Neuroscience-Informed Strategies for Therapists: Brain-Based Techniques for Treating Trauma, Anxiety, Depression, and More

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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.

Handouts

Faculty

Chad Luke, PhD, LPC-MHSP, NCC, ACS, MAC Related seminars and products

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Chad Luke, PhD, LPC-MHSP, NCC, ACS, MAC, is a licensed professional counselor (TN), researcher, and clinical supervisor. He is an internationally recognized author and expert in the clinical integration of neuroscience. His other areas of specializations include, substance use disorders, career counseling, and counseling children and adolescents. He has authored or coauthored over 50 publications, including working on his eighth book on the neuroscience of substance use and misuse. His other titles include Neuroscience for Counselors and Therapists: Integrating the Sciences of Brain and Mind, now in its second edition, and Applying Neuroscience to Counseling Children and Adolescents: A Guide to Brain-Based, Experiential Interventions (with Chris Schimmel). He trains clinicians in the clinical integration of neuroscience in the US and around the world.

 

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Chad Luke has employment relationships with St. Bonaventure University and The Family Institute. He receives royalties as a published author. Chad Luke receives a speaking honorarium from PESI, Inc. He has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Chad Luke is a member of the American Counseling Association, the American Mental Health Counselors Association, the American Mental Health Counseling Association, the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision, and the Tennessee Licensed Professional Counselor Association.

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Objectives

1. Identify the function and clinical value of integrating neuroscience into clinical practice.
2. Determine how neuroscience integration improves social and emotional health.
3. Identify functions of the brain and nervous system as they apply to mental health.
4. Utilize five neuroscience integration strategies to improve activities of daily living.
5. Determine how the neurobiology of empathy builds authentic connections to improve relationships.
6. Identify brain-based strategies to manage depression symptoms.

Outline

Laying the Foundation for Neuroscience in Psychotherapy

• Key reasons to integrate neuroscience into your psychotherapy practice
• The 5 E’s:
  • Empathy: Reduce stigmas and bias
  • Engagement: Capture clients attention
  • Expectations: Power of expectations in the healing process
  • Education: Illuminate limiting factors
  • Experimentations: Basis for new strategies
• Valuing the human above the technology
• Responsibility of the field not just the individual practitioner
• Standards for early career and advanced practitioners
• Key benchmarks for ethical practice
• Uses of neuroscience: Theory enhancement, direct brain interventions, metaphor-based applications, and psychoeducation

Integrate Neuroscience into your Clinical Practice

• 10 Axioms of integration
• Brain and nervous system basics
• Neuroscience and factors common across all theories of treatment
• Limitations of the research and potential risks

Practical Applications of Neuroscience:

Validate and extend popular theories in practice

Third-Wave Cognitive Behavioral Theory

• Neuroscience-informed-CBT
• Expand the understanding of neuroplasticity and homeostasis
• Left- and right-mode processing
• Nervous system retraining

Psychodynamic Theory

• Address trauma and relational wounds
• Neuroscience informed ways to reduce harmful vs. healing recall
• Grow through the impact of early relationships
• Importance of the unconscious: Attention and implicit awareness

Humanistic-existential Theory

• Neurobiology of therapeutic relationship – therapist or technician
• Neurobiology of empathy in building authentic connections
• Interpersonal physiology and co-regulation

Constructivist/Postmodern Theory

• Phenomenological practices supported by neuroscience
• Hawthorne effect: Manage awareness of strengths and challenges
• Pygmalion effect: Unlock the power of expectation
• Neurobiology of developing personal narratives
• Solution-focused relationships and problem-management strategies

Inheritance Model of Wellbeing

• A novel neuroscience-integrated model
• 8 dimension-specific techniques and interventions

Address Mental Health Disorders Through a Neuroscience Lens:

Advanced integration and applications

• Case vignette: Adult with anxiety, mood, and trauma
• Anxiety disorders
  • Teach the prefrontal cortex to respect the messages from the anterior cingulate-cortex and amygdala
• Mood disorders
  • Neuroscience-based models of depression
  • Monoamine, glutamate, and neuroplasticity theories
• Stress trauma
  • Trauma as a continuum and working on specific brain regions
  • Treat the HPA, SAM, and DMN
  • Train systems to work in concert rather than opposition
• Substance abuse disorders
  • Heal the mesolimcocortical dopamine system, reward and stress circuits
  • Listen to what serves and releasing what doesn’t

Target Audience

• Counsellors
• Psychotherapists
• Psychologists
• Social Workers
• Addiction Counsellors
• Occupational Therapists
• Occupational Therapy Assistants
• Physicians
• Art Therapists
• Marriage & Family Therapists
• Case Managers
• Therapists
• Nurses
• Other Mental Health Professionals