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Digital Seminar

Chronic Anxiety: Powerful Treatment Methods to Break the Anxiety Cycle


Faculty:
David Carbonell, PhD
Duration:
6 Hours 35 Minutes
Copyright:
Sep 24, 2020
Product Code:
POS052305
Media Type:
Digital Seminar
Access:
Never expires.


Description

Chronic anxiety disorders all involve a “threat” that doesn’t occur. Panic attacks don’t kill, obsessive doubts about the stove don’t cause fires, social anxiety doesn’t lead to disgrace and isolation, worry doesn’t lead to insanity. The feared outcomes recede into the future the way an optical illusion recedes into the horizon.

Why are anxiety disorders so powerfully chronic? It’s because chronically anxious clients get tricked by their own efforts to avoid, distract from, and protect against the perceived dangers. When the dangers don’t come to pass, they believe they had a narrow escape from a terrible calamity, and feel more vulnerable going forward rather than less. They become increasingly afraid of more and more improbable events. What we call the “anxiety disorders” could be more accurately termed “the disorders of excessive self-protection”, because that’s how they function!

How can you help them recover? By teaching them how to disengage from the self-protective behaviors that trick them. Attend this live webcast and learn how to help your anxious clients find the evidence of this in their own lives, so you can help them approach and accept, rather than avoid and resist, the experience of anxiety.

This workshop will teach you to empower your anxious clients to see themselves as good, capable people who have been fooled by anxiety, rather than defective people who need protection. Discover how to motivate your clients to seek out, rather than avoid, the corrective experiences they need for recovery. Take home effective strategies from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Paradoxical Therapy, Metacognitive Therapy, and traditional CBT to help your clients rediscover the hopes and dreams they had for life before they were derailed by their struggle against anxiety. You, and your clients, will be glad you did!

CPD


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 online program is worth 6.75 hours CPD for points calculation by your association.

Handouts

Faculty

David Carbonell, PhD's Profile

David Carbonell, PhD Related seminars and products


Effective treatment methods for anxiety disorders were just starting to enter the mainstream when David Carbonell, PhD, began his career as a psychologist over 25 years ago. He’s been helping people overcome fears and phobias, and developing new treatment strategies, ever since. Blending humor, compassion, and acceptance with cognitive behavioral methods, Dr. Carbonell, a sought-after presenter, has taught his unique treatment methods to more than 5,000 mental health professionals at workshops across the country.

Dr. Carbonell is the “Coach” at www.anxietycoach.com, a popular self-help site, as well as the author of The Worry Trick (New Harbinger Publications, 2016) and Panic Attacks Workbook (Ulysses Press, 2004). He’s the founding member of The Therapy Players, an improvisational comedy troupe of psychotherapists, and a frequent speaker at annual conferences of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. He has a unique blend of CBT, ACT, Metacognitive Therapy to offer people with anxiety disorders, and the professionals who treat them, and it’s his goal for you to leave armed with an approach, and numerous specific tools, that you can use the next day.

Clinicians rave about David’s guiding formulation of the Anxiety Trick, the simple, humorous language with which he describes it, and the way he helps you translate it into practical, powerful interventions. Join him for a day and go home ready to use innovative new strategies for helping anxious clients, bypassing many of the usual obstacles to progress as you guide your clients to recovery.

 

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Dr. David Carbonell maintains a private practice and is a founder member of The Therapy Players. He receives royalties as a published author. Dr. Carbonell receives a speaking honorarium, recording, and book royalties from PESI, Inc. He has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Dr. David Carbonell has no relevant non-financial relationships.


Objectives

  1. Communicate how anxiety can impede clients’ ability to engage in treatment and utilize clinical strategies to alleviate this issue.
  2. Analyze the efficacy of various anxiety treatment approaches, including CBT, ACT, Metacognitive Therapy, and paradoxical methods.
  3. Implement clinical techniques to address clients’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviour that underlie anxiety, including shame, blame, and excessive self-protection.
  4. Teach a simple breathing technique that both decreases acute anxiety symptoms and serves as a metaphor for management of future anxiety.
  5. Apply simple yet effective clinical interventions in sessions to help clients acquire a new perspective of chronic anxiety and a more adaptive approach to managing symptoms.
  6. Utilize specific behavioural interventions to decrease symptoms of Panic Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and Specific Phobias.

Outline

Treatment Strategies

Prepare Clients for Treatment

  • Disarm the fear of treatment
  • Discover the Anxiety Trick
  • Experiment with exposure and acceptance
  • Empathy requires a phobic viewpoint

Schools of Treatment

  • CBT methods to review outcomes and plan experiments
  • ACT methods to promote acceptance of discomfort and action
  • Metacognitive Therapy methods to disengage from arguing with anxious thoughts
  • Paradoxical methods to encourage exposure

Use Your Body

  • Belly breathing the right way
  • Don’t take it lying down
  • What’s your job when you’re anxious?
  • Replace destructive protection with valued actions
  • The rules of opposites

Interacting with Your Mind

  • The problem with correcting thoughts
  • Uncle Argument at the banquet
  • Disengage from “what if?”
  • Change your relationship with worry

Train Your Brain

  • Work with your amygdala
  • The real purpose of exposure
  • Undoing safety behaviours
  • Being AWARE

Treating Anxiety Disorders

Panic Disorder

  • What maintains it? How to end it
  • Hope and help for demoralized clients
  • Get unstuck from the “Why?” questions
  • 3 powerful questions

Social Anxiety Disorder

  • The self-centred phobia
  • Whose thoughts bother you?
  • Secrecy is a safety behaviour
  • Would you like to try an experiment?
  • Compassion for self

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

  • The two types of worry
  • The Mad Libs of anxiety
  • Paradoxical thought experiments
  • Don’t even think of thought stopping
  • Worry appointments and exposure methods for worry

Specific Phobias

  • In vivo exposure for:
    • Fear of flying
    • Fear of public speaking

Research Limitations and Risks of Psychotherapeutic Approaches

Target Audience

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

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