Full Course Description

Certified Clinical Anxiety Treatment Professional: Two-Day Competency Training

Transform your practice with this intensive 2-day Anxiety Treatment Certification Training and get the skills, proven strategies, and interventions you need to take your treatment of anxiety to the next level!

You’ll learn how to more skillfully assess clients, differentiate between various anxiety presentations, fully engage clients in treatment, and effectively use tools from CBT, mindfulness, Motivational Interviewing, and contemplative practices to enhance clinical outcomes.

And expert guidance on combining brain-based principles, body-oriented techniques and traditional psychotherapeutic approaches will change the way you work with challenging clients whose anxiety is exacerbated by shame, self-judgement, and attachment issues.

Best of all, upon completion of this seminar, you’ll be eligible to become a Certified Clinical Anxiety Treatment Professional (CCATP) through Evergreen Certifications. Certification lets colleagues, employers, and clients know that you’ve invested the extra time and effort necessary to understand the complexities of anxiety counseling. Professional standards apply. Visit www.evergreencertifications.com/CCATP for details.

Purchase today, get the proven tools and techniques needed to move your most challenging anxiety clients forward!

CERTIFICATION MADE SIMPLE!

No hidden fees – PESI pays for your application fee (a $99 value)*!
Simply complete this seminar and the post-event evaluation included in this training, and your application to be a Certified Clinical Anxiety Treatment Professional (CCATP) through Evergreen Certifications is complete.*

Attendees will receive documentation of CCATP certification from Evergreen Certifications 4 to 6 weeks following the program.
*Professional standards apply. Visit www.evergreencertifications.com/CCATP for professional requirements.

Program Information

Objectives

Establish how stories and metaphors can be used as psychoeducational tools to explain the physiology of anxiety, and how contemplative approaches impact the anxious brain and body.
Articulate distinctions in differentiating among anxiety disorders and assessing physical symptomatology.
Provide an explanation of how medication impacts neuroplasticity and determine when medication serves to enhance or derail anxiety treatment.
Specify how individualized, awareness-based interventions can be used by clinicians to enhance client efforts towards change and reduce avoidance.
Communicate how evidence-based contemplative approaches can address self-judgment, worry, and negative thinking that can exacerbate anxiety symptoms.
Characterize how visual meditations can increase clients’ ability to focus attention and reduce rumination.
Analyze the research on the impacts of meditative movement on anxiety symptomology.
Establish how breathing practices can interrupt obsessive thinking, ritualized behaviors, and reassurance seeking.
Specify how treatment plans that employ reframing techniques can interrupt anxiety-producing thoughts.
Assess whether attachment style impacts treatment outcomes amongst clients undergoing treatment for social anxiety disorder.
Communicate how script-based, brief deep relaxation exercises can be implemented to increase feelings of safety and enhance emotional regulation.
Explore how journaling can be used as a clinical tool to shift clients away from anxious thoughts and toward action-oriented change.

Outline

The Neurophysiology of Anxiety

Cognitive & amygdala pathways to anxiety
Autonomic nervous system responses
Polyvagal Theory
Serotonin, dopamine and neurotransmitters
The role of brain derived neurotropic factors
The impacts of sleep and nutrition on the anxious brain

Assessment and Differential Diagnosis

DSM-5 classification of anxiety Disorder
Assessment from the whole person perspective
Clinical approaches for ambiguous anxiety presentations
- Phobia vs. OCD
- Trauma, Axis II, or both?
- Distinguish anxiety from agitated depression

Biological Treatment of Anxiety: Impacts of Psychopharmacology & Nutraceuticals

How medication impacts neuroplasticity
Frequently prescribed medications
Common side effects
Evidence-based supplements

From Avoidance to Proactivity: Strategies to Engage and Sustain Client Motivation

Illustrate neuroscience concepts with stories & metaphors
Link contemplative practices to brain change
Address impasses with awareness based interviewing
Reframes – replacing old neural patterns
Co-create meaningful, values based-goals

Motivational Interviewing for Anxiety Treatment: Mobilizing & Sustaining Change

Elicit change talk
Elaborate on change indicators
Coalesce motivation for exposure treatment
Renew motivation when fear arises

Techniques to Address the Cognitive Pathway to Anxiety

Strategies to dismantle automatic thoughts, core beliefs
How to unwind troublesome thinking patterns
When life feels overwhelming – stemming the tide techniques
Apply Chain Analysis – when and how

Relaxation Skills: Help Clients Develop an Anxiety Resistant Brain

Wire in relaxed, alert mood with deep relaxation
Letting go with moment to moment exercises
Breath and movement strategies to deactivate panic

Antidotes to Shame, Guilt and Self-Judgement

How shame and self-judgement exacerbate anxiety
Tools to identify anxiety fuel
Appropriate & inappropriate guilt
Anxiety interventions for the shame prone client
Ease shame intensity with body witnessing and observing skills
Self-compassion inquiry - inviting in parts of the self
Counteract anxiety with gratitude

Attachment Anxiety

Untangle developmental roots
Contemplative applications - the Polyvagal Theory
Techniques to prime secure attachment

Movement and Visual Meditations for Anxiety Relief

Visual meditations for specific clinical concerns
Prepare with movement, imagery and sound
Draw from inner resources
Instill a new perspective with movement and writing
Individualized follow-up assignments

Mindful Recovery Tools for GAD and Social Anxiety

Three steps for moving from reactivity to responsiveness
Interrupt the worry cycle: from the meditation cushion to daily life
Mindful exploration – predictions vs. what happened
Bring curiosity to perceptions
Prime secure attachment for social anxiety

Meditation for OCD Management

How clients can recognize excessiveness
Titrate exposure with breathing practices
Reduce repetition with mindful response prevention
Overcome obsession with mantra & breath

Research and Limitations

Target Audience

Social Workers
Psychologists
Counselors
Marriage and Family Therapists
Case Managers
Addiction Counselors
Therapists
Other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 02/17/2022

Disrupting Rumination: Changing Anxiety Cognitions

Overactive brain circuitry can trap clients in cycles of rumination that can keep them anxious and depressed. Letting go of ruminating worries, or banishing persistent thoughts, like I’m not good enough or I’m worthless, isn’t easy for clients and when ruminations don’t shift, therapists can begin to feel stuck themselves.

Watch Margaret Wehrenberg and she will examine why clients lock into depressive thought patterns and why they feel they need to hold on to worry. You will learn practical interventions to use in-session for eliminating these patterns and replacing them with attitudes of calm and competency.

Program Information

Objectives

Articulate methods to help clients identify perfectionism in thought and behavior and explore treatment interventions to decrease symptoms of anxiety.
Implement strategies for stress management to reduce symptoms of anxiety in clients, including lifestyle changes, cognitive interventions and time management tools.
Evaluate the negative impact of rumination on the brain structure and function to inform the clinician’s choice of treatment interventions.
Ascertain the underlying neurological processes that impact depression symptoms in clients.

Outline

Rumination as The Link Between Anxiety and Depression

Brief look at brain structure/function contributions
The purpose of worry: cognitive mis-steps
Explore the impact of guilt and interventions for guilt

Manage Worry

Contain your worry in time
Invite the worry
Identify and alter “magical worry”

The Impact of Stress and 4 Competencies to Prevent Stress Damage on Health, Anxiety and Depression

Eliminate the Stressor
Manage time and environment
Manage Attitude
Practice Rest and Relaxation

Perfectionism and the Too Much Activity (TMA) person

Perfectionism in thought and behavior and interrupt its negative effects
When procrastination is perfectionism in disguise

A look at Depression - Raising Energy and Altering Cognitions

Altering the neural networks that keep rumination in place

“Born to be blue” - Spotting and altering the impact of endogenous depression

Change the network on purpose - “Start where you already are”
"Charge the batteries” to raise energy

Situational Stressors

Setting boundaries and utilizing help
Mobilizing energy to respond

Interrupt helplessness

Utilize mentors or lifelines
Focus on strengths

Positive Impacts of Early Life Adversity

Prepare to stay connected
Changing Explanatory style
Gratitude assignments

Target Audience

Psychologists, Addiction Counselors, Counselors, Social Workers, Marriage & Family Therapists, Nurses, and other Behavioral Health Professionals

The New Exposure Therapy

Specific training on how to effectively implement exposure and response prevention for obsessive compulsive disorder and related anxiety disorders and related disorders is rare, and data suggest that even when individuals are trained in cognitive behavioral therapy, they often do not use exposure, or do not use it appropriately. In addition, the relative rarity of well-trained ERP practitioners makes it extremely difficult for OCD sufferers to find appropriate care, and many often wait years to get treatment. Finally, recent research on inhibitory learning, or how exposure works, suggests specific guidelines for amplifying treatment efficacy. Thus, this training serves a specific need in the field.

Program Information

Objectives

Evaluate exposure and response prevention and its efficacy.
Determine the inhibitory learning model of exposure therapies.
Analyze how exposure works from the perspective of inhibitory learning.
Design and conduct exposure exercises that support inhibitory learning.

Outline

How to structure exposure and response prevention hierarchies and "menus" consistent with inhibitory learning principles
How to support expectancy violation
How to minimize covert avoidance during exposure exercises
How to improve generalization and maintenance

Target Audience

Counselors
Social Workers
Psychologists
Psychotherapists
Therapists
Marriage & Family Therapists
Addiction Counselors
Case Managers
Physicians
Nurses
Other Mental Health Professionals