Rewire the Anxious Brain: Neuroscience-Informed Treatment of Anxiety, Panic and Worry

CPD

Handouts

Faculty

Daniel J. van Ingen, PsyD Related seminars and products

Licensed Psychologist

The IMA Group

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Daniel van Ingen, PsyD, is a licensed clinical psychologist, and the author of 3 books: Anxiety Disorders Made Simple: Treatment Approaches to Overcome Fear and Build Resilience, You Are Your Child’s Best Psychologist: 7 Keys to Parenting with Excellence, and Flourish: Breaking Free with Less TV. He earned his B.A. in psychology at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he was a medal of courage recipient and had a tree planted in his name for his support and advocacy for minority students. He earned his M.A. at Saint Mary’s University in Minneapolis and his Psy.D. at the University of St. Thomas Graduate School of Professional Psychology. Some of his experiences include coordinating a PTSD clinic at a VA medical center, work in two college counseling centers, service in substance abuse outpatient treatment, training medical residents in St. Petersburg, FL, and directing a day treatment program for adults with intellectual disabilities and challenging behavior for five years.

Dr. van Ingen, trained as a scholar-practitioner, has many empirical studies published on cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety disorders, parenting research, and disabilities. He has presented at national and international conferences for over 15 years. His book, Anxiety Disorders Made Simple: Treatment Approaches to Overcoming Fear and Building Resiliency, has received outstanding reviews from psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers alike. He has been dubbed the Sarasota Parenting Doctor in his private practice work with families. He is co-founder of Parenting Doctors (www.parentingdoctors.com), an organization dedicated to serving Sarasota County families. He is a national speaker, blogs anxiety articles and posts weekly parenting podcasts on his website www.danvaningen.com, also available on iTunes. He has been featured on ABC-7 for his expertise on anxiety treatment. Follow him at Twitter @drvaningen, his Facebook page: Anxiety Disorders Made Simple and his Parenting Doctors YouTube channel.
 

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Daniel van Ingen maintains a private practice and has an employment relationship with IMA. He is a receives royalties as a published author. Daniel van Ingen receives a speaking honorarium and recording royalties from PESI, Inc. He has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Daniel van Ingen has no relevant non-financial relationships.

Objectives

1. Ascertain the underlying neurological processes that impact anxious symptoms for clients.
2. Develop client engagement in treatment using personalized goals and attending to the therapeutic relationship.
3. Evaluate the differences between amygdala-based and cortex-based anxiety symptoms and identify how these symptoms inform treatment interventions.
4. Communicate strategies for calming and training the amygdala in order to alleviate symptoms of anxiety.
5. Implement methods for teaching clients to retrain the cortex so that anxiety is resisted rather than exacerbated.
6. Analyze how psychotropic medication impacts neuroplasticity in the brain; identify related treatment implications.

Outline

• Positives: We know more about anxiety-based disorders than any other disorders
  • Science gives explanations, evidence, authority, destigmatizes difficulties
• Concerns: It can be difficult to explain, answer questions
  • Clients may feel a lack of responsibility
  • Oversimplification is inevitable

• Don’t neglect the therapeutic relationship!
• Address the challenges of anxious clients
• Remember that strategies are effortful
• Guide the process using client’s goals
• Maintain motivation

• Define Neuroplasticity in everyday language
• Therapy is about creating a new self
• ”Rewiring” as an accessible concept for change
• Re-consolidation: the modification of emotional memories

• Amygdala – bottom-up triggering of emotion, physicality of anxiety
• Cortex – top-down emotion generation based in cognition
• Explain the two pathways to clients
• How anxiety is initiated in each pathway and how pathways influence each other

• Use illustrations to create concrete understanding
• Fight/flight/freeze responses
• The “language of the amygdala”
• Anxiety and the cortex
• Help clients recognize the two pathways to anxiety

• Sleep and the amygdala
• The influence of anxiety
• Breathing techniques to reduce activation
• Relaxation, meditation, and yoga to modify responses
• Exposure as opportunities for the amygdala to learn
• Combatting avoidance
• When anxiety indicates that the amygdala can learn new responses
• Push through anxiety to change the amygdala

• ”Survival of the busiest” principle – strengthen or weaken specific circuitry
• The healthy (adaptive) use of worry in the cortex
• ”You can’t erase: You must replace”
• Recognize and modify the impact of uncertainty
• Training correct uses of distraction
• Left hemisphere techniques – cognitive defusion, coping thoughts, fighting anticipation
• Right hemisphere techniques – imagery, music
• Mindfulness and anxiety resistances

• Medication’s effects in the rewiring process
• The myth of the chemical imbalance
• The danger of sedating the brain with benzodiazepines
• Promoting neuroplasticity with SSRIs, SNRIs
• The effectiveness of CBT and meds

• Anxiety is a component of many diagnoses (depression, substance abuse, etc.)
• Amygdala- and cortex-based techniques help in other disorders
• Targeting brain-based symptoms rather than disorders
• Worry, obsessions, rumination respond to similar cortex-based techniques
• Panic, phobic responses, and compulsions respond to amygdala-based techniques

• Empirical versus clinical and anecdotal evidence
• Clinical considerations for specific clients and settings
• Efficacy of particular interventions may vary

Target Audience

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