Rewire the Anxious Brain: Neuroscience-Informed Treatment of Anxiety, Panic and Worry

CPD

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Heidi Schreiber-Pan, Ph.D., LCPC. NCC Related seminars and products

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Heidi Schreiber-Pan, Ph.D., LCPC, NCC, is a licensed professional clinical counselor in Baltimore, Maryland, where she runs a private practice. She works with various community and faith organizations to merge spirituality and psychology.

Dr. Schreiber-Pan is also affiliate assistant professor at Loyola University Maryland, teaching for the department of Pastoral Counseling, a premier CACREP-approved counseling education program that integrates the pastoral/spiritual, clinical, and scientific dimensions of counseling psychology.

Dr. Schreiber-Pan specializes in anxiety disorders and provides therapy that integrates spiritually and mindfulness. Her workshops and seminars are offered all over the East Coast. She investigated the role of faith in trauma and the effect of nature on psychological well-being and spirituality.

Speaker Disclosure:

Financial: Heidi Schreiber-Pan is in private practice. She receives a consulting fee from Loyola University. Dr. Schreiber-Pan receives a speaking honorarium from PESI, Inc.

Nonfinancial: Heidi Schreiber-Pan is a member of the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision; the American Counseling Association; and Maryland Association for Counseling and Development.

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Objectives

1. Ascertain the underlying neurological processes that impact anxious symptoms for clients.
2. Develop client engagement in treatment using personalized goals and attending to the therapeutic relationship.
3. Evaluate the differences between amygdala-based and cortex-based anxiety symptoms and identify how these symptoms inform treatment interventions.
4. Communicate strategies for calming and training the amygdala in order to alleviate symptoms of anxiety.
5. Implement methods for teaching clients to retrain the cortex so that anxiety is resisted rather than exacerbated.
6. Analyze how psychotropic medication impacts neuroplasticity in the brain; identify related treatment implications.

Outline

• Positives:
  • We know more about anxiety-based disorders than any other disorders
  • Science gives explanations, evidence, authority, destigmatizes difficulties
• Concerns:
  • It can be difficult to explain, answer questions
  • Clients may feel a lack of responsibility
  • Oversimplification is inevitable

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

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

• Sleep and the amygdala
• The influence of exercise
• Breathing techniques to reduce activation
• Relaxation, meditation, and yoga to modify responses
• Exposure as opportunities for the amygdala to learn
• Combatting avoidance
• When anxiety indicates that the amygdala can learn new responses
• Push through anxiety to change the amygdala

• ”Survival of the busiest” principle – strengthen or weaken specific circuitry
• The healthy (adaptive) use of worry in the cortex
• ”You can’t erase: You must replace”
• Recognize and modify the impact of uncertainty
• Training correct uses of distraction
• Left hemisphere techniques – cognitive defusion, coping thoughts, fighting anticipation
• Right hemisphere techniques – imagery, music
• Mindfulness and anxiety resistances

• Medication’s effects in the rewiring process
• 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 (depression, substance abuse, etc.)
• 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

Target Audience

• Social Workers
• Psychologists
• Psychiatrists
• Counselors
• Marriage and Family Therapists
• Case Managers
• Addiction Counselors
• Therapists
• Nurses
• Occupational Therapists
• Occupational Therapist Assistants
• Marriage & Family Therapists
• Other Mental Health Professionals

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