Mastering Anxiety with Simple, Evidence-Based Techniques:
A Certified Clinical Anxiety Treatment Professional & Certified Mindfulness-Informed Professional Online Training Course

Dr. Janene M. Donarski integrates brain-based strategies for calming the anxious mind that motivate lasting change in your clients. Her approach also promotes adherence to treatment and strengthens the therapeutic alliance.

• What we know about anxiety-based disorders
• Scientific explanations, evidence, authority that destigmatize difficulties
• Helping clients take responsibility for their well-being

• Don’t neglect the therapeutic relationship!
• Address the challenges of anxious clients
• Guide the process using client’s goals
• How to 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
• How anxiety is initiated in each pathway and how pathways influence each other

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

• Breathing techniques to reduce activation
• Exposure as opportunities for the amygdala to learn
• Combatting avoidance
• Push through anxiety to change the amygdala

• The healthy (adaptive) use of worry in the cortex
• Recognize and modify the impact of uncertainty
• Left hemisphere techniques – cognitive defusion, coping thoughts, fighting anticipation
• Right hemisphere techniques – imagery, music

• 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
• 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

Methods that control physiology, reduce tension, and offset panic or acute anxiety can be simple to learn but challenging to apply. Bestselling author and anxiety expert Dr. Margaret Wehrenberg gives you a complete set of tools proven to reduce anxiety:

• The causes of panic, generalized anxiety and social anxiety that help select treatment
• Differential diagnosis in children – ADD and ASD
• Treatment approaches that change brain function for long-lasting recovery
• The impact of insomnia in generalized anxiety

• The right way to teach and use diaphragmatic breathing
• Develop the 4 competencies of stress management
• Utilize different types of relaxation and discuss their use in different types of anxiety disorders
• Four important lifestyle changes everyone can make to reduce anxiety

• The best thought-replacement methods for worry and rumination
• Clear the mind of ruminative and racing thoughts
• Know when anger triggers anxiety and how to work with it in worried clients
• How to stop worry before it happens

• Apply the “Three Deep Breaths and Good Preparation” model to construct treatment goals for social anxiety
• Structure cognitive change through planned “counter-cognitions”
• Apply ‘in vivo exposure’ techniques that optimize recovery from social anxiety

• Controlled studies on the human brain structure and function are limited by challenges of studying the brain in action
• New studies continually modify our understanding of how neurotransmitters interact and affect cognition, emotion and behavior
• There are no significant risks associated with Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy
• Assessment of an individual’s capacity to understand and utilize an intervention should always precede employment of the technique

Immerse yourself in Deb Alvis’s flagship, in-depth training into mindfulness tools that have been proven to change neural pathways so clients can reduce their symptoms of anxiety for good. This part provides all the training you need to become a CMIP and enhance your practice.

• Empirical support for improved symptomology and well-being
• The latest research on therapists who practice mindfulness
• Your mindfulness practice and how you can embody mindfulness
• Situations that may contraindicate applying mindfulness in session

• Mindfulness vocabulary
• Visuals and metaphors to explain mindfulness
• Motivate clients with neuroplasticity

• Overcoming barriers
• Affect regulation techniques for therapist and client
• Strategies to create empathetic connection
• Exercises to build clients trust in themselves

• Tips for teaching clients about the senses and awareness
• Strategies to shift from “Automatic Pilot”
• Skill building interventions to increase responsiveness & reduce reactivity
• How to adapt practices to special populations

• Breathing practices that break the rumination cycle
• Movement strategies
• Multi-sensory regulation techniques
• Mindfully reduce the intensity of panic attacks

• Exercises to counter fight or flight
• Guided meditations to disempower intrusive thoughts
• Grounding exercises and sample scripts

• Recognize self-criticism and respond with self-love
• Manage negative self-talk with awareness of thoughts
• Meditations to boost well-being

• Awareness vs. autopilot -- relapse prevention
• Mindfulness for triggers
• Emotional regulation for cravings
• Practices to break the habit loop

• Breathe through anger
• Distraction and grounding techniques
• Self-soothing techniques

• Adapt mindfulness experiences with cultural sensitivity
• Assess appropriateness of mindfulness interventions for individuals
• Negotiate the treatment plan

• Right here/right now – stay in the moment to reduce anxieties
• Effective and healthy ways to manage your emotions
• Change limiting stories about caring for yourself
• Release the negative – 3 steps to countering negativity bias