to use APA web-based assessment measures
Conduct an efficient differential diagnosis process and consider disorders frequently comorbid with anxiety disorders

Case studies of anxious clients will be provided so you can practice with differential diagnosis and making a DSM-5-TR diagnosis.

Program Information

Objectives

Differentiate anxiety symptoms, the syndrome of anxiety, and DSM-5-TR™ anxiety disorders.
Integrate the steps of differential diagnosis into client’s initial DSM-5-TR™ diagnosis list.
Use APA web-based assessment measures and symptom sorting to identify specific DSM-5-TR™ anxiety disorders and other mental disorders with symptoms of anxiety.
Extrapolate possible comorbid disorders for clients with specific types of anxiety disorders.
Create an accurate diagnosis list with ICD codes, mental disorder names, severity specifiers and other specifiers.

Outline

Anxiety Disorders in the DSM-5-TR™

Brief introduction

Using the DSM-5-TR™ for Anxiety Disorders Diagnosis

Brief Review of Diagnosis with the DSM-5-TR™ and ICD-10
Web resources
Revisions Relevant for Anxiety Disorders

Accurate Diagnosis: Using Differential Diagnosis

Differential Diagnosis Case Study
Differential Diagnosis Steps

Diagnosis of Clients with a Syndrome of Fear and/or Anxiety

Syndromes/Symptom patterns of predominate anxiety
Physiological causes of symptoms of anxiety
Differentiating mental disorders with symptoms of anxiety
Frequent comorbid disorders with anxiety disorders
Diagnosis challenge case: Hunter - Fearful, youngest brother

Target Audience

Psychologists
Licensed Clinical/Mental Health Counselors
Marriage & Family Therapists
Social Workers
Nurses
Addiction Professionals
Case Managers