Full Course Description
Brain Care: Applying the Neuroscience of Well-Being
Program Information
Objectives
- Explore how to implement lifestyle choices that protect the physical brain as our clients age, and extend the “health span” portion of our lifespan
- Explore how to apply the tools of self-directed neuroplasticity in therapy that help reverse the impact of stress and trauma on emotional regulation, learning and memory, and empathy
- Explore how to engage clients with practices such as guided visualizations and process journaling that can enhance the higher brain’s capacity for response flexibility, discernment, planning, creativity, and imagination
- Explore how to apply interventions that help prevent/reverse addiction to digital technology and recover capacities for focused attention and concentration, relational intimacy, introspection, and self-reflection
- Explore how to use valuable resources in the latest findings about the brain and the mind-body connections
Outline
- Brain structure, overlapping areas of physical pain, emotional pain and temperature
- Modalities impacting brain structure
- Multiple approaches, experiences change the brain
- Consciousness remains unexplained
- Mindfulness, compassion
- Burnout and compassion fatigue
- Macro and micro approaches to self-care
- The impact of exercise on brain chemistry and development
- Telomeres, longevity, types of movement
- The impact of sleep and rest on brain chemistry and development
- Cognitive impairment, depression
- Sleep improvement strategies
- Brief restorative strategies
- Nutrition supports for brain function
- MIND diet
- Neurotoxins
- Impact of obesity
- The role of play in sustaining healthy brain function
- Social relationships and well-being
- The four intelligences of well-being
- Body based tools for healing trauma
- Reactivity and healing
- Emotional regulation
- Priming the neuroplasticity of the brain
- Relational intelligence
- Mindful awareness
- Modifying perceptions and reactions
- Exercise: Increasing somatic intelligence
- Exercises: Breath, posture and movement
- Positive psychology and neuroscience research
- Contraction and reactivity
- Resilience and health
- Ability to shift perspective
- Mindful self-compassion and acceptance
- Exercise: Hand movement, mindfulness and emotion
- Exercise: Visualization and self-compassion
- Exercise: Moments of kindness
- Exercise: Guided visualization toward self-acceptance
- Exercise: Playing Parts and self-integration
- Exercise: Integrating the inner critic
Brain Switch: Apply Polyvagal and Memory Reconsolidation Theories with Parts Work, Somatic, and Mindful Approaches
Program Information
Outline
- Use the insula to reduce visceral sensations
- Find sensations to rewind them
- Teach clients to release endorphins
- Transform brain research into interventions
- Change the brain’s negative bias
- Externalize & personify negative thoughts
- Rapidly activate centers for positive emotions
- No‐fail homework assignments
- 4‐step method to overcome negative self‐talk: demonstration and practicum
- Replace controlling, critical inner voices with compassion and curiosity
- Use memory tricks to increase mindfulness
- Learn the prerequisite for deep therapeutic change
- Mix everyday tech savvy with neuroscience
Objectives
- Explore the therapeutic impact of activating brain centers that neutralize stressful neurochemicals
- Explore how to regulate sensations from disturbing emotions by balancing them with uplifting neurochemicals
- Explore the power of visual images to externalize distress, enhance attunement, and create pathways to implicit memories and inner assets
- Explore ways to integrate a variety of therapeutic approaches into a three-step, brain-based protocol that can be used with diverse populations and ages
Copyright :
23/03/2018
Calming the Anxious Brain
Program Information
Objectives
- Use examples to illustrate how the anxious brain functions and how to use that information in session to improve treatment outcomes.
- Describe the role of the amygdala and cortex in maintaining anxiety disorders s for purposes of client psychoeducation.
- Explain how learning about the neuroscience of anxiety can improve client engagement.
- Use neurologically informed CBT techniques to help clients reduce anxious responding by making changes in both the cortex and the amygdala.
Outline
Introduction
- Disclosures
- Limitations
- Scope of Practice
- Learning Objectives
Using Neuroscience in the Treatment of Anxiety
- Neuroscience & Anxiety
- Neuroscience & Therapists
- Using Neuroscience to Enhance Client Engagement
- Treatment Goal Selection
- Neuropsychologically Informed CBT
- Neuroplasticity
- Reconsolidation
- Two Pathways to Anxiety
Understanding Anxiety in the Brain: The Amygdala Pathway
- Fight, Flight, Freeze
- Language of the Amygdala
- Triggers Created in the Amygdala
- Neuroplasticity in the Amygdala
- Amygdala-Focused Interventions
Understanding Anxiety in the Brain: The Cortex Pathway
- Relationship between the Cortex & Amygdala
- Neuroplasticity in the Cortex
- Cortex-Based Interventions
Calming the Anxious Brain - Part 2
Copyright :
22/03/2019
Helping Clients Unlearn Their Pain: The New Neuroscience of Pain
Program Information
Outline
Knowledge about Psychophysiologic Disorders (PPD)
- How is pain produced and processed in the conscious and subconscious brain
- What are some of the common manifestations of PPD
- Relationship between stressful life events and PPD
- Overview of treatment of PPD
How to assess if someone has PPD, including examination skills if appropriate (Medical assessment)
- Medical history
- Review of records and imaging studies
- The search for discrepancies
- Review of symptoms checklist lifetime
- Medical examination or review of medical examinations
How to determine the psychological cause of PPD
- Early childhood history—priming events
- Teen and early adult history—triggering events
- Later life history, search for themes and patterns
- Connection between onset and exacerbation of symptoms and stressful life events
How to educate patients and personalize information about PPD
- Explaining PPD 101—the information
- Review themes and relate life events to onset and exacerbation of PPD symptoms
- Obtain feedback and answer questions
How to implement the basic cognitive and behavioral elements of Treatment
- Education as a basis of treatment
- Understanding the concepts and applying them personally
- Believing in them and self-confidence to allay doubts
- Developing self-confidence for successful recovery
- Affirmations for recovery
- Challenging symptoms
- Conditioned responses and outcome independence
Description of expressive writing exercises, handouts only
List of writing techniques (Lists):
- Free writing
- Unsent letters
- Dialogues
- Gratitude
- Forgiveness
- Barriers to recovery
- Responding to life situations
- Writing a new life narrative
Description of the role of meditative exercises, handouts only
- Mindfulness practices
- Attending to emotional states
- Decreasing self-induced suffering
- Tolerating symptoms as transient events
- Guided meditations
How to guide a PPD patient in emotional awareness and expression exercises
- Basic principles
- Description of steps in the process
- Demonstration of the process
Conclusions, Questions and Answers
Objectives
- Discover an approach to distinguishing clients with psychophysiologic pain from those with more structurally caused pain
- Discover how to help clients understand the psychophysiological process for pain in ways that encourage their commitment to positive action
- Discover how to use mindfulness-based cognitive-behavioral techniques to address psychophysiologic pain in clients
Copyright :
24/03/2018
Treating Complex Trauma Clients at the Edge: How Brain Science Can Inform Interventions
Program Information
Objectives
- Evaluate the extreme symptoms of trauma by determining if they are rooted in sympathetic activation or parasympathetic withdrawal to inform clinical treatment interventions.
- Articulate methods by which neuroscience can be interfaced with psychotherapy practices to improve clinical outcomes.
Outline
Experiential Treatments - Integrating neuroscience and psychotherapy
- Necessity of utilizing physical, emotional and relationship aspects in therapeutic intervention
Problems with traditional phase oriented treatment
- Negative evaluation of symptoms - ignoring their protective function
Internal Family Systems
- Understanding symptom presentation as positive efforts pushed to extremes
- Welcoming and integrating all parts of an individual
- Identifying intent of symptomology, importance of avoiding shaming
Redefining trauma related diagnoses and integrating overactive protective mechanisms
- Disorganized attachment
- Borderline Personality Disorder, Dissociative Identity Disorder
Therapist factors - vulnerabilities
- Impact of therapist parts acting as separately as the clients we work with
- Responding effectively to personal triggers
Symptoms of post trauma
- Hyperarousal, hyperarousal, psychic wounds
- Importance of obtaining permission before addressing psychic wounds
Experiential exercise - self-awareness, response to triggers
Mind-brain relationships
- Neuroplasticity, neural integration
- Neural networks associated with trauma
- Implicit nature of trauma memories
Autonomic nervous system
- Role of cortisol
- Sympathetic hyper-arousal
- Characteristics of extreme symptom activation and mixed states
Therapeutic responses
- Choosing compassion or empathic responses
- Providing auxiliary cognition
- Strategies to avoid contributing to hyperarousal
- Top down strategies to separate or unblend
Case presentation - example of permission seeking, direct access and unblending
Polyvagal Theory
- Dorsal and ventral branches
- Activating strategies, responding to hypo-arousal, blunting
Copyright :
23/03/2018
BONUS: Accessing the Deep Brain with Brainspotting with David Grand, Ph.D.
Program Information
Objectives
- Identify how specific eye movements, including wobbles and microsaccades, as well as other facial cues and reflexes reveal specific “spots” in the brain
- Describe “brainspots,” the eye positions associated with the activation of trauma
- Instruct traumatized clients to attend to their inner experience as they move through dissociative blocks and maximize a process of self-healing
- Develop skills that allow you to pay attention to interactions with clients while staying attuned to the internal brain changes reflected in their eye movements
Outline
Introduction to Brainspotting
- Overview education of the components of the brain
- Identifying the advantages of using brainspotting over talk therapy to overcome trauma and other clinical issues
Discussion/demonstration of how to use Brainspotting in a clinical session
- Understanding the science behind why brainspotting works
- Live demonstration of Brainspotting in action
- Q&A session and audience comments on the implementation of Brainspotting
Concluding remarks from David Grand
- Final remarks following session experience and enhanced attunement
- Follow-up training opportunities with David Grand
Copyright :
27/03/2015