Burnout and Anxiety in Clinical Work

CPD

Faculty

Alison Seponara, MS, LPC Related seminars and products

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Alison Seponara, MS, LPC, is a licensed psychotherapist, anxiety educator, and the author of The Anxiety Healer’s Guide. With over 15 years of clinical experience, Alison specializes in helping clients manage anxiety, burnout, and trauma through a holistic and evidence-based lens. She is also the creator of The Anxiety Healer, an online community of over 570,000 followers, where she offers accessible tools for nervous system regulation, emotional recovery, and healing from high-functioning anxiety.

Alison brings a unique perspective to this training – not only as a licensed professional in private practice but also as someone who has personally navigated the emotional toll of solo work. She blends her clinical training in CBT, mindfulness, and nervous system healing with her lived experience of managing burnout, compassion fatigue, and professional isolation. Her work has been featured on major mental health platforms, and she is the co-host of The Anxiety Chicks podcast, which promotes candid conversations about anxiety and therapist wellness.

Alison’s teaching style is known for being grounded, compassionate, and actionable. She equips fellow clinicians with tangible, client-ready strategies while offering tools to care for themselves with the same depth they offer others.

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Alison Seponara maintains a private practice and serves as the CEO and Founder of The Anxiety Healer Health & Wellness. She also works as a consultant with Evergreen Counseling, LLC. In addition, she receives royalties as a published author and has collaborated with Vahdam. She is compensated through speaking honoraria, recordings, and book royalties from PESI, Inc. All relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations have been mitigated.
Non-financial: Alison Seponara is a member of the American Counseling Association and the Philadelphia Behavior Therapy Association.

Additional Info

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For a more detailed outline that includes times or durations of time, if needed, please contact cepesi@pesi.com.

Objectives

1. Identify three early signs of clinical burnout and compassion fatigue in mental health practitioners.   
2. Choose two evidence-based interventions for addressing nervous system dysregulation caused by prolonged stress.   
3. Determine three community-building strategies that mitigate isolation in solo or private practice settings. 

Outline

Burnout Isn’t Just Stress: Understanding the Therapist’s Toll 

• Differentiate burnout, compassion fatigue, and secondary traumatic stress (STS) — and how they impact empathy, presence, and decision-making. 
• Spot early STS signs: emotional numbing, avoidance, intrusive imagery. 
• Tool: Professional Quality of Life Scale (ProQOL) 
• Clinical Takeaway: Awareness isn’t enough — supervision and systemic support may be required. 

Early Red Flags: Catching Burnout Before the Crash 

• Emotional, behavioral, and somatic markers of depletion. 
• Reflection prompts to track irritability, detachment, and boundary erosion. 
• Tool: Burnout & Compassion Fatigue Self-Assessment 
• Takeaway: Apply insights early to prevent disengagement that impacts client outcomes. 

Burnout & the Brain: Stress, the Nervous System, and Clinical Clarity 

• HPA axis disruption, vagal tone, and why cognitive tools fail when stress dominates. 
• Polyvagal-informed strategies for managing stress in-session (both therapist and client). 
• Takeaway: Map stress impacts on countertransference, clarity, and treatment effectiveness. 

Nervous System Reset: Somatic Strategies for Therapists (and Clients) 

• Bilateral tapping, physiological sigh, orienting exercises. 
• Tool: Nervous System Reset Menu (therapist + client options). 
• Takeaway: 2–3 regulation tools that can be applied between sessions and modeled in-session with clients. 

Beyond “Take a Break”: Building a Self-Care System That Works 

• Design a value-based self-care plan (daily, weekly, emergency levels). 
• Create a “Break Glass in Case of Burnout” action plan. 
• Tool: Therapist Self-Care Toolkit Worksheet. 
• Takeaway: Sustainable, personalized strategies — not generic advice. 

Boundary Work: Saying No Without Guilt 

• Identify overfunctioning patterns. 
• Implement boundary scripts for clients, peers, and workload. 
• Takeaway: Boundaries as ethical practice and protection of clinical capacity. 

From Isolation to Connection: Building a Peer Support Network 

• Reduce professional loneliness with structured peer connection. 
• Tools: Community Care Plan + Outreach Templates. 
• Takeaway: Support systems as buffers against burnout and compassion fatigue. 

Risks, Limits, and Ethics 

• Self-care ≠ cure for systemic burnout. 
• Role of supervision, consultation, and scope awareness. 
• Takeaway: Balancing personal resilience with professional responsibility to clients. 

Target Audience

• Psychologists
• Licensed Clinical/Mental Health Counsellors
• Marriage & Family Therapists
• Social Workers
• Physicians
• Other Mental Health Professionals