Description
Anxiety sends our brains into overdrive. But how often do our therapy approaches actually address what’s happening in our anxious clients’ brains? Whether your clients are struggling with anxiety stemming from OCD, PTSD, or GAD, this workshop will walk you through a clear, neuroscience-backed approach. You’ll learn to address symptoms like distress and avoidance, as well as promote neuroplasticity and change as you help clients set concrete goals and take steps toward building happier, less burdened lives. In addition, you’ll explore the different parts of the brain and their role in anxiety, and the hows of actual treatment as we walk through evidence-based techniques borrowing from CBT, mindfulness, and more. You’ll discover how to:
- Help anxious clients make sense of their symptoms, feelings, interpretations, and beliefs
- Explain neurological causes of anxiety in clear, easy-to-understand language
- Build an anxiety-treatment plan when your client is also taking medication
- Use cognitive restructuring interventions and reconsolidation approaches
- Challenge distorted thoughts and unrealistic beliefs and images
Faculty
Saint Mary's College
Catherine Pittman, PhD, HSPP, is a licensed clinical psychologist and psychology professor at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana, who’s spent over 30 years treating anxiety and brain injuries. She’s the author of Taming Your Amygdala, and trains therapists in neurologically informed CBT.
Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Dr. Catherine Pittman has employment relationships with Saint Mary's College and Renew Counseling. She receives royalties as a published author. Dr. Pittman receives a speaking honorarium, recording, and book royalties from Psychotherapy Networker and PESI, Inc. She has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Dr. Catherine Pittman is a member of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America.
Additional Info
Access for Self-Study (Non-Interactive)
Access never expires for this product.
For a more detailed outline that includes times or durations of time, if needed, please contact cepesi@pesi.com.
Objectives
- Identify the role of the amygdala in the physical symptoms and avoidance behaviors associated with anxiety disorders.
- Describe strategies for building a therapeutic alliance with anxious clients.
- Explain how specific anxiety management interventions directly target amygdala-based reactivity.
- Differentiate exposure therapy from other interventions in its ability to retrain how the amygdala.
- Identify techniques to modify cortical activation patterns to reduce anxiety symptoms.
Outline
Teaching Clients Where Their Anxiety Comes From
- Focus and Limitations
- Explaining Neuroplasticity
- Amygdala and cortex pathways to anxiety
- Helping clients recognize both pathways: Useful examples
- Assessing when anxiety is initiated in the amygdala vs. cortex
- Shifting from anxiety reduction to a goal-focused approach
Explaining the Amygdala in Anxiety Treatment
- Explanation of Fight/Flight/Freeze Response and physical symptoms
- Survey to assess F/F/F tendencies
- The amygdala as protector and its limitations
- Promoting mindfulness in responding to the amygdala
- Helping clients see how the amygdala blocks their goals
- Helping client develop personal goals
- Importance of the working alliance and confidence in the therapist
- Evidence-based strategies to reduce amygdala activation
- Common issues and limitations
Using Exposure to Teach the Amygdala
- Worksheets for trigger selection and hierarchy development
- The essential step of agreeing on tasks
- General guidelines for exposure
- Tips for exposure effectiveness
- Using imagery in exposure
- Resisting compulsions with response prevention
- Risks, limitations, and concerns
- Case examples
Neurologically-Informed Interventions for the Cortex Pathway
- The relationship between the cortex and amygdala
- Surveys to identify amygdala-activating cognitions
- Explanations that motivate clients
- Mindfulness to combat amygdala-activating cognitions
- Distraction, including limitations
- When cognitions interfere with Exposure
- Limitations of cognitive approaches
Target Audience
- Counsellors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counsellors
- Physicians
- Other Mental Health Professionals