Treating Pandemic and Catastrophe Related Anxiety, Fear, Panic & Worry

CPD

Handouts

Faculty

Marwa Azab, PhD Related seminars and products

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Marwa Azab, PhD, teaches for the psychology and human development departments at Cal State University, Long Beach, (CSULB). She has also taught for the biology department at University of California, Irvine (UCI). Marwa studied psychology for many years and completed a master’s in counseling. She has facilitated many groups such as anger management, stress management, interpersonal communication and many others for patients suffering from a variety of mental disorders. After many years of addressing human behaviors from a psychological perspective, she realized that there were blind spots that needed to be satiated from complementary fields. Thus, she completed a PhD in biological sciences with emphasis on neuroscience. Marwa started life coaching utilizing an interdisciplinary approach that intersects psychology, biology and genetics.

Marwa is a sought after international public speaker who is invited to speak on a variety of interdisciplinary topics, including three TEDx talks. She recently published her first book titled, Anxiety Disorders: New Science on Mind-Body Connections and Healing and blogs for Psychology Today, her blog is called "Neuroscience in Everyday Life". You can connect with her on her Facebook page: www.facebook.com/DrMarwaAzab.

 

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Dr. Marwa Azab has an employment relationship with California State University and receives royalties as a published author. She receives a speaking honorarium and recording royalties from Psychotherapy Networker and PESI, Inc. She has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Dr. Marwa Azab writes a blog for Psychology Today called "Neuroscience in Everyday Life."

Objectives

1. Evaluate existential anxiety (EA) and utilize ACT and logotherapy techniques to help clients improve outcomes.
2. Differentiate between the neurobiology of fear, panic, situational and trait anxiety for accurate assessment, diagnosis, and treatment.
3. Implement brain-based strategies to help clients manage uncertainty, worry, panic and anxiety symptoms.
4. Utilize strategies such as mapping worry loops to curtail habitual thinking and negative self-cognitions.
5. Integrate top-down and bottom-up techniques to address panic.
6. Utilize neuroplasticity-enhancing techniques to calm the anxious mind.

Outline

• Fear, hormone responses, and brain circuits simplified
• Quite the inflamed amygdala in 3 steps
• Calm the nervous system in 90 seconds
• Eradicate anxiety in 1 session
• The antithesis to anxiety
• Limitations of the research and potential risks

• Critical differences between situation, trait, and pathological anxiety
• Turn off your client’s monkey mind and initiate change
• How to curb clients’ secondary gains in anxiety treatment
• Exercises to re-route the circuits of anxiety to enhance neuroplasticity

• Tackle experiential avoidance and cognitive diffusion
• Construct statement of life purpose and clarify values
• Tools to convert EA into motivation
• Re-orient to the present moment with anchors
• How to utilize the attentional brain system
• Case study: Marwa got COVID, EA revised her entire life!

• Reversing client’s bias for threats
• Mapping worry loops to curtail habitual thinking
• Shifting from efficient to effective thinking
• How to objectively evaluate evidence for worry
• New journal writing prompts to diffuse worry
• Case study: Maria is a lawyer, 45-year-old and excessive worrier

• Ten ways to prime secure attachment
• Unpack the internal self-talk that fuels anxiety
• Disempower internal schema of others’ expectations that fuels anxiety
• How to diffuse client’s anxiety away from self
• Stop client’s rumination after perceived rejection
• Build social skills through role play
• Case study: Dave 27 years old social worker who cannot write an email to an old friend

• Help clients out of chronic ‘survival’ mode
• Reinterpreting bodily sensations to soothe
• How some medical conditions trigger panic attacks and what to do about it
• Teach clients to unlearn panic triggers and learn safety triggers
• In vivo exposure technique to confront internal and external panic triggers
• Case study: Leena is a 21 year old student suffering from panic attacks

Target Audience

• Social Workers
• Psychologists
• Counselors
• Marriage and Family Therapists
• Case Managers
• Addiction Counselors
• Therapists
• Nurses
• Psychiatrists
• Physicians
• Other Mental Health Professionals