2-Day: Chronic Anxiety: A 6-Step Treatment Blueprint to Break the Anxiety Cycle

CPD

Handouts

Faculty

Heidi Schreiber-Pan, PhD, LCPC. NCC Related seminars and products

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Heidi Schreiber-Pan, PhD, LCPC, NCC, is a successful psychotherapist, author, clinical director and sought-after nationwide speaker on topics of resilience, anxiety, neuroscience, and occupational burnout. As an affiliate and former faculty member of Loyola University, Maryland, her past research has focused on resiliency and psychological well-being, including nature-based mental health.

Dr. Schreiber-Pan has worked with various organizations, schools and corporations to reduce stress on a communal level and to increase structural well-being through training in positive psychology as well as emotional intelligence coaching.

She has developed unique continuing education courses that combine established clinical methods such as CBT with innovative treatment approached including nature-based psychotherapy and neuro-counseling. She is the author of Taming the Anxious Mind: A Guidebook to Relieve Stress and Anxiety.

 

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Dr. Heidi Schreiber-Pan maintains a private practice and has an employment relationship with Chesapeake Mental Health Collaborative. She receives royalties as a published author. Dr. Schreiber-Pan receives a speaking honorarium, recording royalties, and book royalties from PESI, Inc. She has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Dr. Heidi Schreiber-Pan is a member of the American Counseling Association (ACA) and Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (ACES).

Objectives

1. Determine the underlying neurological processes that impact anxious clients.
2. Evaluate the differences between amygdala-based and cortex-based anxiety symptoms and identify how these symptoms inform treatment interventions.
3. Utilize the 6-step treatment model to improve the client’s ability to engage in treatment.
4. Develop client engagement in treatment using personalized goals and attending to the therapeutic relationship.
5. Analyze the efficacy of various anxiety treatment approaches, including mindfulness, CBT, ACT and logotherapy.
6. Plan strategies for calming and training the amygdala in order to alleviate symptoms of anxiety.
7. Integrate clinical techniques to address client’s thoughts, feelings and behaviour that underlie anxiety, including shame, blame and excessive self-protection.
8. Practice a simple breathing technique that both decreases acute anxiety symptoms and serves as a metaphor for management of future anxiety.
9. Apply simple, yet effective clinical interventions in session to help clients acquire a new perspective of chronic anxiety and a more adaptive approach to managing symptoms.
10. Choose specific behavioural interventions to decrease the symptoms of Panic Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Social Anxiety Disorder.
11. Propose specific clinical techniques to address persistent worry and understand how this changes the neurobiology of ruminative thought patterns.
12. Utilize cognitive therapy interventions with clients to manage perfectionism, procrastination and rigid approaches to problems.

Outline

Step 1: Create Calm in the Nervous System by Taming Amygdala

• Neuro-counseling as an empowerment tool for clients
• The power of neuroplasticity
• Six principles to reduce the chronic fight or flight response
• Weekly routine to calm sympathetic nervous system activation
• Practices: Brain-based techniques that consistently lower sympathetic nervous system arousal
  • Letting Go of SNS Arousal
  • Let’s Breathe: A review of breathing techniques
  • Body Scan

Step 2: Introduce and Reinforce Self-Compassion

• Self-esteem vs self-compassion
• Quieting the inner critic
• Establish an interior ally
• Mindful acceptance of self
• Inner-child-work to encourage forgiveness of self
• A case for self-care
• The role of boundary setting in self-care
• Practices: Powerful strategies to promote emotional resiliency and lessen destructive inner narratives
  • Inner Child Guided Imagery
  • The Bridge – A Boundary Parable
  • Internal Family Member, Anxiety

Step 3: Apply Mindfulness-based Cognitive & Behavioural Interventions

• Schools of treatment
  • ACT methods to develop the ability to shift perspectives, develop acceptance and self-advocacy
    • The healing power of awareness: seeing thoughts as creations of the mind
    • Decentering as a way of disengaging from self-criticism, rumination, and negative thinking patterns
    • Reconnecting & befriending feelings
  • CBT methods to train the mind through
    • identifying and diminishing unhelpful thinking styles
    • the use of coping thoughts
    • the compassionate use of exposure therapy
    • composing fear ladders
    • the utilization of behavioural experiments and home practices
  • Practices: Cognitive approaches to help navigate painful emotions and thoughts
    • Apply Cognitive De-Fusion
    • What Glasses am I Wearing Today?
    • Worry time, Worry Planning & 7 Steps to End Rumination

Step 4: Treating Anxiety Disorders

• Attachment Anxiety
  • The Neuroscience of attachment
  • Activation of attachment anxiety
  • Address unmet attachment needs
  • Therapist, a secure attachment figure?
  • Case Study: Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP)
• Generalized Anxiety Disorder
  • Address excessive worry and ending the worry loop
  • Body-based expression of worry (tension, hypervigilance)
  • Implementation of calming skills into daily lifestyle
• Social Anxiety Disorder
  • Investigate self-talk that mediates fear reaction
  • Challenge biases and replace with empowering narratives
  • Design exposure experiences to tackle avoidance
• Panic Disorder
  • Panic attack vs panic reaction
  • Address fears that fuel and prolong panic
  • Strengthen ability to self-soothe and boost comfort
• Practices: Reflective exercises to complement self-care tools and foster positive neuroplasticity
  • Adult Attachment Inventory
  • Hand on Heart
  • Loving-Kindness Meditation

Step 5: Determine Values, Purpose and Meaning

• Logotherapy
• Exploring one’s value-lifestyle congruence
• Formation of a spiritual identity
• Existentialism, worldview & legacy
• The use of metaphor to facility meaning-making
• Practices: Contemplative methods to alleviate inner distress caused by a lack of meaning and purpose
  • Value Card Sort
  • Listen by My Values
  • Existential Contemplation

Step 6: Establish and Execute a Maintenance Plan

• Shifting perspectives through gratitude practice
• Positive neuroplasticity to rewire the brain for resiliency
• Meditation, formal & informal
• Nature-based mental health
• Acceptance and commitment practices
• Mindful engagement
• Practices: Tools for developing a lifestyle that boosts resiliency and contributes to psychological well-being
  • Inventory of Your Day
  • The Power of Gratitude
  • Thich Nhat Hanh Technique for Difficult Emotions

Target Audience

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