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

What does Neuroscience have to do with anxiety treatment? Module 1 will focus on the neurological mechanisms behind anxiety. You’ll also learn…

• How you can help anxious clients understand themselves, their feelings, interpretations, and beliefs
• What should you do if your anxiety treatment plans produce anxiety?
• How to work within the context of the goal for changing the brain and not the goal for reducing anxiety
• How neuroplasticity makes it more resistant to anxiety
• Clients can be given simple explanations of how anxiety travels through their brains.

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 is amygdala Management so Important for All Anxiety Disorders, OCD, Depression, PTSD, OCD
• The amygdala’s role in the stress/fear/anxiety response and formation of emotional memories
• How to get your brain to stop reacting to negative anxiety “triggers”
• The Vagus nerve’s role in recovery from the activation of the sympathetic nervous system
• Interventions to lower anxiety “fuel” Produced in amygdala
• Exposure: Safely activating the fear circuitry in the amygdala, to create new connections

The brain’s cortex plays an “anxiety igniting” Many anxiety disorders include OCD, GAD, SAD and OCD. In Module 3, you’ll learn tools and strategies for recognizing and managing anxiety driven by the cortex. You’ll also learn…

• The way the cortex constructs reality
• How to avoid the negative effects of anxiety and healthy (adaptive use) of worry
• “Survival of the busiest” principle — strengthen or weaken specific circuitry
• How to recognize and reduce the uncertainty impact
• Techniques for the left hemisphere: Cognitive defusion, coping thoughts and fighting anticipation
• Techniques applicable to the right hemisphere

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 chemical imbalance myth
• Assessment tools for medication use during initial intake
• How SSRIs & SNRIs can promote neuroplasticity
• There is a danger in sedating the brain using benzodiazepines
• And overview of buspirone, beta blockers and sedatives/hypnotics/z-Drogue
• The effectiveness of CBT/meds

Exposure can be used to teach the brain positive responses. In this module, you’ll learn to safely and effectively use exposure strategies to create new emotional learning.

• Tools to help clients reduce anxiety and avoidance
• Psychoeducation, breathing training, and cognitive restructuring are some of the ways to prepare clients for exposure.
• In vivo vs. imaginal exposure approaches
• Methods for exposure and interoceptive triggers
• Use of Subjective Units Of Distress/Discomfort (SUDS).
• Safety signals, medication, and distraction: Concerns
• 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. Mindfulness provides evidence by introducing Mindfulness to anxious brains.-It is possible to change the brain’s response to anxiety and symptoms.

• Defining basic emotional reactions:  Attachment, Aversion, Indifference
• How to be a self-practice-Acceptance and erasure of the negative effect of judgment
• Mindfulness can be used to explore thoughts, feelings, and emotions.
• How to use the power and influence of intention to guide thoughts in new directions
• How to deal with common reactions to fear

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-A based approach to helping your clients to practice new behaviors and strengthen their neural connections to ease anxiety.

• Enhance client engagement by using CBT and neurological information
• Strategic use of neuroscience in CBT: Advantages
• Why disputing and logic have their limits
• Using skills-Based approaches in CBT to give the brain experiences it needs 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 influences negative thinking
• Help clients to focus on the positive
• Common cognitive errors in depression include worry, rumination, or worry.
• Goal setting and behavioral activation have many benefits
• Social interaction and social support play a crucial role

Clients who are obsessive, ruminative, and worried-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 unrealistic beliefs and images and distorted thinking
• How to recognize and stop anxiety-OCD and GAD both have common triggers for thoughts.
• Strategies to help clients accept uncertainty
• Making OCD or worry the adversary: Don’t be bullied!
• How clients can schedule their obsessions and worries to control them

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 by step instructions on how to safely use therapeutic memories reconsolidation to improve anxiety treatment

• How to explain implicit emotional learning, and identify examples
• How can you help the client feel the memory structure at the moment?
• How to promote your client’s experiential learning of emotional truth
• Steps to confirm or discredit an emotional memory “mismatching” Information that would invalidate it