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Digital Seminar

2-Day Taming the Amygdala in Anxiety Treatment: Brain-Based Strategies for Panic, Agoraphobia, Social Anxiety, GAD, OCD, & PTSD

Faculty:
Catherine Pittman Ph.D., PhD, HSPP
Duration:
12 Hours 26 Minutes
Format:
Audio and Video
Copyright:
Aug 25, 2022
Product Code:
POS058945
Media Type:
Digital Seminar
Access:
Never expires.
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Description

When clients don’t realize that there are brain-based reasons for your recommendations of exposure therapy, relaxation techniques, and lifestyle changes, they are less likely to make the changes they need to master their fear and worry.

If you want to be successful at helping your clients manage their anxiety, the amygdala is the most important part of the brain to understand!

Watch neuroscience and anxiety expert Catherine M. Pittman, PhD, HSPP, as she guides you through what’s happening in the brain and body when a client has anxiety.

You’ll learn the essential tools and techniques, backed by neuroscience, to teach clients how to use their amygdala as a vehicle to reduce anxiety and worry. Dr. Pittman will provide easy-to-implement, practical applications to therapy that will change your clients’ brain and not simply decrease their anxiety.

You’ll learn how to:

  • Assess anxiety from a neuroscience perspective
  • Increase client engagement through brain-based goal setting
  • Train your client’s amygdala to respond differently to anxiety
  • Empower clients to recognize anxiety-igniting cognitions from the cortex

Not only will you learn the essential keys for successful anxiety treatment, Dr. Pittman will share tools and exercises from her workbook, Taming Your Amygdala, that you can use with clients.

You don’t have to be a neuroscientist to help your clients understand how their brains work! Purchase today to help your clients tame their amygdalas!

CPD

Planning Committee Disclosure - No relevant relationships

All members of the PESI, Inc. planning committee have provided disclosures of financial relationships with ineligible organizations and any relevant non-financial relationships prior to planning content for this activity. None of the committee members had relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies or other potentially biasing relationships to disclose to learners.  For speaker disclosures, please see the faculty biography.


CPD

PESI Australia, in collaboration with PESI in the USA, offers quality online continuing professional development events from the leaders in the field at a standard recognized by professional associations including psychology, social work, occupational therapy, alcohol and drug professionals, counselling and psychotherapy. On completion of the training, a Professional Development Certificate is issued after the individual has answered and submitted a quiz and course evaluation. This program is worth 12.5 hours CPD for points calculation by your association.

Handouts

File type File name Number of pages
PDF Manual - 2-Day Taming the Amygdala in Anxiety Treatment (5.4 MB) 107 Pages Available after Purchase
PDF Manual - 2-Day Taming the Amygdala in Anxiety Treatment - French (5.4 MB) 107 Pages Available after Purchase
PDF Manual - 2-Day Taming the Amygdala in Anxiety Treatment - Italian (5.4 MB) 107 Pages Available after Purchase

Objectives

  1. Evaluate the role of the amygdala in defending clients from danger and creating anxiety-producing memories for purposes of client psychoeducation.
  2. Utilize the language of the amygdala and how it learns to improve client level of functioning.
  3. Support client motivation and engagement via use of the language of the amygdala.
  4. Demonstrate why both the amygdala and cortex pathways in the brain must be treated for maximum relief of anxiety symptoms.
  5. Assess and identify where client’s anxiety begins and help them interpret their fight, flight, freeze response.
  6. Construct interventions to help train client’s amygdala to respond differently to anxiety and fear.
  7. Demonstrate the connection of client’s amygdala to anxiety symptoms for treatment planning purposes.
  8. Evaluate the relationship of the cortex to the amygdala as it relates to treatment outcomes.
  9. Utilize exposure techniques to increase client’s tolerance to anxiety and retrain the amygdala.
  10. Determine how clients label their anxiety-related experiences.
  11. Employ neurologically informed strategies such as relaxation, exercise, exposure, and sleep interventions to reduce anxiety symptoms.
  12. Utilize neurologically informed strategies such as cognitive restructuring techniques to reduce cognitions that produce anxious responding.

Outline

THE AMYGDALA AS A VEHICLE TO REDUCE ANXIETY

Teach Clients How & Why They Experience Anxiety
Amygdala’s Role in Defending Us from Danger & Creating Anxiety-Producing Memories

  • Make neuroscience accessible
  • How the amygdala learns
  • The language of the amygdala
  • Lifestyle changes that calm the brain
  • Importance of questioning the necessity of fear & anxiety response

Promote Client Motivation & Engagement
Essential Knowledge About Using the Amygdala in Therapy

  • Anxiety symptoms as a window into amygdala functioning
  • The pitfalls of avoiding anxiety: Case example
  • Introduce clients to their amygdala: Worksheets, explanations, examples
  • Connect amygdala to client concerns

Teach Client’s Where Their Anxiety Comes From
Two Brain Pathways that Produce Anxiety

  • Triggering of emotion: Amygdala
  • Generation of emotion: Cortex
  • Help clients recognize their two pathways: Useful examples
  • How anxiety is initiated in each pathway & how they influence each other
  • Why both pathways need to be understood & treated for maximum relief

THE AMYGDALA IN TREATMENT OF ANXIETY: PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Personalize and Select Which Client Goals to Focus On
Connect Client’s Amygdala to Goal Setting: Examples

  • Find the client’s amygdala in their experiences
  • How clients label their anxiety-related experiences
  • Guidelines to draw out and identify goals
  • How/where anxiety/worry interferes with client goals
  • The value in client’s complaining about their life

Exposure Techniques to Increase Tolerance to Anxiety
How to Retrain the Amygdala

  • Teach clients to communicate with their amygdala
  • Importance of SUDS ratings for communicating with clients
  • Seven general guidelines for exposure
  • Six tips for exposure effectiveness

Amygdala-Focused Interventions
How to Stop Scaring the Amygdala

  • The type of relaxation that calms the amygdala
  • The type of sleep that calms the amygdala
  • How yoga calms the amygdala
  • The type of exercise that calms the amygdala: Case example
  • Exposure interventions that teach the amygdala: Case example

Cortex-Focused Interventions
How to Stop the Cortex from Activating the Amygdala

  • Cognitive approaches to target the cortex
  • Remember “survival of the busiest” rule
  • You can’t erase, you must replace
  • The amygdala watches cortex television
  • Change the channel in the cortex

Limitation of Research and Potential Risks

Target Audience

  • Social Workers
  • Psychologists
  • Physicians
  • Counselors
  • Marriage and Family Therapists
  • Case Managers
  • Addiction Counselors
  • Speech-Language Pathologists
  • Therapists
  • Nurses
  • Occupational Therapists
  • Other Mental Health Professionals

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