Catherine M. Pittman – Certified Clinical Anxiety Treatment Professional Training Course

How does Neuroscience inform the clinical treatment of anxiety? In Module one, you will explore the neurological processes behind anxiety. You’ll also learn…

• How you can help your anxious clients understand their own symptoms, feelings, interpretations, beliefs
• What to do when treatment strategies for anxiety produce anxiety
• How to work within the goal of changing the brain rather than the goal of reducing anxiety
• How neuroplasticity makes the brain more resistant to anxiety
• Simple explanations you can share clients about how anxiety travels through their brain

Module 2, you’ll learn how the amygdala fuels anxiety and how amygdala management can improve your client’s level of functioning without the use of medication.

• Why amygdala management is essential for all Anxiety Disorders, PTSD, OCD, Depression
• The amygdala’s role in the stress/fear/anxiety response and formation of emotional memories
• How to train the brain to stop responding to negative anxiety “triggers”
• The Vagus nerve’s role in recovery from the activation of the sympathetic nervous system
• Interventions that reduce anxiety “fuel” produced in the amygdala
• Using exposure: safely activating the fear circuitry created in the amygdala to generate new connections

The brain’s cortex plays an “anxiety igniting” role in many anxiety disorders, including: GAD, SAD, OCD, PTSD and also depression, eating disorders and substance abuse. In Module 3, you’ll learn tools and strategies for recognizing and managing anxiety driven by the cortex. You’ll also learn…

• How the cortex constructs reality
• How to resist the effects of anticipation and the healthy (adaptive) use of worry
• “Survival of the busiest” principle — strengthen or weaken specific circuitry
• How to recognize and modify the impact of uncertainty
• Left hemisphere techniques: How to use cognitive defusion, coping thoughts, and fighting anticipation
• Right hemisphere techniques: How to use imagery and music

Even when you don’t prescribe medications, it’s important to understand how medication impacts your treatment plan. In this module, you’ll learn how your partnership with prescribers can improve overall client education on how medication affects clients and their therapeutic goals.

• The myth of the chemical imbalance
• Tools for assessing medication use during the initial intake
• How SSRIs and SNRIs promote neuroplasticity
• The danger of sedating the brain with benzodiazepines
• And overview of buspirone, beta blockers and sedatives/hypnotics/z-drugs
• The effectiveness of CBT and meds

Using exposure can help teach the brain new, positive ways to respond. In this module, you’ll learn to safely and effectively use exposure strategies to create new emotional learning.

• Tools for helping clients learn to reduce avoidance and push through anxiety
• How to prepare clients for exposure: psychoeducation, breathing training, cognitive restructuring
• In vivo vs. imaginal exposure approaches
• Interoceptive triggers and methods for exposure
• Use of Subjective Units of Distress/Discomfort Scale (SUDS)
• Concerns associated with safety signals, medications, distraction
• How to troubleshoot problems

Our clients with anxiety or depression may be so tuned into worry or rumination that they aren’t aware of their experiences. When we introduce Mindfulness to the anxious brain, we provide an evidence-based avenue for changing the brain to be more resistant to anxiety and its symptoms.

• Defining basic emotional reactions:  Attachment, Aversion, Indifference
• How to practice self-acceptance and erase the detrimental effect of judgment
• Using mindfulness to explore thoughts, sensations, and emotional reactions
• How to use the power of intention to focus thoughts in new directions
• Tools for coping with common reactions to aversion

In this module, you’ll work on increasing the effectiveness of CBT tools by using neurologically informed interventions. You’ll learn exactly what to do to use this skills-based approach to help your clients practice new behaviors and strengthen new neural connections to ease their anxiety.

• Using CBT and neurological knowledge to strengthen client engagement
• Advantages of the strategic use of neuroscience in CBT
• Why focusing on logic and disputing has limits
• Using skills-based approaches in CBT to provide the brain experiences to learn

With some estimates showing that 60% of those with anxiety will also have symptoms depression, you are likely treating individuals for both disorders. In this module, you’ll explore the link between anxiety and depression and learn how you can more effectively improve both disorders through interventions that help make the brain more resistant to anxiety and depression.

• How the hippocampus impacts negative thinking
• Exercises to help clients focus on the positive
• Addressing worry, rumination, and common cognitive errors in depression
• Benefits of goal setting and behavioral activation
• Key role of social support and social interaction

When clients have obsessive, ruminative and worry-based thinking, clinicians can easily get caught up in the process.  In module 9, we’ll cover effective approaches for working with OCD and GAD that ensure we don’t co-obsess.

• How to challenge distorted thoughts and unrealistic beliefs and images
• How to identify and stop anxiety-igniting thoughts common in OCD and GAD
• Strategies for helping clients embrace uncertainty
• Making OCD or worry the adversary: Don’t be bullied!
• Why clients should schedule obsessions or worries to bring them under control

Breakthrough research shows we can modify and erase old memories through reactivation – which can reduce anxiety symptoms quickly. In this final module, you’ll explore step-by-step how to safely use therapeutic memory reconsolidation to improve anxiety treatment.

• Explaining implicit emotional learning and identifying examples
• How to assist the client to experience the memory structure in the present moment
• How to promote your client’s experiential learning of emotional truth
• Steps for disconfirming the emotional memory with “mismatching” information that invalidates it