Hey there, everybody, and welcome to this presentation on diagnosing anxiety and panic in the DSM 5tr. I’m your host Dr. Donnelly Snipes in this presentation.Very briefly, we’re going to review the diagnostic criteria for anxiety disorders or at least most of them in the DSM 5 tr.So let’s talk a little bit about anxiety disorders in general, when we’re talking about anxiety disorders, we need to remember that fear and anxiety may be expressed as fighting agitation, tantrums fleeing freezing fawning clinging, or withdrawal, or what I call the final f, Which is um politely forget about it, because people, just don’t have any more energy left, so they kind of withdraw anxiety.Disorders differ from each other regarding the types of objects or situations that cause fear, anxiety, or avoidance behaviors and the associated beliefs.Anxiety disorders represent a response that is not developmentally culturally or, I also add, contextually normative in terms of intensity or duration.So when we’re looking at what somebody is anxious about, we want to examine, obviously culture and development, something that a five-year-old is afraid of is not necessarily going to be the same thing that a 25-year-old is afraid of.We also want to look at context, though, something that uh, you’re, afraid of in one context, you may not be afraid of in another like for children being around strangers may not be stressful for them when they are at home or when they’re.At school, somebody comes in to do a presentation versus when they are alone and they don’t have a caregiver around.Interestingly, from August 2020, through December 2020, the percentage of adults reporting symptoms of an anxiety disorder rose from 31 4 to 36 9.Now, when you go through the DSM and you start adding up the prevalence of these anxiety disorders, it is really hard to get to a number anywhere close to 36 9. So the numbers in the DSM and the numbers in the uh national health survey, don’t seem to jive very well.We also have to remember that during 2020 we were at the beginning of the pandemic, so there was more anxiety.You would expect that, but even the 31 percent that it was before 2020 seems to be higher than what is identified in the DSM.So I think that’s interesting the anxiety chapter in the DSM 5tr, just like in the DSM 5, is arranged in order of diagnosis which appears in children first, so separation, anxiety, and disorder appear first, and generalized anxiety.The disorder is down a little way, whereas you might expect some of the quote more common disorders to be first, but that’s not how the DSM is arranged.However, in this presentation, I did put generalized anxiety first, when we talk about generalized anxiety, we’re talking about excessive anxiety most days for six or more months, and the anxiety is about a variety of things.It’s not just about one particular thing like health or an individual or a phobia.It is about a variety of things.The worry, in addition to being excessive for the person’s developmental age, culture, and context.The worry is difficult to control the anxiety or the feeling of anxiety is associated with three or more symptoms in adults or one or more symptoms in children, feeling restless or feeling keyed up or on edge, easily fatigued difficulty concentrating, or mind going blank, irritability muscle, tension Or sleep disturbance, I want you to think about it. Anxiety is part of the fight or flight response, so we would expect somebody to experience anxiety.Would it be experiencing symptoms of hpa, axis activation, or activation of the threat, threat, response, or stress response? Whatever you want to call it, so we would expect all of these symptoms or any of these symptoms. When the fight or flight system is engaged, the body is not focused on higher order, processing, memory, or concentration it’s focused on self-preservation protection the person becomes more vigilant because they are trying to protect themselves from threats.They’re not able to relax enough to get good quality sleep because guess what they are keyed up.They’re scanning for those threats, muscle tension and I’ve mentioned in other videos.When I used to play tennis, my coach always used to say don’t stand flat-footed on the baseline, because it takes more time and it’s harder for you to run and spring into action to where that ball is going to be.Now.That is not a threat per se, but the same thing is true for people with anxiety disorders, when you are when you’ve got that muscle tension, it’s kind of like standing on your toes on the baseline.In tennis, you are primed and ready to go and it makes it easier to theoretically fight or flee.These symptoms have to cause clinically significant distress.People can have subclinical anxiety disorder where they have a lot of worry about a variety of things, but it is either not excessive for what they’re worried about, or it doesn’t cause them clinically significant distress. Overall, they report a decent quality of life.It doesn’t interfere with functioning in major areas of their life and generalized anxiety disorder, as well as all of the disorders, are not better explained by a medical, mental, or substance use disorder, and we’re going to talk in the end about differential diagnosis Of the anxiety disorders in general because there’s a lot of overlap between the symptoms, as well as the differential, diagnosis, and comorbidities for anxiety disorders.Remember the difference is often what the person experiences anxiety about and the cognitions associated with the diagnostic features of generalized anxiety disorder.Well, this section, as with most of the sections in the anxiety chapter, pretty much just recapitulated the diagnostic criteria and it elaborated a little bit.One interesting feature is that for generalized anxiety disorder, they noted that adults tend to worry about general life, things like paying bills and getting a promotion, or what’s going to happen with this or that or what’s going on in the world. Kids tend to worry about their competence like performing at school or their ability to be competent in relationships.Sometimes they worry about disaster now, with the coming of the pandemic.We can probably add that too, but other disasters like hurricanes and fires and floods and those sorts of things can prompt a lot of worry in children and punctuality.Interestingly enough, some children become very concerned about being punctual, and so it’s interesting to note that there is a difference in what they worry about, which makes sense, because adults have different responsibilities than kids do, and you notice that, except for disaster, a lot of these worries revolve around the primary life areas or functions of the person.You know: kids, are, n’t worried about paying bills or or maintaining or parenting, or some of the things that that adults worry about associated symptoms.Well, let me talk about disaster. Quick, I’m trying not to go too far off the rails today, because we’ve got a lot to cover, but it’s important to recognize that children have a difficult time, understanding, the prevalence and likelihood of things.So when there is a disaster such as you know, we’ve had several in middle Tennessee over the past two years and a child watching the news or hearing about the news may not understand how close or far away that disaster was or the likelihood of It recurring adults are better able to understand.You know it’s a 100-year flood or there’s the chance of it happening again.Do you know whatever? The probability is depending on what you’re talking about children don’t understand that they see it on the news it feels like, since it’s on the news, it’s kind of in their house.So it feels like it’s right in their space and it’s hard to know when it’s going to end or when it’s going to happen again, which can prompt them to have a lot more worries about disasters.Parents can help by explaining some of the things to them and explaining to children the probability of another disaster occurring, and you know how they’re safe right now and the steps that they can take.It won’t do everything, but it is important again to recognize children’s different cognitive abilities compared to adults, associated symptoms with generalized anxiety, disorder, and other somatic symptoms that are not as intense as those seen in panic disorder.So we will also see potentially heart racing clammy, skin, rapid breathing other things, and an upset stomach that isn’t specifically indicated in diagnostic criteria, but we know it happens when that fight or flight response is kicked off the prevalence.Remember I said if you start adding up the prevalence of all these anxiety disorders.You’re going to be hard-pressed to get anywhere close to 31 percent and according to the DSM 5 tr between one percent of adolescents and three percent of adults in the? U s experience generalized anxiety disorder according to the National Center on Health Statistics in 2019. Now that was before the pandemic.15 6 of adults experienced symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder in the prior two weeks.The development, and course the mean onset, is rarely before adolescence, and is I’m? Sorry, the mean onset is 35 and rarely before adolescence.So this is one of the disorders that has a much later onset than other disorders, which I did find to be somewhat interesting.Now we’ll move on to separation.Anxiety, separation.Anxiety is the first disorder in the chapter because it tends to be the one that presents earliest and it can be diagnosed as early as preschool separation.Anxiety is characterized by developmentally inappropriate, excessive, recurrent anxiety about separation from major attachment figures.To be diagnosed, the person has to have three or more symptoms.It can be diagnosed in childhood. It can be diagnosed in adulthood if it’s diagnosed in adulthood.You do not have to have a childhood onset of separation anxiety.It actually can have an adult onset, so that is something to remember: symptoms, three or more distress due to or in anticipation of separation from home or from major attachment figures, anxiety about losing a major attachment figure, or possible harm to them.Anxiety about something bad happening to the person, the patient, which would cause them to be separated from an anxiety from an attachment figure.So they have fears about something happening to the attachment figure, causing separation, and fears about them, something bad happening to themselves, causing separation, a reluctance, a refusal to go out or away from home because of fear of separation.Now, generally, this is leaving home and separating from that attachment figure, but in some cases, it can include even being reluctant to leave the house to be cut with the attachment figure because they’re afraid that when they’re out there, they may get separated.Now think how this might occur if there was a child who happened to be at a carnival and got separated from their caregiver that might prompt future fears of separation when in public places, fear of or reluctance to be alone, or without major attachment figures.Refusal to go to sleep without being near a major attachment figure, nightmares about separation, or physical complaints in reaction to or in anticipation of separation.So they have those physiological symptoms of anxiety now note here they keep talking about major attachment figures because remember this can be diagnosed in adulthood.We’re not talking about the primary attachment from infancy. We’re talking about the person’s current major attachment figure, whether that be their significant other, their parent, or whomever that happens to be the fear, anxiety, or avoidance, is persistent, lasting at least four weeks in children and adolescents, and typically six months or more In adults – and you’ll find that’s a common theme where a lot of these situations or conditions have to last six months or more and be causing clinically significant distress for six months or more to rank a diagnosis.Although the symptoms often develop in childhood, they can be expressed throughout adulthood.It can be diagnosed in adults in the absence of a history of childhood separation, anxiety, or disorder, and, as I said, it causes clinically significant distress or impairment in one or more areas of functioning.The diagnostic features section repeats the diagnostic criteria with some elaboration and examples.It’s a pretty straightforward diagnosis in terms of development and, and course the onset of separation.Anxiety can be any time from preschool through adulthood, but generally before the age of 30.So you can have diagnoses of separation anxiety up through the 20s, there may be periods of exacerbation and remission, although most child onset cases do not experience ongoing, clinically significant impairment.I thought that was kind of an interesting associated feature.Now these are not diagnostic criteria.These are features that are associated with separation anxiety but didn’t rank in the diagnostic criteria, sadness or apathy. Well, if somebody is perpetually anxious that hpa axis is going to down-regulate some which may contribute to apathy, if they are perpetually anxious, they may also start feeling hopeless and hopeless, which is associated with feelings of sadness and depression.They may have difficulty concentrating well.The mind is not focused on concentration.If it’s in a perpetual state of fight or flee, there may be social withdrawal just stepping away from everything, because they don’t have the energy to engage with others.Because the anxiety is so pervasive in older children you may see homesickness or pining when they are away at camp or or something like that.Now.A lot of children who don’t have separation, anxiety, or disorder, experience homesickness when they’re away at camp.For the first time, however, this is also associated with separation, anxiety, the child migs or the person may exhibit anger or aggression towards separators.So anybody who’s causing a separation between the patient and their major attachment figures may provoke anxiety, anger, and perceptual disturbances.Now these are not hallucinations. These are when a person is alone, for example at night, and they feel like somebody’s watching them, or they think they see something moving in the shadows.It’s not there and by turning on the light.So there are no more shadows.You know that goes away.It’s, not a persistent uh hallucination that the person is experiencing, but perceptual disturbances are more common in children than they are in adults, and we want to make sure we don’t mislabel that as something related to a psychotic disorder, children with separation, Anxiety tends to be described as demanding intrusive and in need of constant attention.According to the DSM now, I would argue when we get down a little further that this may be true of all people with separation, and anxiety, adults may appear dependent and are likely to contact their major attachment figures throughout the day and track their whereabouts.They are also often overprotective as parents and pet owners.Interestingly enough, the DSM did mention pets where the person with separation anxiety may be excessively concerned about knowing where their pet is at all times.The prevalence of separation.Anxiety in children is approximately four percent, and in adolescents and adults, it ranges from one to two percent. In the culture section, the DSM talked about the importance of differentiating separation, and anxiety disorder from the high value, some cultural communities place on strong interdependence among family members.Specific phobias is the next in the line of disorders we’re going to talk about and a specific phobia is pretty straightforward.There’s a marked, fear or anxiety about an object or a situation about 75 percent of people that have one phobia have more than one phobia, and I think, if you think about it, even if it doesn’t rise to the level of being a Diagnosable phobia you can think about.If you have one what we’ll call irrational fear, you probably have a couple of others when I started to think about it.I’m, like yeah, i have i have a couple in there.The stimulus almost always produces an immediate fear response and is actively avoided.The fear is disproportionate to the threat that persists for guess what six months or more and causes clinically significant distress – and I have this bold and italicized because it’s important to remember that.Having a fear – and I’ve talked in other videos about my fear of bridges, I also have a fear of enclosed spaces.I hate you know those little water, tubes and tunnels and things that make me feel closed in.Does it cause me clinically significant distress or cause me to have to alter my life to get around it? No, so it doesn’t rise to the level of a specific phobia. A lot of people have fears that may not have a um basis or the fear may be disproportionate to the threat.In reality, we recognize it, but it doesn’t cause us clinically significant distress, so it would not be diagnosable as a specific phobia and the specific phobia is not better explained by another mental disorder and I’m thinking here more obsessive, compulsive disorder.But in the differential diagnosis list on the anxiety disorders, there were a lot, so we’re just going to go through all of those.In the end, the diagnostic features again for specific phobias were pretty much a restatement of the diagnostic criteria-associated features.Interestingly enough, some people are arousal.Well, that makes sense when the HPA axis kicks off.A lot of people have a um increased heart rate, sort of a panic sort of feeling about them, not to the level of a panic attack necessarily, but they have that aroused state in preparation for fight or flee.Other people may have what they call a vasovagal response in which their heart rate decelerates their blood pressure drops, and they may faint my grandmother used to do this.Oh my gosh, and it wasn’t necessarily hers.Wasn’t phobia-related, but when she would get startled she would fall out and for the longest time the doctors, couldn’t figure out exactly what was going on. But ultimately my guess would be.It re had something to do with with anxiety or generalized anxiety.The prevalence of phobias is between eight and twelve percent, it peaks in adolescence at sixteen percent.So sixty percent of adolescents have specific phobias.The development, in course usually develops before age, 10 or after a trauma, and the presence of phobias is a risk factor for neurocognitive disorders in older adults.Why is this? We’ve again, we’ve talked in other videos about how hyperactivation of that stress response system keeps levels of glutamate and norepinephrine and stuff high in the brain which causes neurodegeneration, which can lead to neurocognitive disorders additionally, because of social withdrawal and avoidance and restructuring Of their daily lives, to avoid the phobic stimulus, there tends to be less stimulation for the person with specific phobias, which may also lead to a decline in what they call cognitive reserve and social anxiety disorder in social anxiety disorder.There’s a marked fear of social situations when in which one might be judged.So you’ve got generalized anxiety, which is anxiety about a lot of things over at least six months.We have a specific phobia, which is something specific.Like enclosed spaces or spiders, or snakes, um separation, anxiety, which is anxiety or fear of being separated from an attachment figure, and then social anxiety, which is fear from being in situations in which one might be judged by children. The symptoms have to be present not only in relationships with adults but in relationships with their peers.It’s natural for children to be somewhat anxious if they’re interacting with adults if they’re having the same anxiety when they’re interacting with their peers, then that’s really what we’re going to look for for a trigger The person has an excessive fear of being embarrassed, rejected or offensive, and the offensive seems to be increasing in popularity or not popularity in commonality, um very quickly, with Twitter and Facebook and tick tock, and all these other things and trying to be politically correct.A lot of people have developed a level of social anxiety, maybe not to the level of being a disorder, but, a level of social anxiety, because they fear not saying the right thing because they fear being canceled.Social situations almost always trigger anxiety and social anxiety disorder.Social situations are actively avoided or endured with intense fear, and the level of fear is disproportionate to the potential consequences.People may have a high level of fear and anxiety uh before going out and giving a performance in front of 10,000 people the level of anxiety for that would probably be different than giving a speech in front of six classmates.You know you see the difference here, but a person with social anxiety disorder.They would have that same level of fear in front of six people.They knew as opposed to ten thousand, that they didn’t persist again for six months or more causing clinically significant distress and is not due to another medical, mental, health, or substance-related condition.There is a note that social anxiety disorder can be performance only and you do want to specify that if it only has to do with giving speeches performing sports music, or anything like that, the diagnostic criteria features section, gave further examples of the symptoms that were identified in The diagnostic criteria associated features with social anxiety. The person may be passive or shy.They may want to kind of blend into the wall.They may be somewhat withdrawn because they don’t want to be out there in the limelight.They don’t want to be in this position where they fear being judged.On the other end of the spectrum, though, there’s a proportion of people with a social anxiety disorder who are highly controlling of situations, and they may try to control the conversation and control other people in the situation to avoid feeling out of control.Use of substances, substance, use, misuse or abuse is often associated with people with social anxiety disorder, and I have parenthetically heard liquid courage is what we used to call it back in the day I don’t know if it’s what they still call it but using substances to help temporarily allay anxiety.Interestingly, as alcohol leaves, the body people tend to have an enhanced anxiety response.So using alcohol before a social situation may end up causing more problems for some people, but that’s that’s up to them.Additionally, you may see a worsening of physical illness symptoms such as tachycardia or increased tremor in people with social anxiety disorder, so if they already have something that causes a tremor or a tick that may get worse, if they already have something that causes tachycardia, that may Get worse in situations in which they fear being judged.Now I have here increased pain, a question mark that’s not identified in the DSM 5t. However, we know that hyperactivation of the hpa axis contributes to ultimately development of systemic inflammation and the worsening of autoimmune disorders.So I would be interested to see what the actual numbers are for that and no, I could not find any research that compared the rates of increased pain with social anxiety, specifically prevalence.Seven percent of people in the United States experience social anxiety, disorder now brace yourself.This is not a typo.2 3 percent of people in Europe can be diagnosed with social anxiety disorder.So what is that? A third? What’s different in the United States? That is contributing to significantly higher rates of social anxiety fear of being judged and fear of offending people.Just saying additionally, social anxiety disorder does tend to be highest in non-Hispanic whites.So what is unique about nonhispanic? Whites in us I’ll leave you to talk about that and panic disorder, people with panic, disorder, experience, recurrent unexpected surges of intense fear or discomfort that peak within minutes and has a and accompanying four-plus symptoms.Now I have bolded and italicized unexpected here there are expected panic attacks when you’re in a situation in which you’ve had a panic attack before when there is a known trigger for the panic attack that’s an expected panic attack that doesn’t count towards our diagnosis here, which I don’t know seems a little strange, but okay, the panic attacks have to be unexpected.That is, they come from out of the clear blue and the panic attacks need to be characterized by four or more of the following symptoms palpitations, which is when it feels like your heart, is like fluttering, pounding, heart or tachycardia, which is racing heart, sweating, trembling or Shaking a feeling of shortness of breath or smothering you just can’t don’t feel like you can breathe, feeling like you’re, choking chest pain or discomfort, nausea or abdominal distress, feeling dizzy, unsteady lightheaded or faint chills or heat, sensations, numbness or tingling. Derealization, in which things just don’t feel real.You feel like you’re kind of a dream or depersonalization.You don’t feel, like you, ‘re part of your own body, anymore, with fear of losing control or going crazy and fear of dying.Now I’ll mention it, even though it’s pretty obvious.Many of these symptoms are also symptoms of a heart attack.It is important if you are a clinician not to assume that somebody who is experiencing a panic attack it’s, it’s, just a panic attack and to dismiss it.It’s important to take every panic attack seriously when somebody’s experiencing it and work with their medical provider to help them differentiate between what’s a panic attack.How do I know when I’m having another panic attack versus how do I know when I need to go to the ER and their doctor will work with them on that culture? Specific symptoms of panic may include tinnitus or ringing in the ear and neck.Soreness headache, uncontrollable, screaming, or crying.Interestingly, even though these are culture-specific symptoms, the DSM said those don’t count toward the required four plus symptoms. Additionally, at least one of the attacks – unexpected attacks has been followed by one month or more of both of the following persistent concern or worry about additional panic attacks or their consequences and a significant maladaptive change in behavior related to the attack avoidance of situations where You think they might happen again or ritualized, or superstitious behavior or extreme behavior, like changing your diet completely or doing something extreme to try to prevent the attack, so the unexpected attack happens and then for the next month or more.Both of those persistent concerns about it happening again and significant maladaptive changes in behavior are occurring, it has to cause clinically significant distress and it’s not due to another mental medical or substance use disorder.Interestingly, for panic attacks, there were no specifiers, but in the diagnostic features, it did note that panic attacks can be full meaning four or more symptoms or limited symptoms, so it doesn’t meet all of them.Doesn’t meet four symptoms or more, but the person’s having a panic response.If the person has never had a full-blown panic attack, uh, four or more symptoms, then you would not diagnose panic.Disorder frequency can be relatively regular like one per week or it can come in bursts where they, where they have multiple, really close together, then they go weeks months, or even years without having them, and then they have another burst of panic attacks, and there could also Be instances where they just have a panic attack, and then they may go for a couple of years or more before they have another one.It still qualifies as panic disorder.There is no code for remission of panic disorder and the expectation is unfortunately that if somebody has had a panic disorder at some point, they probably will have another panic attack at another point.Remember that expected panic attacks occur with known triggers, and there are many culture-related diagnostic issues due to expected triggers.So if you read through the culture-related diagnostic issues, a section of the DSM 5tr, you will find they talk about a lot of culture-bound triggers that can cause a panic attack in people’s associated features. People who have panic attacks.Panic disorder may also cause intermittent anxiety about health or mental health.They tend to be more somatically sensitive.That means they’re more aware of what’s going on in their body.Well, that makes sense if you’ve already had your body kind of go haywire on you once makes sense that you would be a little bit more hypersensitive to it happening again.They may have increased anxiety about their ability to tolerate daily stress there.A lot of times this may stem from the fear that if they experience too much stress it, ‘ll trigger another panic attack and they may have more extreme behaviors to control panic.The prevalence of panic disorder is about the same two and two percent to three percent in both the: u s in europe and Europe, the only disorder that had a marked difference between the; u s and other countries.Interestingly enough was social anxiety, disorder.The development of panic disorder, the median age – is 20 to 24 in us and 32 worldwide. So that is a little bit divergent.You know the prevalence, and the number of people that experience it worldwide are pretty comparable, but the median age for panic disorder is much younger in us than in other countries.Additionally, they speculate that older adults may attribute symptoms to medical conditions, so they may be underrepresented in the prevalence rates because when they’re having these panic symptoms, they’re, attributing them to medication, side effects, or other health conditions that they already have.So let’s talk about some of the risk and prognostic factors for anxiety disorders in general.Anxiety disorders often develop afterlife stress.This could be a death, a severe illness, a disaster, a big move becoming a parent adverse childhood experiences, or aces that’s just to name a few that those aren’t all of the causes, but I think it’s interesting that becoming A parent was in there as a life stress that often triggers the development of anxiety disorders.I mean I’m a parent myself.I can see how that could happen, but it’s not something that I had considered in the past as a risk factor for the development of anxiety disorders.People who’ve been bullied have an increased risk of developing anxiety disorders.The heritability of anxiety disorders ranges between 30 and 75 percent. I found that interesting, but they didn’t explain in any of the diagnoses whether they were looking at twins that were raised in the same household or twins that were raised in different households.If they’re raised in different households, it gives more credence to a genetic component.If they’re raised in the same household, then they experience the same psychosocial, and environmental stressors.Both of them are so.I don’t know what the actual data is on that person with negative affectivity.They tend to be more brooding, more depressed, more irritable people who are more self-conscious.People who ruminate more also all of these kinds are combined often referred to as neuroticism.They are at higher risk for the development of anxiety disorders.Attentional bias to threat was noted in generalized anxiety disorder as being an associated feature, but research shows that people with any anxiety disorder tend to have a stronger attentional bias to threat, which means they tend to be more hyper-vigilant.They tend to be more aware when there are, threats in the environment, and anxiety disorders by and large – tend to be much more frequent in women than in men. Interesting, not sure.Why again, my assumption is this is people who are biologically female and it seems to be consistent across cultures.Therefore, I am wondering what the genetic predisposition might be that may cause this.It seems like it’s, less about environment and shaping and behavioral training and more about a physiological response.But additionally – and these last two were not in the DSM.However, I did a PubMed search for risk factors for anxiety disorders and those who have a more external locus of control.That means they believe that things happen in the world by fate.By chance, there’s not a they.Don’t have a whole lot of control or ability to change what’s going on destiny is preordained, etc.People with that outlook who have a more external locus of control, tend to have much higher rates of anxiety and depressive disorders, and again not in the DSM, but in the PubMed. In the literature.People who have a lack of emotional support also tend to be at greater risk for developing anxiety disorders seems pretty self-explanatory in terms of suicidal thoughts.Anxiety itself increases the risk of suicidal thoughts.All of your anxiety disorders carry with them an increased risk of suicidal thoughts.People with separation anxiety have that generalized anxiety, related to increased risk, but people with specific phobias, interestingly enough, have an increased transition from ideation to attempt in a study that was cited in the DS well mentioned in the DSM, but they didn’t say what the study Was they looked at adults and they found that up to 30 percent of people who had their first suicide attempt? It was related.They also had a specific phobia or it was related to that specific phobia so that’s 30 percent is a big number uh.When we’re, especially when we’re talking about suicide attempts and suicidal ideation, if you have somebody with a specific phobia, we often downplay that because we think it’s just a fear of this or a fear of that.But that fear can feel very, limiting and oppressive to a lot of people, and again 30 percent of them.Uh, 30 percent of people who have attempted suicide also had specific phobia functional consequences.Now I could go on a diatribe about the functional consequences of anxiety disorders. The DSM didn’t have much to say about it, so let’s talk about some of these limited independent activities.This is especially true in agoraphobia and separation, anxiety, people who are afraid of leaving the house for fear of being separated from their significant other or for fear of being separated from their safe place, and people who have social anxiety, who fear being in social situations, may Have a lot of restrictions on their life activities and limited activities that they feel safe or comfortable doing by themselves, not in the DSM 5 tr, but in the literature, also the functional consequences of impaired relationships.People with anxiety disorders may be because of their restrictions on life activities and their um potential need to know where people are and their separation, anxiety, etc.A lot of times, people with anxiety disorders struggle in their relationships, because it can feel overwhelming to the partners.As I mentioned earlier, people with anger, and anxiety disorders, have higher rates of autoimmune issues.Continuous or excessive levels of stress hormones contribute to systemic inflammation, which will trigger depression or is associated with triggering depression and associated with worsening of autoimmune conditions and obesity.I thought this one was interesting, but it makes sense when you look at it.People with anxiety disorders, who often are restricted in their life activities, may feel worn down and exhausted.From being stressed out, all the time may not have a lot of energy to do.Other stuff tends to be more prone to develop obesity so that’s an interesting functional consequence now differential diagnosis, I told you there was a laundry list of them. Generalized anxiety, a disorder in gad.Excessive anxiety is about a variety of things for at least six months.Separation, anxiety, the worry or the anxiety is about separation from the attachment figure.Okay, that’s pretty clear, agoraphobia.The fear is about being trapped or helpless in situations in which escape is difficult.The fear surrounds being away from their safe place, not being away from a person they want to be in a place where they feel safe, and it needs to be not specific to one setting so being trapped or helpless in a situation.I give the example of an MRI that closed MRIs.Oh my gosh, I can’t stand them.I’m terrified of them, but that is specific to one setting and I’m not afraid to leave the house for fear of being trapped or helpless in a situation, social anxiety, anxiety is about being judged negatively, and illness anxiety and this illness anxiety.Falls under somatic disorders but illness anxiety. The worry is about the illness, not separation, judgment, or being away from your safe place, so that’s a differential diagnosis of your basic anxiety disorders in terms of other disorders because there’s that criteria not better explained by another mental health or medical disorder.In psychotic disorders, people who have hallucinations and delusions may also have anxiety, but their worry or fear surrounds hallucinations or delusions and is not reversed by context or the presence of an attachment figure.So a person with psychotic disorders, if their major attachment figure shows up does. n’t help them feel more comfortable if they turn on the light to eliminate the shadows that don’t make them feel more comfortable, and the hallucinations are not due to psychotic disorders.The hallucinations are not due to something present in eating disorders avoidance behavior is only related to food and food-related cues.According to the DSM, however, one of the main criteria for your eating disorders is an excessive fear about weight, shape, and size, and it’s important to recognize that, because people with eating disorders may avoid mirrors and scales and food, obviously certain foods, and that could All be related to their eating disorder, body, dysmorphic disorder.The fears are only related to people being offended by a particular perceived flaw in obsessive-compulsive disorder.The fear is an object or situation as a result of obsessions.So if they start thinking about germs on their hands – and they keep thinking about it, then they start developing a fear of getting germs on their hands, so the fear becomes the object of their obsessions.Their obsessions turn to cause what they’re.Thinking about becoming a fear in the autism spectrum, the person lacks sufficient age, appropriate relationships, and social communication capacity in anxiety disorders. The person often has sufficient age-appropriate relationships and can communicate socially, and socially understand others, just fine.What we’re, looking at in anxiety, is fear of being judged conduct.Disorder.School avoidance is a very common symptom of conduct disorder, but school avoidance is not due to worry or fear in conduct, disorder, school avoidance, and conduct disorder are due to not wanting to be told what to do.Thank you very much in oppositional defiant disorder, the oppositional behaviors occur in response to multiple situations, not just separation or situational anxiety, not just in response to an anxiety-provoking threat.So if somebody has separation anxiety, they may become oppositional about leaving their major attachment figure.If somebody has a social phobia, they may become oppositional about engaging in situations that would prompt that anxiety, or if they have a specific phobia, maybe they’re afraid of snakes.They may become oppositional about doing something like going hiking because they are actively avoiding that phobic stimulus if they are actively avoiding a phobic stimulus or an anxiety-provoking stimulus.It’s, probably not oppositional defiant.Now you can have both you can have them. Co occurs, but you do want to differentiate.What is the cause of the behavior? Prolonged grief is characterized by intense longing and yearning for the deceased, not fear of separation from them.Now you can have prolonged grief and separation.Anxiety, co occur, but you can’t.Have somebody who develops a fear of separation from others after a particularly particularly traumatic loss? That can happen, but you do want to differentiate and diagnose appropriately and in depression and bipolar.A lot of people who are in a major depressive episode may have reluctance to leave home, but this is due to a lack of motivation and energy to engage and apathy.It’s not due to fear of something out there.They just don’t care or they don’t have an energy personality.A person with a dependent personality relies too much on others.It’s not that they fear uh their safety or loss of attachment figures and avoidant personality disorder, broader avoidance patterns, and a pervasive negative self-concept, differentiate, avoidant, personality disorder from anxiety, and related disorders, not in the DSM I’m. Bringing up for differential diagnosis.Anxiety is related to apprehension and vigilance of physiological sensations and may have an onset after a concussion pots is a postural orthostatic tachycardia and when people have it, when they stand up, their heart rate will jump 30 or more beats just from when they move from sitting To standing and that can feel very scary, they can also get light headed they can.Faint hypoglycemia can also produce symptoms of anxiety sweating and agitation in people, so we want to differentially diagnose.I believe I read a study that more than 25 of Americans are pre-diabetic and don’t know it.Co-morbidity and anxiety disorders are comorbid with each other.So if you have one, you probably have some of its buddies.It’s also comorbid with depression.Bipolar PTSD, prolonged grief, obsessive-compulsive disorder, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, somatic symptom, related disorders, so any of your physical symptom disorders, anti-social personality, specifically social anxiety, common commonly may co, occur with anti-social, oppositional, defiant disorder and substance use disorders.Physically autoimmune diseases may increase the risk of psychiatric disorders partially due to thyroid dysfunction when that hpa axis goes offline.It also affects the functioning of the thyroid cardiovascular issues like supraventricular tachycardia can also be misdiagnosed and is often misdiagnosed for panic disorder. Hormone level fluctuations, especially extreme hormone fluctuations, can contribute to anxiety, related symptoms, high levels of estrogen or testosterone, nutrient deficiencies, or toxicities.So too, much or too little of certain vitamins and minerals can also cause anxiety-like symptoms.Environmentally poverty is a high risk factor for the development of anxiety disorders, for obvious reasons and socially adverse childhood experiences that include abuse, neglect, abandonment, or mental illness in the household.Are all risk factors for the development of anxiety disorders later in life? Anxiety disorders represent an anxiety response that is developmentally culturally and contextually excessive it’s persistent or recurrent, and causes clinically significant distress, so that differentiates it from people’s run-of-the-mill anxiety.If you will multiple anxiety disorders are common.This presentation covered some of the more common anxiety disorders but did not cover selective mutism substance-induced anxiety or other specified and unspecified anxiety disorders.Finally, it is important to rule out or diagnose comorbidly any physiological causes of anxiety.Symptoms include cardiovascular issues, pots, or diabetes.
ᵃⁿⁱᵐᵃᵗⁱᵒⁿ ˢᵗᵘᵈⁱᵒ ᴏɴᴇ-ᴛɪᴍᴇ ꜱᴘᴇᴄɪᴀʟ ᴜᴘɢʀᴀᴅᴇ ᴅᴇᴀʟ – ᴍᴀʏ ᴇxᴘɪʀᴇ ᴏɴᴄᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ʟᴇᴀᴠᴇ ᴛʜɪꜱ ᴘᴀɢᴇ. ꜱᴋɪᴘ ᴛʜɪꜱ ᴅᴇᴀʟ ᴀᴛ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴏᴡɴ ʀɪꜱᴋ ᴀꜱ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʀɪᴄᴇ ᴍᴀʏ ᴅᴏᴜʙʟᴇ ᴡɪᴛʜᴏᴜᴛ ɴᴏᴛɪᴄᴇ! Animation Studio is a must-have for anyone serious about selling or promoting anything online with video! Damon Nelson. Wow, Paul & Todd, this is a competition killer. “Animation Studio The Animation Creator That You Have Been Waiting For Has Finally Arrived… …..”
CEUs are available for this presentation at AllCEUs.com/CBT-CEU Hi everybody and welcome to today’s
presentation on cognitive behavioral therapy skills. Like the other
The presentation we did on assert not assertive community treatment acceptance
and commitment therapy, which is also based on providing information
about skills that can be used not providing an evidence-based practice
We couldn’t cover that in a full hour or just an hour so over the
next hour we’re going to define cognitive behavioral therapy and its
basic principles a lot of us are familiar with this but it’s going to be
a good review and it also may highlight some nuances that you didn’t know about
will identify factors impacting people’s choice of behaviors explore causes and
impact of thinking errors and identify common thinking errors and their
relationships to cognitive distortions so why do we care well as therapists we
want to help people figure out the best way to live a happy healthy meaningful
goals-driven life for some people that’s going to mean using some cognitive
behavioral interventions that can be in addition to mindfulness that can be in
addition to a lot of other things but it’s important to help people understand
that the way we believe things to be the way we interpret things is going to
affect our reactions so for example think about a situation you know you’ve
walked into and maybe you walked into it with a small child and it was a
different situation it was a new situation but you know it was no big
deal you walked in it was not a threatening situation to you because you
were like hey I got this the little kid walks in and goes oh wow there are a lot
of people walking around here, this is really scary same situation as two
different perceptions you probably didn’t have much of a stress reaction
going on whereas the little child probably had this fight-or-flight thing
going on grabbing onto your hand like please don’t let go
Atlanta Airport is a perfect example if you’ve ever
taken a little kid through Atlanta Airport it gives you an idea about how
People can perceive things differently and when you enact that fight-or-flight
reaction you’re going to have all those stress hormones you’re going to have all
either anxiety or anger or whatever that goes with it it may serve to
exhaust the person and leave them feeling hopeless and helpless so what we
want to do is help people see that but we also want to help them see that when
They’re depressed when they’re tired when they’re sick things are going to
seem a lot worse a lot of times because they don’t have the energy to perceive
it differently I mean when you’re sick it’s overwhelming to think of going
through Atlanta Airport so this is what we want to help people start
understanding is it’s two sides of the same coin they interact if one is you
know kind of going wonky is going to affect the other one the good thing is
If one’s going really well the other one’s going to go well if you’re
Having positive thoughts you’re probably going to feel pretty good
there’s an activity and I think we’re going to talk about it later it’s called
the coin flip activity and I asked client clients to flip a coin in the
morning and in the morning if it turns heads then they have to be the most
positive Pollyanna all day long look for the silver lining and everything smile
walk with their head up hold those nonverbals up and see how they feel at
the end of the day besides a little sore because there are muscles they’re using
they haven’t been used in a while if it lands on tails they can just be their normal
selves which generally if they’re seeing me means that they are depressed anxious
stressed out angry about something in the negative realm then we
Talk about how things seemed different on the days when you were feeling better
when you were walking taller when you were smiling even our nonverbals it
doesn’t even have to be sickness it can be our nonverbals that can make us feel
or make our body feel heavy and tired and make it seem like it’s a whole lot
harder to deal with life as a person who perceives the world
generally good and believe they can deal with challenges as
they arise that good old self-efficacy will be able to allow their stress
response system to function normally so if they’re like you know what I can deal
with whatever life throws at me I’ve got it and maybe I need help with it maybe
I’ll need to ask for support but I’ve got it it’s not going to completely
overwhelm me with people who see the world as hostile unsafe and unpredictable You
know for a variety of reasons whatever happened to make their scheme as such
that they don’t believe that people or the world is trustworthy are predictable
They are always on guard they’re always kind of like a hamster in a cage that has
Have you ever had a hamster hamsters doesn’t recognize you and goes Hey that’s my own
Or human contact score hamsters go run under their little house
And you just kind of open the cage and stick your hand in there and flip over
their house and you’re like come here and give me cuddles and you’re like you
know 200 times bigger than they are so the little hamster is like freaking
out this is what it’s like for people and obviously, I’m exaggerating but this
is what it’s like for people who have a negative perspective a negative view or
a hostile view of the world so kind of keep that little hamster in your mind cognitive behavioral therapy we have
core beliefs those things that are in our hearts when I talk with my clients
about honesty step one and that’s what they’ve got to do to start recovery is
get honest with themselves first and then other people we talk about head
heart and gut honesty do you think it’s right does it seem like the right thing
to do does it feel right in your heart you know does it make you happy it
doesn’t make you feel good and then the Spidey senses is your gut saying and or
Is your gut fine if one of those is saying this might not be the right
choice and we need to think about what’s going on so we have those core beliefs
and I put them in the heart just because that’s the middle of the head heart and
gut but you have core beliefs about yourself whether you’re good with
You’re bad whether you’re effective at certain things yadda
You have core beliefs about other people same thing good bad effective
predictable and you have core beliefs about the future and a lot of that goes
with locus of control but also your past experiences if the world in the past is
seemed unfriendly and uncontrollable and you’ve perceived it that way then you’re
going to expect the future to be uncontrollable so what we want to do is
help people look at their schemas and their core beliefs about themselves
others in the future and figure out kind of what they want it to look like these
schemas are going to affect your behavior your thoughts and your
feelings and you know you can pick wherever you want to start it doesn’t
matter because all three interfaces with one another so if you haven’t let’s
Start with negative thoughts If you have negative thoughts then you might feel
anxious angry stressed dysphoric which will affect the behavior you’re going
to do different things than if you have positive thoughts about something you
feel excited and energized you’re going to have different behavior the best
thing example I can give you is if you’ve ever done public speaking or had
to present something Some people detest public speaking it’s just
terrifying for them to get up in front of a group of people so their thoughts
are I’m going to trip up I’m going to forget what I’m going to say I’m going
to make a fool of myself I’m going to you know it can go on forever that when
you get on a roll you can get on a negative roll and go on forever or
positive hopefully get on that roll with those thoughts you start holding onto
Those thoughts remember as we talked about in a CT the other day when you
hold those thoughts and you kind of mush them around in your mind and you come to
believe them that you’re going to make a fool of yourself and it’s going to be
awful you’re going to start feeling terrified which is going to
likely affect your behavior if you go out on the stage and you’re terrified
You’re going to probably stutter you’re probably going to get foggy-headed
You’re going to have that fight-or-flight reaction so there’s an
adrenaline rush and you start sweating and you can’t focus and you can’t
concentrate you want to away as opposed to somebody like me who
loves public speaking and I’m just like cool I get to go out there and try to
engage however many people are in the audience it’s a game for me because when
I can see your faces I enjoy trying to figure out and make eye
contact with people and figure out what it is that they’re there for what is it
that’s going to make them tick what resonates with them so my behavior as
You can kind of see right now when I go out there I’m excited and I want to
engage people and it’s a fun experience for me again just like the airport the
same experience for two different people and two very different interpretations
and reactions to it so what effects I don’t like the term rational but when
We’re talking about CBT irrationally comes up a lot I like to replace it with
helpful because every behavior in its weird sort of way is or probably was
rational at one time that being said we’re going to get back to that stress
affects our behavioral choices if we’re under stress we can have negative
emotions negative emotions will affect our thoughts if we’re feeling sad we’re
probably going to look at the dark side if we feel sad we’re going to look at
the bottom falling out if we’re happy we’re probably going to look for that
silver lining physical factors if you’re in pain sick sleep-deprived poorly
nourished so your body can’t produce the neurotransmitters it needs to or heaven
forbid intoxicated you’re probably not going to make the same decisions as you
would if you were comfortable healthy well-rested nourished and not
Intoxicated any of those things can impact how you perceive a
situation or how you react in a situation, especially the intoxication
whereas in your intoxicated State in your sober state, you may think that you
want to do something but then you’ve got that filter that does not
not a good idea in an intoxicated State or even in a manic state if you’re you
know if you have somebody with bipolar that filter kind of goes away so the
behaviors that someone may normally not do because they have a rational filter
That goes you know punching this guy out is probably not the best idea right
Now the filter goes away when you’re sleep-deprived you’re less generally
People are less patient generally people don’t have as much of a filter thing
about watching your children if you have children or your grandchildren or even
yourself I know myself when I’m sleepy I am giddy as all get-out and things I
wouldn’t normally say because they’re you know stupid I’ll just come out and
say anyway and my kids just roll their eyes or the mom you’re overtired could
go to bed, uh but that’s okay You know I’m okay with that
In that situation now if I acted that way at work it would be a worse thing
environmentally if you’re introduced to a new or unique situation and you
perceive it as stressful because the unknown we know can be stressful then
you may not make as rational of a choice or as helpful of a choice because you
Maybe trying to escape the same thing as exposure to UNPROFOR bellowing for a
word here but UNPROFOR ball is the best I could come up with we all prefer
certain situations some people like I said would rather do just about anything
then get up in front of a lecture hall of a hundred and fifty people and talk
but if they have to do it then they’re going to be under stress which may
affect how they do things so we want people to understand that their
perception and their feelings are affected by a lot of other things not
Just you know an emotion here or a particular memory there’s a lot that
goes into it and social if peers your family convey
irrational thoughts as necessary very standards for social acceptance
people may tend to cling more to it to those unhelpful thoughts and unhelpful
behaviors you know in CBT they say irrational because quote nobody wants to
associate with those people you know who are those people and why can’t we
associate with them there are a lot of things if you think back think high
School you know high school is pretty rough if we’re going to talk about
having irrational thoughts and cognitions if you have to be part of
this particular group to be accepted you have to do this you have to
do that but do you do you do those kinds of all-or-nothing statements
are cognitive distortions and while they may have served a purpose in some way
shape or form in the past we need to encourage our clients to take a look at
them now and go are they still helpful ways of thinking is it still helpful for
me to think that I am only successful if I live in a million-dollar house in a
gated community and do this that and the other or can I be can I define success as a
different way or do I define success differently and lack supportive
peers to buffer stress so we had those peers who caused stress by talking
about the half dues and categorizing and lots of attributions but then there’s
Also not having somebody to go you know does this make any sense
because sometimes we are our own worst enemies and if we go to a friend and we
go you know this is what I’m thinking and I think I have to do this in order
to be acceptable to be loved or you know whatever the case may be
Most people are not going to use those exact phrases A good friend is probably
going to listen and go yeah you’re right or no that’s way off so supportive
peers are essential to reminding us to consciously regularly check in with our
cognitions to make sure that they are hopeful and rational so a note about
irrationality and this is mine this is not from CBT the origins of most beliefs
for rational and helpful given the information the person had at the time
and their cognitive development their ability to process that information so
concepts schemas and core beliefs that people formed when they were five
are probably going to be very egocentric you know the person is going to feel
like everybody sees it my way because this is how I see it you know just like
A five-year-old does A five-year-old doesn’t think Well you know let me take
Johnny’s perspective is no he assumes that Johnny sees it the same way so it’s
going to be egocentric It’s probably going to be focused on only one aspect
of the situation because small children can’t focus on multiple aspects and it’s
probably going to be dichotomous it’s all-or-nothing
Mommy loves me mommy hates me and it could be personalized you know
Everything a lot of kids think that everything has
to do with them so if something happens something bad happens many times
Children will take it personally or be afraid it’s going to happen to them
Again you know if Hurricane Katrina hurricane
Andrew those sorts of things you know we saw a lot of trauma in children and they
developed very real fears about thunderstorms and hurricane season
And if you’ve watched Florida hasn’t had a notable hurricane in years now but
There’s a lot of stuff that goes into that but young people
During some of those really bad hurricane seasons perceive those
situations differently okay so we need to help people understand that if we
especially if we use the term irrational those thoughts you form when you are
knee-high to a grasshopper and they made perfect sense to you back then but now
that you’re an adult you’ve got more experience and you’re
able to take different perspectives your brain is more developed
Let’s take a look at it and see if you can look at different perspectives and
Come up with something a little more helpful maybe a different way of
perceiving this situation the irrational irrationality or unhelpful Nosov Fox
comes when those beliefs are perpetuated without examination so something a
the belief that you formed when you’re five you’re still holding when you’re 35 and
you’ve never questioned it you’ve never gone you know does this make sense is
This is helpful to getting me toward where I want to be Most of us don’t know
We form these attitudes and beliefs when we’re you know growing up when we’re in
elementary school middle school high school from watching TV to being
around our peers from being around our family in our community and we get all
This input of the way things should be and a lot of times people don’t stop to
question and go and go Well does this make me happy Is this really what
I want and they can be irrational if they continue to be held despite causing
harm to the person so the person continues to hold this belief even
though it is causing them general emotional cognitive harm is making them
miserable we need to look at what’s motivating them to hold on to that
belief why is that belief so important and how can we make it so they can live
a happy values-driven life with an emphasis on the harness and how can we make it less
harmful sometimes it’s more productive for clients to think of these thoughts
as unhelpful or helpful instead of irrational sometimes when I say
irrational to clients and you know I’m the same way if somebody says you’re
being irrational I’m like oh I’m not it elicits this instantaneous defensive
reaction it’s like when you tell them they’re being resistant they’re like I
am NOT resistant so helpful or unhelpful and then we talk about why it
is unhelpful in getting them toward their goals
basic principles of cognitive behavioral therapy we teach or help clients learn
to distinguish between thoughts and feelings I can think something is scary
I’ll probably feel it but if I have an automatic you know feeling I walk into
Atlanta Airport and I see yeah I went to an airport in New York I can’t even
remember which one it was because my plane was diverted and I got off and I
walked out there and I have never seen so many people packed in his place like
sardines before in my life I was just completely overwhelmed that was kind of
an automatic feeling now that was a feeling based on you know who knows it
was overwhelming to be surrounded by that many people so then I had to
separate the thoughts and go Okay what am I thinking that’s making me feel so
overwhelmed and at that point you know I didn’t know how to get to my gate and
all that other sort of stuff with traveling I don’t travel well but
encouraging clients to stop and go okay why am I feeling this way what are my
What thoughts am I having that are contributing to these dysphoric feelings
CBT helps people become aware of how thoughts can influence
feelings in ways that are sometimes not helpful
We have hecklers in our gallery the automatic tapes that we plaything
memories that we have whatever you want to call them when you try something
When you are just going through daily life you hear these voices in the back
of your head and not real voices but that is saying you’re never
going to make this or if you would have just blah blah blah then you’d be a
better person helping clients become aware of those thoughts and how they’re
Negatively influencing their feelings and keeping them kind of stuck is a huge
part of CBT we help them learn about thoughts that seem to occur
automatically without even realizing how they may affect emotions again those
thoughts from the they’re saying you’re not good enough
You’re not smart enough and nobody’s going to like you Where did that come from
and do you believe it you know maybe it came from somebody
When you were in high school so was that a valid was that a valid source Maybe it
came from somebody yesterday on Facebook was that a valid source taking in those
thoughts and then figuring out is something I’m going to hold because it
makes me happy or is this something that I’ve got to deal with because I’m having
a negative reaction constructively evaluate whether these automatic
thoughts and assumptions are accurate or perhaps biased the other thing to
remember is a lot of our clients not all of them but a lot of them hold
themselves to a standard there’s like up here and they hold everybody else to a
standard that’s down here so they are a failure if they don’t achieve this but
Everybody else is successful as long as they achieve this so encouraging them to
take a look at how accurate and biased or unbiased are the thoughts and like I
said they may be their thoughts they may be telling themselves these things
evaluate whether the current reactions are helpful and a good use of energy or
unhelpful and a waste of energy that could be used to move toward those
people and things important not impotent important to the person road-rage you’re
In the car you’re driving somebody cuts you off Okay natural reaction fight or
flight reaction you’re just like slam on the brakes and do whatever you got to do
aversive maneuvers you’re good so you could let it go at that point ago got
Lucky on that one and keep driving most people not all but most found that
80% of drivers have reported incidences of road rage which is a
high number but most people will start getting all fired up and irritated
and grumpy and we and just rageful and so my question
would be I hear that and I hear that it made you angry
In retrospect did screaming at the person as you pass them at sixty miles
An hour in your car with the windows rolled up does any good Did it Did
any good at all what else could you have done with that energy if you wouldn’t
have expended it all yesterday we had to wait for the vet to come by and my
daughter just completely wore herself out worrying about when the vet was
going to get there what he was going to say about her donkeys and was beside
herself so by the time it got to evening and it was time for her to go to her
martial arts class she didn’t have the energy to go she’s like um wiped out I
just want to go to bed in retrospect we’re looking back and saying okay now
Tell me what it was that you were so stressed out about and let’s talk about
whether that was a realistic and helpful line of thought to perseverate on all
day long and what could you have done differently because she didn’t bother to
mention any of that to me yesterday and then developed the skills to notice
interrupt and correct these biased thoughts independently causes of these
thinking errors information processing shortcuts when we form schemas and we
encounter a situation that reminds us of something in the past like when I go to
my grandmother’s house I have a schema I have a belief system I have you know
stuff that I know about my grandmother’s house so when I go to my grandmother’s
house it’s kind of a shortcut to knowing what to expect when I walk in and how to
behave how to do different things and it helps me plan and predict if you’re
Using outdated or dichotomous all-or-nothing schemas may cause
thinking errors because you may be now incorrectly processing current events
mental noise some of us have it a lot of us have it
Not everybody thinks about trying to focus and study for a final exam in the
middle of a really busy sports bar okay this is a cause of thinking or you’re
going to miss important things you’re not going to be able to focus you’re not
going to necessarily attend to the correct things because there’s just so
much else going on your attention is drawn in 17 different directions and or
the brain’s limited information processing capacity due to age we talked
about that before young kids think all or nothing they think dichotomously
egocentric ly middle school-aged kids and older start developing the ability
for abstract thinking, by the time we get older, you know as adults theoretically
We’re able to you know think pretty well and think pretty clinically about different
events but if we’re in crisis when someone is in crisis it could be
like what we think of clinically as a crisis or it could be they’re just
completely overwhelmed and burned out and have been burning the candle at both
ends for three months they’re not going to process information quite as well
They’re not going to take in all this stuff because they’re just like
shell-shocked have you ever seen teachers in the hallway of like an
elementary school Oh at the end of the second nine weeks they just kind of
stand there with this blank look on their face they’re not processing as
much as they were the first day of school and you know God loved them they
have a lot to deal with but we need to help our clients
understand that there are some times that they are going to have to really
stop and focus write things down so they can remember or they can make decisions
A little more my guess is most of us have times in our lives when we’ve
been able to think through complex problems but then there are other times
where you just can’t keep it all in your head and you’ve got to put it on a
Whiteboard maybe that’s just me but we want clients
to understand that they are not broken they’re not faulty they’re doing the
best they can with the tools they have and the knowledge they have and our job
is to help them see where some of this might have gone a little awry other
causes of thinking errors and emotional motivations I feel bad therefore
whatever I’m thinking must be bad if I’m scared that means whatever it’s coming
on the other end of the phone is bad news moral motivations I did it because
it was the right thing to do and that can be an excuse for doing wrong
behaviors as well it can also be you know you can argue on
The moral one social influence well everyone else is doing it so it must not
be bad set that again a lot of times and this is where the frames approaching the
Motivational interviewing is helpful It stands for feedback
about the reality of what’s going on is everybody doing it let’s look at
statistics you know not subjective information let’s look at objective
information so the impact of these thinking errors makes people want to
fight or flee when they get upset and we use upset as a kind of this
all-encompassing garbage term emotionally they get depressed or
anxious we don’t want to feel that way Anxiety and anger are flee or fight
fight or flee it’s our body saying there’s a threat you got to do something
depression is your body going I give up I just don’t I don’t even have the
energy to do it anymore behaviorally some people withdraw because they
Shut down We all know people get frustrated when they get overwhelmed
When they start feeling hopeless or helpless they just kind of withdraw from
Everything and everyone’s addictions numb that out so they don’t have to feel
the dysphoria sleeping problem and changes when we start being on that
constant fight-or-flight hyper-vigilant sort of thing going on in the body is
always sort of turned on which means you’re not going to sleep as well then
The circadian rhythms get messed up which starts causing exhaustion and
lethargy and then everything seems harder because you’re sleep-deprived and
then you start thinking more negatively and more hopelessly you see where this
is going it’s a downward spiral and eating changes some people eat a lot
more because they’re eating comfort foods some people eat a lot less because
Their stomach is so torn up from the stress they can’t even think about
holding anything down physical stress-related illnesses fibromyalgia
gastrointestinal problems headaches neck aches backaches you know the whole
the gamut of it when you start feeling bad when you start hurting generally it gets
frustrating after a while and that frustration makes it kind of raises the
bar brings you up a little bit so you’re
That thatch closer to kind of just kind of being overwhelmed as you do You have as much
of a cushion as you would if you were happy healthy well nourished not in pain
and socially a lot of times we will get irritable or impatient with other people
or withdrawal when we’re having these negative cognitions these thinking
errors that are keeping us in a dysphoric state these effects of
thinking errors contribute to fatigue a sense of hopelessness and
helplessness which intensifies thinking errors This is an important concept that
I want my clients to understand and I want to drive home in this presentation
so thinking errors what are they emotional reasoning feelings are not
facts and we want to help people learn to identify feelings
and separate them from facts so if somebody says I’m terrified
okay that is a feeling what are the facts supporting that feeling why are
you are terrified what is the evidence that you are in some sort of danger
Right now you know that danger may not be the right word for your client at that
a particular point in time but what’s the evidence that there’s a threat in what
ways is this similar to other situations maybe it’s triggering something from the
past that was scary or you know you were too little to be able to
handle it but you can handle it now and how if you dealt with similar situations
Like in the past, we wanted people to just step back and get some
distance between their feelings and their thoughts and try to figure out you
know which thoughts are helpful and productive and even if a sought makes
people anxious or angry it can be helpful it may be telling them hey dude
you need to get your butt up and get out of there if it’s helpful it means it’s
moving them toward where they want to be happy healthy safe and values-driven
life so happy and helpful developed a stress tolerance skills when people use
emotional reasoning they feel emotions which then they start attributing
finding the facts to support those emotions instead of looking at all the
facts we want to help them learn to tolerate their distress so they can kind
of let that subside for a second they can accept their feeling they can name
them They say I’m scared I’m stressed I’m angry and whatever but they don’t
have to act on it right then they can tolerate the distress for a minute
without having to try to make it go away and emotional regulation skills they can
feel a feeling without having to make it go from zero to 120
You know if they feel sad they go I feel kind of sad instead of grabbing onto it
and going I wonder what I feel sad about I must feel sad about all these sad
things now I’m going to be sad and devastated so we want to
help people learn how to regulate their emotions identify them accept them
Whatever word you want to use tolerate them because feelings are
there for a reason they’re there to tell you your brain thinks something’s going
now thankfully we have that higher-order cognition stuff going on so
We can contradict our brain and we can go you know maybe that’s not true in
this situation cognitive bias negativity mental filter whatever you want to call
it people who focus on the negative they walk in they get up in the morning and
They look outside and it’s partly cloudy They get to work and they say instead
of saying there was it was very light traffic they said there was a fair
amount of traffic everything is always the flip side of
what somebody who’s optimistic would say so asking them what’s the
benefit to focusing on the negative in what ways is this helpful to you
know some people say Well it keeps me from getting disappointed because I know
It’s going to end up negative anyway so we can trap challenges that know that
whatever it is they think they know and see if there have been exceptions when
It hasn’t turned out that way What are the positives to this situation
I give the example a lot of you know I wash my car or it rains and maybe I
wanted to go out on a run that day but I can perceive it I can look at the
positives you know the rain washed my car for me so I don’t have to do it now
score it watered my garden all the better it knocked down some of the
pollen out of there even better I can find and I can encourage people to find
positives in a situation yes there are negatives there are negatives to every
situation if you want to find them you’re going to find them but if you
want to find the positives you can too which takes us down to what are all the
facts there’s the positive and the negative and the neutral I told you
Earlier about the coin toss activity having people toss a coin on the
heads days they act like it is just the greatest day to be alive and see how
Things are different when they do their journal because you know I have my
clients do I’m sort of a mindfulness check-in in
the morning and in the evening and preferably at lunchtime how are they
feeling what’s their emotional state what’s their energy level on the happy
days a lot of times it can be less and sometimes they need a little coaching
throughout because some of those old patterns kick in but I want them to
start challenging some of their automatic thoughts that we’re going to
talk about in a minute disqualifying or minimizing the positive most of us can
probably say we’ve had a bunch of clients that do this they are more than
happy to tell you about all the things that they mess up but then when they do
something right they minimize it encouraging people to hold themselves to
the same standard they would hold everyone else to and I know I talked
about that earlier ask them things like would it minimum would you minimize this.If it was your best friend’s experience your best friend came to you and said I
just got into such-and-such college would you say awesome or would you say
anybody can get in there how would that go ask them what is scary about
accepting these positive things that you might have had an
accomplishment for some people it means that it might mean other people expect
more of them for other people they just don’t know how to accept the positive
They don’t know how to accept compliments they don’t know how to be
the center of attention and they don’t like it and then we want to look at why
that is sometimes we disqualify the positive because it fails to meet
someone else’s standards so as people might that be true here you know I know
When I was growing up and going through college and going through school and
everything got my doctorate but I will always not being not
a real doctor because a Ph.D. is not an MD and I’m like really
So is it somebody else’s standards or can I feel good about having a Ph.D. egocentrism My perspective is the only
perspective I’ll being egocentric but it doesn’t work
most of the time so encouraging people to take alternate perspectives
Maybe you’re texting with someone and they say something that is not what you
interpret as not the nicest thing and this happens in text messages a lot and
they get upset now an egocentric thinking error would say that purse is
just grumpy today Someone who’s taking other perspectives would stop and go
back and read the text and go I wonder if maybe this could have been taken some
other another you know obvious reaction is not what I intended
So egocentrism if you hold on to that I don’t understand anybody else because
You know I don’t see a problem with anything personalizing and mind-reading This is when you assume that everybody’s
frowning because of something you did your boss walks down the hallway
and looks at you and grimaces and continues to walk on oh I must have done
something wrong No maybe he just got out of his senior management meeting that
was five hours long and he’s got to go to the bathroom you know there could be
a hundred different explanations for why that happened so encourage clients to
ask themselves what some alternate explanations for this event that are
doesn’t involve me you know why this might have happened if they hold
on to that, I must have done something wrong but as soon as their boss calls
them up and goes hey can you come to my office for a second you know where their
thoughts are going to go I’m getting fired I’m going to get laid off I don’t
know what it was that I did wrong but he walked by me two weeks ago in the
hallway and grimaced and I’m just I’m the worst person in the whole world
But where did that come from so encouraging people to not necessarily
assume they know what’s going on in someone else’s mind and not
automatically attributing every person’s negative behavior to something they did
How often and then ask them how often has it been about you
now think about the last 10 times you’ve taken something personally how many of
Those 10 times has it been about something you did versus something with
the other person then the availability heuristic remembering what’s most
prominent in your mind so asking clients what the facts ah the most obvious
One that we talk about is plane crashes You know it is very dangerous to fly on a
plane because you hear about all those plane crashes well yeah you hear about
the airlines crashes but don’t hear about the 20,000 every day that land
safely so you remember it and it seems more dangerous because that’s what is in
your mind that’s what is available to you that’s what you’ve based your
thought processes on because maybe you didn’t know that 20,000 planes or more
fly and land just perfectly every day this can also be true with people
remembering what’s most prominent in your mind sometimes and this can be very
very true in domestically violent relationships if somebody falls in love
with someone and that person is just the greatest person since sliced bread for
the first four months and then the cycle starts and there’s this little tiny
a sliver of the honeymoon period after the battering cycle and the person’s like
That’s the person I fell in love with that’s what I remember and they try to
focus on that that’s most prominent in their mind and they ignore the rest of
the stuff so we need to encourage people to look objectively at the facts magnifying high and
low probability outcomes what are the chances that this is going to happen how
Many clients have worked with have gone to the doctor and gotten into a
physical or get a test run and then the doctor had to call them back and
This could be true for you too and the doctor had to call them back two or
Three days later when the tests came back from the lab and that whole three
days they were just in a panic because they
were afraid they were going to get some terminal diagnosis so thinking about
high and low probability outcomes another instance or example of
magnification is somebody that thinks this is the end of the world whatever it
I think I’ve told you before my little story about um tripping when I
was walking down the hall at work and falling and yeah it was embarrassing my
folders went everywhere and yeah but in that big scheme of things will it matter
That much from now you know are people going to think Oh she is such a clutch she
must be a ditz too no I mean they may have thought that at that time I don’t
know but you know in six months nobody’s going to remember and then ask them in
the past when something like this has happened when you’ve had to get a test
done and you’ve had to wait on results or if you’ve done something that was
embarrassing and you didn’t think you thought everybody was going to remember
it forever how did you tolerate it how did you learn to deal with it building
on those strengths that they already have all-or-nothing thinking errors
These are things like love versus hate I love them or I hate them it’s all or
Nothing she does this all the time or she never does it if I’m going to do it
I’m going to do it perfectly or I’m not going to do it at all thank you all good
intentions or all bad intentions you know sometimes we do things with good
intentions that have some bad repercussions so did we do it with all
Bad intentions are all good intentions and the answer is neither most of the
time life is kind of in that middle-ground gray area encouraging clients to
Look and find examples where something hasn’t been one of the polls when have
they done something that they’re proud of that wasn’t perfect or when again
When has somebody else done something that they were proud of that wasn’t
perfect remembering that with availability
heuristic remembering how often something happens and how long it’s
been since you’ve seen that behavior and remember that sometimes good times are
amazing but how frequent are they compared with the bad times another thinking error is a belief in a
just world or a fallacy of fairness I just asked clients to identify for good
people you know who’ve had bad things happen and in in reality we all have bad
things happen good people do bad people do in between people do attributional
errors and this is a pet of mine you know labeling yourself is not a behavior so
global versus specific and I am stupid versus I’m stupid at math I don’t have
good math skills it’s not about me it’s about the skills I can change skills
stable I am and I always will be versus it’s something I can change it’s
something I can learn internally It’s about me as a person versus it’s about a
skill deficit or something I could learn or change and there’s you know lots of
information on attributions out there on the internet if you need a refresher on
it but we find that a lot of people who have dysphoria have negative global
stable internal attributions so questions for clients remember the
beliefs equal thoughts and facts plus personal interpretation another way of
saying it is reality is 10% perception is 10% reality and 90% interpretation so
what are the facts for and against my belief is the belief based on facts or
Feelings Does the belief focus on one aspect or the whole situation Does the
belief seem to use any thinking errors what are alternate explanations what
Would you tell your child or best friend if they had this belief how would you
want someone to tell what would you want someone to tell you about this belief so
If you’re telling somebody about this what are you hoping they’re going to say
in return and finally, how is this belief moving you toward what and who is
important to you or moving you away from what or who is important to you now they
can do a worksheet and have all of these or you can pick one or two of these
questions that are most salient for your clients but they can have kind of at
their fingertips so as they’re going through the day and something happens
They can ask themselves ok what’s an alternate explanation Or you know
Whatever it is this salient for that client’s irrational thoughts how do these
thoughts impact the client’s emotions health relationships and perceptions of
the world you know this is what we want to ask them How is this thought
impacting you globally how may this thought have been helpful in the past
Where did it come from How does it make sense from when you formed it in the
past when you’re dealing with it ask the person if the thought is bringing you
closer to those that are important Are there any examples of this thought or
belief not being true and how can the statement be made less global less
all-encompassing so it’s about a specific incident a specific situation
less stable which means you can change it and less internal which means it’s
not about who you are as a person but maybe something that you do or a skill
that you have so we’re going to go through some of these thoughts real
Quickly here mistakes are never acceptable and if I make one it means
that I’m incompetent well never is kind of stable and I am incompetent is kind
of global, that’s also that extreme all-or-nothing thinking so you can see
where these cognitive distortions end up leading to unhelpful beliefs
When somebody disagrees with me it’s a personal attack Well there’s
Personalization If I ever heard it before maybe it’s not about you may be
They’re having a bad day and you just happen to be the unlucky target or maybe
they’re disagreeing with you because they have a different point of view and
It’s not a personal attack it’s just their point of view If someone
criticizes or rejects me there must be something wrong with me
personalization all-or-nothing thinking global stable and internal something
wrong with me as a person to feel good about myself others must approve of me
Now this is one we’ve talked about external validation before and we can’t
control other people to feel good about yourself how can you do that
Besides necessarily requiring other people to approve of you to be
content in life I must be liked by all people Wow I’ve never met anybody who’s
liked by all people I’ve never even met anybody who’s been hated by all people
but it’s important to help clients see how this is dramatic to say all
people and for them to be content everybody has to like them
I mean I like to be liked but if everybody doesn’t like me you know
That’s pretty understandable My true value as an individual depends on what
others think of me I would challenge this one this is all you know
Also very personally I would challenge people to look at and say it
so your child’s value as an individual depends on what other people think of
Most people would say no but the perspective thing nothing ever turns
out the way you want it to okay all-or-nothing thinking and probably
availability heuristic if something bad just happened then they may be focusing
on that which causes them to focus on all the other bad things in the past
that have happened not to focus on that is okay you know bad thing
happen but look at all these good things I won’t try anything new unless I will
be good at it this fear of failure fear of rejection
It just really paralyzes a lot of people when they get stuck with that thinking
the area that they have to be perfect I am in total control of anything bad that
happens is my fault well that’s egocentric and personal if
They think they’re in total control that’s their perception of how the world
Do they think if they’ve got everybody on marionette strings anything
bad in the world that happens is their fault how powerful are they
I feel happy about uh if I feel happy about life something will go wrong
It happens sometimes but let’s look at times when you’ve been happy that
something hasn’t gone wrong you know let’s get rid of that all-or-nothing
thinking it’s not my fault my life didn’t go the way I wanted could be true
but it seems like that’s making you unhappy so what do we do about that if
I’m not in an intimate relationship I’m alone
No, again that’s pretty extreme I’m either in an intimate relationship or I
am alone and a loner and you know it’s just me and my 17 cats which follows
with there’s no gray area so encouraging people to look at what these
beliefs are saying important thoughts impact behaviors and emotional and
Physical reactions emotional and physical reactions impact thoughts and
interpretations of events so if you do something and it’s pleasurable
and you have a great physical reaction you know let’s take bungee jumping or
Skydiving if you go out there and it’s scary but you do it and you’re just like
Whoa what a rush Your interpretation of that is probably going to be good which
means you’ll probably do it again if you go out there and it’s just the most
horrible experience you’ve ever had you’re probably not going to do it again
and your interpretation of it is going to be not good which is going to make it
hard to understand why other people would do it irrational
thinking patterns are often caused by cognitive distortions so let’s just look
back at some of those because there are a lot fewer cognitive distortions or
general ways of thinking about the world then there are thinking errors because
There are lots and lots of thinking errors Cognitive distortions are often schemas
which were formed based on faulty inaccurate or immature knowledge or
understanding and by identifying the thoughts of the hecklers you know the
automatic tapes that maintain our unhappiness the person can choose
whether to accept those thoughts or change them.As found on YouTubeNatural Synergy $47.⁰⁰ New Non-Invasive Alternative. To Electro-Acupuncture, Producing Astounding Results… Self-Application Is Easy, Rapid Response. You’re about to discover how both chronic and acute pain, skin conditions, migraines, and hundreds of ailments all stem from the same root cause ꆛ Yin Yang Ailments🗯 such as➯➱ ➫ ➪➬ Chronic pain immunity⇝Chronic acid reflux⇝High blood pressure⇝Addictions⇝Fibromyalgia⇝Allergies⇝Osteoarthritis⇝Headaches⇝Low back⇝pain Asthma⇝Headaches⇝Depression and anxiety⇝Urinary problems… to name just a few…
This episode was pre-recorded
As part of a live continuing education webinar on-demand CEUs are
still available for this presentation AllCEUs.com/Anxiety-CEU I’d like to welcome everybody to today’s
presentation on best practices for the treatment of anxiety I am your host, Dr. Dawn Elise Snipes now not too long ago we did
a presentation on strengths-based biopsychosocial approaches to addressing anxiety while
Those are wonderful you know I thought maybe we ought to look at you know what’s some of the
current research so I went into PubMed which is I don’t know it’s a playground for me it’s where
You find a lot of journal articles and you can sort I sorted by articles that were
done and meta-analyses that were done within the past five years so that gives us an idea
About current research I mean there’s a lot of stuff that is still the same like some of
The medications that were known to work ten years ago are still known to be you know good
first-line treatments but there are also some newcomers that we’ll talk about and there are
also some changes that we’re going to talk about so we’re going to explore some common causes
for anxiety symptoms in order to treat it, we really need to and of course, this does play into
the biopsychosocial aspect we really need to understand kind of what causes it because anxiety
that’s caused by for example somebody having a racing heart may be different than anxiety that’s
caused for somebody who has abandonment issues so we’re…
…It
can be incorporated in a lot of various places again where they’re not applying it or ingesting
it in any way all they’re doing is smelling it they’ve used it in defusing aromatherapy in
hospital emergency rooms and they found that it reduces stress and irritability the people in
emergency rooms and I’ve been to enough emergency rooms over the course of the years to know that
People who are in emergency rooms typically are not in the best mood so if it can help those people then
It’s probably going to have some sort of an effect so psychologically helping clients realize
that their body thinks there’s a threat for some reason that’s why it triggered the threat response
system which is what they call anxiety, so they need to figure out why is there really a threat
You know sometimes it’s like the fire alarm going off in my house it just means that the windows are
open and there’s a strong breeze there is no fire there is no problem there’s just a malfunction
It’s a false alarm A lot of times clients get this threat reaction they get this stress
reaction and it’s not a big deal right now so they can start modifying what their brain responds to
and again, those basic fears that a lot of people worry about failure rejection loss of control the
unknown and death and loss distress tolerance is one of those cognitive interventions that has
taken center stage in anxiety research and it isn’t about controlling your anxiety you know
helping people recognize their anxiety acknowledge it and say okay I’m anxious it is what it is
How can I improve the next moment instead of saying I’m anxious I shouldn’t be anxious I hate
being anxious and slang with that anxiety let it go just accept it is what it is have the client
learn to start saying I am feeling anxious okay so distracted don’t react because I explain to them
The whole notion of feelings comes in crest and go out in about 20 minutes It’s like a wave so once they
acknowledge their feeling if they can distract themselves for twenty or thirty minutes you know
Obviously, they figured out there’s no real threat if they can distract themselves for twenty or
thirty minutes those emotions can go down and then they can deal with it in their wise mind and encourage
them to use distancing techniques instead of saying I am anxious, or I am terrified or whatever
Have them say I am having the thought that this is the worst thing in the world I am having the
thought that I could not handle this because thoughts come and go and that comes from acceptance and
commitment therapy functional analysis makes it possible to specify where and when with what frequency
with what intensity and under what circumstances the anxious response is triggered so it’s
important that we help clients develop the ability to do functional analyses on their own so
when they start feeling anxious, they can stop and say okay where am I what’s going on how intense
Is it what are the circumstances, and they start really trying to figure out what causes this for
them so they can identify any common themes from their psychoeducation about cognitive distortions
and techniques to prevent those circumstances or mitigate them can be provided so if the client
knows that they get anxious before they go into a meeting with their boss and it’s usually a high
intensity of anxiety okay so we can educate them and help them identify what fears that may be related
to techniques to slow their breathing calm their stress reaction and help them figure out
times in the past when they’ve handled going in and talking to their boss and it really wasn’t
the end of the world you know there’s lots of different things we can do there for them there
but the first key and it gives them a lot of a huge sense of empowerment to start becoming
detectives in their own life and going okay now under what situations does this happen positive
Writing this was another really cool study each day for 30 days the experimental group and this
was high school-aged youth in China but you know the experimental group engaged in 20 minutes of
writing about positive emotions they felt that day so they’re writing about anything positive
that make them happy that made them enthusiastic give them hope whatever long-term expressive
writing positive emotions so after 30 days it appeared to help reduce test anxiety by helping
them develop insight and use positive emotion words so it got them out of the habit of using
the destruction and doom words and encouraged them to get in the habit of looking at the positive
things and being more optimistic it’s a really cool activity that clients can try it’s…The Market WeekSign Up For The Free Newsletter No nonsense, no spam, unsubscribe anytime You can unsubscribe at any time. Read our privacy policy. Financial disclaimer: The Market Week is a general interest newsletter that is not liable for the suitability or future investment performance of any securities or strategies discussed. Readers are advised that the material contained herein should be used solely for informational purposes. As a financial newsletter publisher of general and regular circulation, we cannot tender individual investment advice. Read our full disclaimer. https://is.gd/mycbgenie_The_Market_Week
As found on YouTubeAFFILIATE MASTERY BONUS: 6-Week LIVE Series Has Begun! FunnelMates $46.⁹⁵ Replays are Instantly Available. Want A Profitable Mailing List But Not Sure Where To Begin? We’ll Guide You, Equip You, and even PAY You Cash To Do It! ☃in 5-10 Minutes A Day Using Automation Software and our Time-Tested Strategy See How Your New Site Can Be Live In Just 27 Seconds From Now!
this episode was pre-recorded
as part of a live continuing education webinar on-demand CEUs are
still available for this presentation AllCEUs.com/Anxiety-CEU I’d like to welcome everybody to today’s
presentation on best practices for the treatment of anxiety I am your host, Dr. Dawn Elise Snipes now not too long ago we did
a presentation on strengths-based biopsychosocial approaches to addressing anxiety while
those are wonderful you know I thought maybe we ought to look at you know what’s some of the
current research so I went into PubMed which is I don’t know it’s a playground for me it’s where
you find a lot of journal articles and you can sort I sorted by articles that were
done and meta-analyses that were done within the past five years so that gives us an idea
about current research I mean there’s a lot of stuff that is still the same like some of
the medications that were known to work ten years ago are still known to be you know good
first-line treatments but there are also some newcomers that we’ll talk about and there are
also some changes that we’re going to talk about so we’re going to explore some common causes
for anxiety symptoms to treat, we need to and of course, this does play into
the biopsychosocial aspect we need to understand kind of what causes it because anxiety
that’s caused by for example somebody having a racing heart may be different than anxiety that’s
caused for somebody who has abandonment issues so we’re gonna treat the two things differently so
we want to look at some of the common causes we’re gonna look at some common triggers for anxiety
Do you know what are some of these common themes that we see in practice I will ask you to share
some of the themes that you see that underline or underlie a lot of your client’s anxiety and
identify current best practices for anxiety management including counseling interventions
medications physical interventions and supportive treatments so we care because anxiety can
be debilitating and a lot of our clients have anxiety a lot of our clients have anxiety
comorbid with depression and they’re looking at us going how can I feel anxious and stressed out
and like I can’t sit still and be depressed at the same time you know when you’re depressed you’re
supposed to want to sleep well a lot of times people who have both issues want to
sleep but they can’t so I want to help clients understand that also sometimes anxiety when
people are anxious for long enough the body starts kind of holding on to the cortisol the body
recognizes at a certain point this is a losing battle I’m not going to put energy into
this anymore so it starts withdrawing some of its excitatory neurotransmitters so to speak and
people will start to feel depressed the brain has already said this is hopeless this is
you’re helpless to change the situation so then people start feeling hopeless and helpless
which is sort of the definition if you will of depression low-grade chronic stress and anxiety
arose energy and people’s ability to concentrate so if we’re going to help them become their uber
selves we need to help them figure out how to address anxiety not just generalized overwhelming
debilitating anxiety but also panic social anxiety and those minor anxiety triggers that come along
that may not meet the threshold for diagnosis anxiety is a major trigger for addiction relapse
if you have a client who is self-medicated before or had an addiction for some reason anxiety is a
major trigger increased physical pain when anxiety goes up people tend to tense their muscles when
they tense their muscles they tend to feel more pain I mean think about when you’re stressed you
tend to have more pain like in your neck your back and things that already hurt may hurt more
why because serotonin which is one of our major anti-anxiety neurotransmitters is also one of our
major pain modulators so when serotonin levels are too low because anxiety is high then our pain
perception is going to be more acute and people can have sleep problems if they’re stressed out
your body thinks there’s a threat you’re not going to be able to get into that deep restful
sleep you may have you may sleep you may sleep a lot but it’s probably not quality sleep which
means your neurotransmitters may get out of whack your hormones make it out of whack and your body
is going to start perceiving yourself in a persistent state of stress when you’re exhausted
the body knows that we may be the weakest link in the herd so it continues to secrete cortisol
to keep you on alert a little bit so you may again you may be resting kind of like when
you have a new baby at home those first couple of months that my children were home from the
hospital I slept but I didn’t sleep well I mean the slightest little noise and I was awake and I
was looking around and you know I felt it I felt exhausted and a lot of new parents do so triggers
for anxiety abandonment and rejection and we’re going to talk about ways we might want to deal
with these things but some of the underlying themes that I’ve seen in a lot of clients and when
I do the research and a lot of what themes that come out include low self-esteem if someone has
low self-esteem they’re looking to be externally validated oftentimes they’re looking for somebody
else to tell them you’re lovable you’re okay so that can lead to anxiety about not having
people to tell them you’re okay which makes their relationships tenuous and can make them
dysfunctional irrational thoughts and cognitive distortions may lead people to believe that if I’m
not perfect for example I am not lovable so we’re going to look at some irrational thoughts and
cognitive distortions unhealthy social supports and relationships when you’re in a relationship
it takes two to tango and even if your client is relatively mentally and physically healthy if they
are in a dysfunctional relationship they can fear abandonment and rejection if that other person
is always saying if you don’t do X I’m going to leave you or if that other person is always
cheating on them or whatever so relationships can trigger abandonment anxiety and ineffective
interpersonal skills can lead to relationship turmoil and social exile if our clients are in
relationships even if they’re not completely dysfunctional if our clients are not able to ask
for what they need and set appropriate boundaries and manage conflict effectively because conflict
happens in every relationship then they may start to argue more which may lead to fearing may lead
to relationships ending in the past and them going well every relationship I get into ends which
means I must not be lovable so they start fearing abandonment and rejection these are four areas
that we can look at one more assessing clients another issue is the unknown and loss of control
a lot of times negative self-talk and cognitive distortions can contribute to that if I don’t have
control of everything then it’s all going to be a disaster negative others when clients hang out
or when people hang out with negative people it kind of wears on you after a while you notice
that people who tend to be more negative pessimistic conspiracy-minded tend to hang out
with people who are also negatively pessimistic and conspiracy-minded so if you’re hanging out with
somebody who tends to be anxious then the anxiety can be palpable and it can kind of permeate
physical complaints can lead people to be anxious because they don’t know what’s causing it
like I said earlier sometimes if your heart starts to race if you don’t know what’s causing it you
can start thinking I’m having a heart attack or I’m gonna die when people have panic attacks for
the example they truly think they’re having a heart attack and it’s I’ve had them they are very
very unpleasant experiences but when people start having physical complaints and it can be you
know they have a weird rash that they can’t get to go away or whatever but when they don’t know
what it is and they can’t control it they can’t make it go away they start thinking about all
the worst-case scenarios and going online and getting on WebMD which usually gives you all the
worst-case scenarios um so physical complaints are important we need to normalize the fact that
nobody’s pain-free all the time and you know the fact that you may have an ache or a pain or a lump
or a bump or you know a cough most likely you know when we look at probability the probability of it
being something significant is pretty small now do you want to get it checked out probably but
you know the probability that is anything to be worried about is relatively small and a sense
of powerlessness can trigger fear of the unknown and loss of control for somebody who doesn’t
feel like they have any agency in their life if they have an external locus of control or
if they felt victimized all of their life then they may fear not being in control they may be
holding on and saying okay this is the one area of my life I can control when I grew up you know
I grew up in a very chaotic environment I had no control I was bounced around in the foster system
yadda yadda yadda now that I’m an adult you know I can control these things and I am going to hold
on with white knuckles and if I can’t control everything then that terrifies me to death and
loss are other triggers for anxiety and it can be people or pets and pets are important I don’t
want to minimize pets because you know they are little parts of a lot of our families so making
sure we check that my daughter’s dog for example is it’s getting old she’s getting older she’s 14
now I think and you know she’s in decent health we took her to the vet and the vet said yeah she’s
got a little heart murmur but that’s expected for a 14-year-old dog and but when she goes out if she
doesn’t come back when I call her I have this rush of anxiety for a second oh my gosh I hope this
wasn’t the day so anxious around losing people and you know if she when she crosses the bridge
she will and you know I’m okay with that I’m I have a harder time dealing with my daughter’s
emotional turmoil when that happens and because she’s grown up with this dog so you know those
are the types of things that we want to talk about with our clients what things are weighing on you
that you may not even be thinking about because I know in the back of my mind there’s always that
worry about one of our donkeys and her dog jobs and promotions can trigger anxiety if people are
afraid they’re gonna lose their job if they’re always afraid that you know they’re gonna walk in
and get a pink slip or get fired you know we want to help them look at how realistic they are
you doing what you need to do to achieve and keep your job and sometimes it’s not easy to
answer I mean the first thought that a lot of us have is well you know if you’re doing the right
thing so just do it but there are those bosses out there and I’ve had some amazing bosses
a lot of them and I’ve had two horrendous bosses and those two bosses I could never I
never felt like I was able to do anything right and so going to those jobs there was always this
anxiety about what I’m what am I going to get in trouble for today so you want to talk with people
about does your job cause anxiety what can you do to moderate that anxiety the same thing with
promotions people may get anxious about whether they’re going to get promoted to safety and security
you know when you lose safety and security you can feel anxious so if there’s a break-in at
the house next door or shooting down the road or you start watching the news you can feel very
unsafe and insecure quickly so we want to help people figure out how safe and secure are you
really and a lot of it goes back to really looking at facts when people lose their dreams and hopes
or fear that they’re going to lose their dreams and hopes they can start to get anxious you know
they have this dream that they’re going to be a doctor or I just finished the presentation on
helping high school students transition to college and a lot of high school students for example
start college with these wide eyes and hopes to save the world and they want to be doctors
and engineers and this and that and they get into it and they realize that it’s a lot harder
then they thought or they realize that you know what I don’t like this but I’ve already
committed to it so what do I do I want to help people but I can’t I can’t cut it doing this you
know for me I figured out in my second year that I wasn’t going to medical school because I wasn’t
going to pass calculus and that caused a lot of anxiety it was like okay what am I gonna do now
Do you know what career should I choose to help people figure out do they have dreams that have
maybe kind of crashed and burned and you have to find new ones you know okay that one we’ve got to
accept it figure out that it’s not going to be and what can you do now people may also have dreams
about relationships, they get into relationships and see themselves with this person forever
and then this relationship ends and or starts to get rocky and they’re like but that’s my dream
what happens if that’s got to happen because it’s my dream I don’t know how to function if
that goes away we want to help people be able to rewrite their narrative and then sickness spiders
and other phobias kind of go in with death a lot of times when people get sick they start getting
anxious that oh my gosh what if this is terminal oh my gosh what if this is you know incurable
if I get bit by a spider it’s gonna kill me and which is rare you know there are very few spiders
that is that poisonous same thing with snakes going over bridges I’ve shared with you all
that is not one of my irrational fears you know I am just terrified that you know something’s going
to happen and I’m going to get pushed off the side of the bridge which is completely irrational but
we need to help people look at those and identify the thoughts that they’re telling themself about
those phobias and dealing with that anxiety failure is another trigger for anxiety especially in
this culture our culture American culture is in large part puts a high premium on success
and perfectionism so when people realize that they’re not perfect they may start to get anxious
because they feel like if I’m not perfect then I’m a failure you know those cognitive distortions of
all-or-nothing thinking and they start with that negative self-talk you know you can’t do anything
right so those are some of the issues that you know we often see in counseling sessions so what
do we do you know somebody comes in and is like I can’t live this way doc anxiety depression and
substance disorders as well as a range of physical disorders are often comorbid so this is the first
the thing we need to realize is that we’re very rarely dealing with a very simple
diagnosis you know when somebody comes in we need to figure out you know if they come in and they’re
presenting with depression all right let’s talk about that and then we start realizing that there
depression started to occur after a long period of being anxious okay so we need
to deal with that but we also need to help them with their sense of hopelessness and helplessness
we need to develop that sense of empowerment and then substance disorders we know that substance
use is often a way of self-medicating but we also know that it monkeys with the neurochemicals
in the brain and can contribute to anxiety and depression the same thing to physical issues pain
from physical disorders anxiety about having physical disorders medications you’re taking for
physical disorders can all contribute to anxiety so we need to look at the person as a whole and go
what are all the things that are contributing to the anxiety and what are all the things that the
anxiety is contributing to so we have started having this big list of stuff that needs to be
addressed and then we can start figuring out okay where we start so knowing that these things
are comorbid helps researchers explore pathways to mental disorders so they can start figuring
out you know what little string can we pull to unravel this blanket of anxiety so it doesn’t
suffocate somebody and for us as clinicians it provides us key opportunities to intervene in you
know sometimes clients will come in and start talking about their
anxiety and their physical issues you know maybe their anxieties about you know heart
palpitations and because that’s a common one we may want to encourage them to go see the doctor to
get that ruled out you know rule out anything that has to do with hormone imbalances or you know
heart conditions or anything else that might be contributing to it which can help them address
it and if they do have physical disorders let’s go with hormone imbalances that are contributing
to the heart palpitations then they can start to treat that if they don’t start to treat that then
no amount of talk therapy we do is going to get them to the quality of life that they’re looking
for because they’re still gonna feel those so we want to make sure that we’re addressing them
holistically anxiety disorders should be treated with psychological therapy pharmacy therapy or a
combination of both and what they found and this is no surprise this is kind of old news is that
counseling Plus pharmacotherapy tends to have the best outcomes but separating the two have
similar outcomes in many cases but that’s just looking at and I hate to call it simple anxiety
but we’re just looking at anxiety symptoms here we’re not looking at the full quality of life and we
want to make sure that we’re also including any medical issues behavioral therapy is regarded
as the psychotherapy with the highest level of evidence, there are a variety of cognitive
behavioral approaches ranging from acceptance and commitment therapy to dialectical behavior
therapy to CBT to debt you know any of those that deal with the thoughts and the cognitions that fall in
that realm and it is effective in the current conceptualization of the etiology
of anxiety disorders includes an interaction of psychosocial factors such as childhood adversity
or stressful events and a genetic vulnerability so the psychosocial factors and these are other
things when we do our assessment we want to pay attention to because our approach to treatment
is going to be different for people for example who have trauma-related brain changes maybe
then for somebody who doesn’t so, we want to look at childhood adversity and stressful events
that it may have caused basically what I tell clients is like rewiring of the brain there
are trauma-related brain changes in soldiers and especially in children or in people who’ve been
exposed to extreme trauma that is designed to protect them but it also can cause complications
kind of later on in dealing with anxiety coping skills that were learned that are ineffective you
know sometimes people grow up in a household or an environment or a situation where they don’t learn
effective coping skills so we need to kind of help them unlearn those and learn new ones build on
their strengths and trauma issues that may still need to be dealt with such as domestic violence
you know if they grew up a lot around a lot of domestic violence they may think you know I’m
out of that situation it’s over I don’t want to think about it it’s not bothering me anymore or a
parental absence and I put absence because it can be death it can be a parent that just packed up
and left it could be a child that got put up for adoption whatever put the child in a position of
feeling like they were rejected by a parent can be very traumatic and bullying among other things
but there are a lot of trauma issues that people once they’re out of that situation often say you
know I’m out of it it’s not a big deal I dealt with it let’s move on and they don’t realize the
full ramifications and how that’s contributing to their current anxiety and their current self-talk
and cognitions of current stressors if somebody has a lot of current stressors that’s also going to
impact whether they develop generalized anxiety you know we’re kind of stacking the deck here and
the current availability of social support if they don’t have effective current social support then
they’re gonna have difficulty bearing the weight of everything on their shoulders so we want
to look at all these psychosocial factors when we do our assessment now going back to the trauma
issues if you’ve taken the trauma courses at all CEUs you know that some people are not ready
to acknowledge that the trauma is still bothering them or work on the trauma and that’s okay we
can educate them that it might be an issue and then let them choose how to address it but
we want to bear in mind the fact that you know this could be sort of an underlying force
motivating some of the current cognitions and genetic vulnerability so you take any three
people and you put them or 300 people and you put them through roughly the same psychosocial
situations they’re all probably going to react a little bit differently based on their prior
experiences but also because of their genetic makeup there are certain permutations and they
found four we’ll talk about later that make the brain more or less responsive to stress and
more or less responsive to serotonin which is your calming chemical so brains that are less
responsive to serotonin isn’t going to you know send out as much or send out serotonin as easily
so people can stay kind of tensed and wired that’s an oversimplified explanation but that’s
all you need for right now so genetic vulnerability impacts people’s susceptibility
to the effects and development of dependence on certain substances which can increase anxiety
when people are detoxing from alcohol when they’re detoxing from benzos when they’re detoxing from
opiates they can feel high levels of anxiety when they take opiates some people find that opiates
have wonderful anti-anxiety properties not that I am advocating for the use of opiates I’m
just client experiences have shown that that can be true so some people are going to be
more susceptible to the anti-anxiety effects of certain substances and some people are going
to be Cerrone to become dependent on substances where others may not and that part of that is
genetic vulnerability and they estimate about 30% the predictability of the development
of anxiety disorders is genetic and genetics also impact which medications are effective
if you have genetic makeup then SSRIs might be helpful then
atypical antipsychotics may be more effective and SSRIs might not do anything which is why
a lot of our clients get so frustrated because they know there’s no way to figure out exactly what I
guess there is now that there’s genetic testing out there but up until then it was harder to
figure out which medications to start with and most physicians matter of fact I don’t know of
a single physician that starts by saying well let’s do a genetic profile to see
what med to start you out with most we’ll start with events as with an SSRI or some other
anti-anxiety medication some sort of Benzo that’s been my experience so we may want
to encourage clients to consider genetic testing if they’re having difficulty finding a
medication regime that works for them and they are feeling like they have to have medication
genetic vulnerability also affects what’s going to make somebody more vulnerable now than all of you
in class today you know thinking about sleep you know sleep may not be a big deal for some of you
I know people who can go days or weeks with four or five hours of sleep and they feel fine it’s
not a big deal, not me I need eight or nine hours of sleep so genetically for whatever reason I am
programmed to need a lot of sleep so when I don’t get that much sleep I tend to be it tends to be
harder for me to deal with life on life’s terms and I know that that makes me more vulnerable to
being irritable so genetic vulnerability affects who can become addicted and affects what medications
work best and affects what situations are going to tend to make somebody more vulnerable to
anxiety so our medications and I know the type on here is small but we’re going to go through
the first-line drugs are the SSRIs selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and SNRs is
selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors now the names are a little bit deceptive because
selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors also increase available serotonin but the mechanism
of action is different the mechanism of action for each SSRI is a little bit different as well
which is why you can put somebody on Prozac and they have an awful experience and you can put them
on Zoloft and they have a much better experience like I said earlier a lot of the research pre
five years ago had been done on medications and Zoloft paxil luvox lexapro celexa and their
generics have all been found to be effective at treating anxiety in certain people no one
medication works for everybody in the last five years effexor has come on the radar and it has
been found effective according to the Hamilton rating scale for anxiety so that’s another one to
consider if clients are not successful or getting the treatment effect that they need for on some
of the other medications obviously, none of us probably are prescribers but we do need to educate
clients about why the first drug or even the third drug that the doc tries may not work so they
don’t start feeling helpless and hopeless like I said earlier there are at least four different
genetic variations which are correlated with the development of generalized anxiety disorder and
different medications are more or less effective depending on the genetic makeup of the person
there’s a high mortality rate moving on to two benzos the recommendation has switched
to back off from the use of benzos now for some doctors will prescribe an SSRI and for the
first, four weeks while the SSRI is building up in the system they will also prescribe a Benzo
to be taken as needed to moderate the anxiety and you know you could argue on either side
of that, if somebody has a history of substance use or substance dependence benzos are really
a bad idea because they do have a high rate of dependence but the other reasons that they are now
cautioning against the use of benzodiazepines is that there’s a higher mortality rate among benzo
users compared with non-users there’s an increased risk for dependence with use for more than six
months and that’s a long time to be using Benzo and when we’re talking about dependence and six
months we’re talking about somebody who uses it like every four hours or every eight hours
depending on your Benzo every single day, not a PRN user if somebody’s using it at night to
help them go to sleep or you know three or four times a week when the anxiety gets high
the risk of dependence is relatively low but a lot of people with anxiety because if they find
the right Benzo makes them feel so much better they may not want to be off of it and for a lot of
people when that benzo reaches its half-life and starts getting out of the system even more their
anxiety spikes you know they have rebound anxiety which they want to medicate with more benzos
that’s gonna be an issue for them to discuss with their doctor there’s also an increased risk
of dementia identified in long-term benzodiazepine users again this is for the people who use you
know throughout the day every day for six months or relatively every day for six months or more
and it doesn’t matter if it’s you know we’re talking about somebody who’s 65 or somebody
who’s 35 who’s been using Benzos for you know six months a year two years the risk of later
life dementia is greatly increased according to the research benzodiazepines also don’t treat
depression okay so if you’ve got somebody who has concurrent anxiety and depression there’s a much
higher suicide risk if they’re on benzodiazepines so being aware and generally that suicide risk
comes from overdosing on benzodiazepines but not always other treatment options you know if the
benzos aren’t something that people want to touch you know they scare the living daylights out of
I SSRIs and SNRIs don’t seem to be working then tricyclic antidepressants can be tried on those
your older generation antidepressant seroquel is used a lot and there are some there’s some
research that shows it can be effective with anxiety like some of the antidepressants and
depending on the person the benzos seroquel can make people very very very sleepy so you know
it may not be the side effects of the Seroquel the weight gain and the fatigue and you know
sleepiness may be an unacceptable side effect for some clients and boosts perón is the third option
boost Barone works more like an anti-depressive serotonin reuptake inhibitor and that it takes
you know four weeks or so to kind of build up in the system studies have shown that there’s really
no long-term benefit to taking it but after six months to eighteen months of use it has been shown to
be effective in talking with clients a lot of clients report that boost bar when they take it
doesn’t necessarily help them stop being anxious like a benzodiazepine does but it helps them not
go from zero to 200 in 2.3 seconds it kind of you know keeps them from having this gush of a freak
out reaction every time something goes wrong which a lot of clients report helps because they feel
more stable throughout the day after remission medication should be continued for six to twelve
months and during that last six months first six months keep it as is last six months you know
they say that tapering is best it’s best not to stop somebody cold turkey on any of these but
it’s important for people once they’re in remission to not just suddenly go okay I feel
better I don’t need any of this anymore they need to work into it and make sure they’ve developed
the skills and tools that they need to deal with some of the anxiety that is going to
happen in life so physical signs and symptoms of anxiety may include fatigue irritability muscle
tension or muscle aches try laying feeling twitchy being easily startled trouble sleeping nausea
diarrhea irritable bowel syndrome headaches so the first thing we want to do with clients when we’re
talking to them well second thing first thing is say get a physical let’s rule out physiological
causes of this but we can also help clients look at you know what might be causing these
things that you can do to mitigate it what might be contributing to your fatigue what might be
contributing to your irritability and your muscle tension or your muscle aches I mean let’s look at
economics did you recently get a new bed or do you need to get a new bed what about your desk chair I
know you know I get more muscle tension and muscle achy when I do a lot of mousing because I have
deplorable posture being becoming aware of that helps and then I’m like okay well I know it caused
unfortunately, it’s unpleasant but it’s not a big deal trembling or feeling twitchy you know
that can be caused by low blood sugar that can be caused anxiety that can also be caused
by early onset Parkinson’s symptoms you know there’s you know it can be worst case scenario
or it can be something benign so we want to have people figure out you know when you start
trembling or feeling twitchy is there something that it’s related to you know I know when my
son gets excited he’s he just sits there and you can see him almost shake because he’s so
excited about something so we want to have people prevent misidentification we don’t want them
to jump to that worst-case scenario we don’t want them to go onto WebMD and go oh my gosh I’ve
got cancer I’ve got this debilitating disease and I’m going to die in six months probabilistic Lee
speaking it’s not gonna happen yes get a doctor’s opinion I’m certainly not going to tell them it’s
all in your head I want them to get an evaluation but I do want to in the meantime
help them think about how likely is this and other things for headaches and this is
one another one of those that can be frustrating as we get older our eyesight starts to go and
you know there was a period there I did fine and then after I hit 45 my eyesight just started
to like steadily and kind of rapidly in my mind decline so I have to get my eyeglass prescription
changed every couple of years and that can cause headaches so instead of starting to worry
about oh my gosh I’ve got a headache all the time maybe I’ve got a brain tumor you know I know that
it’s probably my glasses or I’m grinding my teeth so other biological interventions that
have been evaluated there’s something called the floatation rest system that reduced environmental
stimulation therapy reduces sensory input into the nervous system through the act of floating
supine which is on your back in a pool of water saturated with Epsom salt you know I’m looking at
this going sounds good and you can’t quite get the same experience in a bathtub because
you’re not floating you’ve got pressure points and you’re still hearing stuff clients can sort of
simulate it with you know earplugs or whatever but it’s if they can access this it’s been shown
to be effective the float experience is calibrated so that sensory signals from visual
auditory olfactory gustatory thermal tactile or tactile vestibular gravitational and preceptive
channels are minimized which means you don’t see here taste touch smell feel anything as is most
movement and speech so you want people to lay just like completely motionless and not talk which can
be hard for some people with anxiety in the study the study I looked at fifty participants
reported significant reductions in stress muscle tension pain depression and negative effects and it
was accompanied by significant improvement in mood characterized by increases in relaxation happiness
and well-being I read the study I’m like where can I sign up you know it sounds in looking at some of
the research this was more effective for addressing anxiety than something like a massage
Tai Chi also produced significant reductions in anxiety there was approximately a 20% treatment
effect 25% treatment effect in patients with anxiety and fibromyalgia who practiced twice a
week for a year now you know we want to look at the confounding things here is it the Tai Chi
itself or is it learning to control the muscles and becoming more in tune with your body and
learning to control your breathing helps people reduce their anxiety either way you know
Tai Chi helps people do that and it was shown that after a year after the first six months, there was
a significant treatment effect but after a year you know it kept growing and after a year it was
about 25% so Tai Chi can be effective acupuncture at the HT 7 median Meridian can
attenuate anxiety-like behavior induced by withdrawal from chronic morphine treatment through
the meditation of the GABA receptor system what does that mean that means if you if the
acupuncture is done in very certain places the anxiety behavior the GABA a receptor
system GABA is your main calming relaxation neurochemical that is triggered and causes your
body to sort of flood that receptor system and this research was done on people who were detoxing
from morphine treatment but we can look at generalizing the results and I would be interested
to see further studies on it pain other things we need to do to help people with anxiety when people
are in chronic pain they often have anxiety that oh my gosh this is getting worse or It’s never
gonna get better or I just can’t take this pain anymore or they may get anxious that they’re going
to be rejected because they can’t do some of the things they used to do because they’re in so much
pain so there’s a lot of guilt and anxiety that can kind of revolve around pain what can we do
to help clients guided imagery is generally very helpful if we can help them imagine you know if
that pain in their shoulder imagine the pain is like the color red flowing out of their arm
or other focus mindfulness so you know when you think about something you know when you get a shot
if I don’t think about it it doesn’t hurt near as much as if the nurse says okay now one two three
and you know she’s counting down and I’m getting prepared and I’m focused on it I had
another nurse one time who she was just talking to me and you know put the alcohol on my arm
and just kept on talking and didn’t tell me she was getting ready to give me a shot and before I knew
it she had given me a shot and she was like okay we’re done I’m like you didn’t give me a shot yet
she said yes I did it’s like oh so not focusing on it and next time you have an itch for example
if you’ve ever been driving on the interstate and you can reach on your foot I get those on
the bottom of my foot sometimes and I’m like okay I’m not going to pull over to each my foot if you
focus on something besides the itch eventually, it goes away I’m not saying the pain is gonna completely
go away but the more people focus on it the more it hurts physical therapy can help so encourage
them to get a referral and encourage them to do a self-evaluation if nothing else of ergonomics in
their car at work where they watch TV and spend most of their time at home and they’re sleeping
so those are the four places that they spend most of their time what do their ergonomics look like
and that can help a lot of people mitigate a lot of pain hormones are another thing that
we need to look at imbalances of estrogen and testosterone can contribute to anxiety symptoms
heart palpitations fatigue irritability having people get a physical we can’t as clinicians do
anything about it but doctors can rapid heart weight rate sweating palpitations are not uncommon
in women in perimenopause or menopause so a lot of women start feeling like they’re developing
generalized anxiety and/or something’s going wrong when they start reaching that mid-40s to mid-50s
area and they start having some of these symptoms again we’re not going to diagnose it but we do
want them to recognize that it may not be anything you know is catastrophic this is something that a
a lot of women experience and help them figure out how to deal with that supportive care biologically
now you know this isn’t gonna treat anything but we can help them minimize their vulnerabilities
help them create a sleep routine so their brain and body can rebalance this can help repair any
adrenal issues that may be going on and improve energy levels people with anxiety don’t sleep well
so helping them figure out how to get some quality sleep is important nutrition minimizing caffeine
and other stimulants are going to be a big help because those make people feel anxious and encourage
them to work with a nutritionist to try to prevent spikes and drops in blood sugar which can trigger
the stress response when your blood sugar goes way up or way down you can start getting kind of shaky
and feel weird and that can cause people anxiety because they might think oh my gosh I’m having a
stroke or a heart attack or you know I don’t know what these tremors are so it’s important that
they don’t miss identify symptoms and encourage them to drink enough water dehydration can lead
to toxic Ardea which is increased heart rate sunlight vitamin D deficiency is implicated
in both depression and anxiety mood issues vitamin D has been found in those main areas where
serotonin receptors are found vitamin D receptors are found so we know the serotonin and vitamin D
have something going on sunlight prompts the skin to tell the brain to produce neurotransmitters and
set circadian rhythms which impact the release of serotonin your calming neurochemical melatonin
which is made from breaking down serotonin and helps you sleep and gaba so sunlight actually
helps increase the release of GABA when it’s time to start calming down and going to sleep
exercise studies have shown that exercise can have a relaxing effect and encourage clients to start
slowly there’s not a whole lot of new research on exercise and anxiety aromatherapy has been
used a lot, especially in other countries in the treatment of people with anxiety people with
hospital anxiety people women who are giving birth and they have some birth anxiety there they’ve
been found to be effective in a lot of those studies essential oils for anxiety include
lavender rose Bedevere ylang ylang bergamot chamomile frankincense and Clary sage encourage
clients to just go to a health food store and you know sniff some of these and see if it makes them
feel happy and calm and content the aromatherapy molecules enter the nasal membranes and they
will start triggering neurochemical reactions and so you don’t need to apply it you don’t need
to ingest it all you need to do is so encourage clients if they’re open to it to think about this
because aromatherapy can be integrated into their bedroom for example with an atomizer or a Mr. It
can be incorporated in a lot of different places again where they’re not applying it or ingesting
it in any way all they’re doing is smelling it they’ve used it in defusing aromatherapy in
hospital emergency rooms and they found that it reduces stress and irritability the people in
emergency rooms and I’ve been to enough emergency rooms over the years to know that
people who are in ers typically are not in the best mood so if it can help those people then
it’s probably going to have some sort of an effect so psychologically helping clients realize
that their body thinks there’s a threat for some reason that’s why it triggered the threat response
system which is what they call anxiety so they need to figure out why is there a threat
you know sometimes it’s like the fire alarm going off in my house it just means that the windows are
open and there’s a strong breeze there is no fire there is no problem there’s just a malfunction
it’s a false alarm a lot of times clients get this threat reaction they get this stress
reaction and it’s not a big deal right now so they can start modifying what their brain responds to
and again those basic fears that a lot of people worry about failure rejection loss of control the
unknown and death and loss distress tolerance is one of those cognitive interventions that have
taken center stage in anxiety research and it isn’t about controlling your anxiety you know
helping people recognize their anxiety acknowledge it and say okay I’m anxious it is what it is
how can I improve the next moment instead of saying I’m anxious I shouldn’t be anxious I hate
being anxious and slang with that anxiety let it go just accept it is what it is have the client
learn to start saying I am feeling anxious okay so distracted don’t react because I explain to them
the whole notion of feelings comes in the crest and goes out in about 20 minutes it’s like a wave so once they
acknowledge their feeling if they can distract themselves for twenty or thirty minutes you know
they figured out there was no real threat if they can distract themselves for twenty or
thirty minutes those emotions can go down and then they can deal with it in their wise mind and encourage
them to use distancing techniques instead of saying I am anxious or I am terrified or whatever
have them say I am having the thought that this is the worst thing in the world I am having the
thought that I cannot handle this because thoughts come and go and that comes from acceptance and
commitment therapy functional analysis makes it possible to specify where and when with what frequency
with what intensity and under what circumstances the anxious response is triggered so it’s
important that we help clients develop the ability to do functional analyses on their own so
when they start feeling anxious they can stop and say okay where am I what’s going on how intense
is it what are the circumstances and they start trying to figure out what causes this for
them so they can identify any common themes from their psychoeducation about cognitive distortions
and techniques to prevent those circumstances or mitigate them can be provided so if the client
knows that they get anxious before they go into a meeting with their boss and it’s usually a high
the intensity of anxiety okay so we can educate them and help them identify what fears that may be related
to techniques to slow their breathing and calm their stress reaction and help them figure out
times in the past when they’ve handled going in and talking to their boss and it wasn’t
the end of the world you know there’s lots of different things we can do there for them there
but the first key and it gives them a lot of a huge sense of empowerment to start becoming
detectives in their own life and going okay now under what situations does this happen positive
writing this was another cool study each day for 30 days the experimental group and this
was high school-aged youth in China but you know the experimental group engaged in 20 minutes of
writing about positive emotions they felt that day so they’re writing about anything positive
that make them happy that made them enthusiastic gave them hope whatever long-term expressive
writing positive emotions so after 30 days it appeared to help reduce test anxiety by helping
them develop insight and use positive emotion words so it got them out of the habit of using
the destruction and doom words and encouraged them to get in the habit of looking at the positive
things and being more optimistic it’s a cool activity that clients can try it’s not gonna
hurt anything if you have them journal each day for 30 days mindfulness also came up in the
research and was shown to be effective in a meta-analysis of six articles about mindfulness
based stress reduction four about mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and three about fear of
negative appraisal and emotion regulation were reviewed all of these showed that mindfulness
was an effective strategy for the treatment of mood and anxiety disorders and is an effective
in therapy protocols with different structures including virtual modalities so you know if you’re
doing it via teleconference mindfulness can still be helpful mindfulness helps people start learning
how to observe what’s going on and become aware of what’s going on more aware of those circumstances
which will help them complete their functional analysis but it also helps them become aware of
vulnerabilities and head off things in the past and if they’re taking better care of themselves
that they’re living more mindfully then they may not experience as many situations that trigger
their anxiety mindfulness also encourages clients to learn acceptance that radical acceptance of
it is what it is I’m not gonna fight it I’m angry right now I am anxious right now however I’m
feeling right now is how I feel and that’s okay it’s hard for clients to get to that but once
they get a hold of that and they truly believe it and they can say all right it’s fine I’m not gonna
feel this way forever I’m gonna do something else until the feeling passes it helps and that’s where
the labeling and letting go comes in mindfulness can also help them identify trigger thoughts
what thought were you having right before you started feeling anxious if people are mindful or
let’s start back when people are not mindful they often notice or don’t notice that they’re getting
anxious until they’re like super anxious when people are mindful they become more aware of
subtle cues address unhelpful thoughts when they say or believe it’s a dire necessity for adults
to be loved by significant others for almost everything they do always running gonna happen
why is it a necessity what we can encourage them to do is concentrate on their self-respect
on winning approval for practical purposes you know for promotions or whatever but it’s not about
me being lovable it’s about me getting a promotion and making more money and focusing on loving
rather than being loved because when we give love we generally get love back with unhelpful thought
number two people feel they aren’t able to stand it if things are not the way they want them to be
or are not in their control so encourage clients to focus on the parts that are in their control
and other things in life which are going well and to which they’re committed number three misery
is invariably externally caused and is forced on us by outside people and events just by reading
that makes me feel disempowered so encouraging clients to focus on the fact that reactions such
as misery or happiness are largely caused by the view that people take of the conditions so if
you see it as a tragedy and devastating then it’s probably going to produce misery if you
see it as an opportunity and a challenge it’s probably going to produce a different emotional
reaction if something is or may be dangerous or fearsome people should be upset and
endlessly upset about obsessing about it a lot of people with anxiety get stuck on this you know
if I feel like it’s fearsome I need to worry about it getting on a plane for example if I fear that
that’s dangerous that I need to think about it and worry about it that’s not going to do any
good so encourage clients to figure out how to face it and render it harmless if possible and
when that’s not possible accept the inevitable so looking at airplanes you know facing it means
researching to figure out how dangerous is it really and realizing that it’s not
that dangerous so that helps render it a little bit harmless in their mind it proves to them
that it’s not as dangerous as it could be and when it’s not possible accepting the inevitable you
know you got a fly so getting on there figuring out how you’re gonna get through it hurricanes
are the same way people especially in places like Texas Louisiana Florida may obsess as soon
as it starts coming to hurricane season or if a hurricane is spotted out in the Atlantic somewhere
they start checking the weather every hour or more wondering what the path is going to be and you
know what there’s you can’t change the path of the hurricane so all you can do is board up your house
evacuate if necessary and deal with the fallout child driving is just another example I’ll give
you know my children are learning how to drive and that’s kind of scary and fearsome you know what’s
gonna happen when they’re out there you know you see crashes all the time well render it harmless
by making sure they’ve got good training on how to drive make sure they’re good drivers and then
accepting that some things are just not within my control it’s easier to avoid than face life
difficulties and responsibilities Well running from fear is usually much harder in the long run
so encourage clients to look back at times when they’ve avoided difficulties and responsibilities
and the eventual outcome you know what happened there people believe they should be thoroughly
competent in achieving in all possible respects or they will be isolated rejected and failures we
need to encourage clients to accept themselves as imperfect with human limitations and flaws and
focus on what makes them loveable human being what qualities like courage and intelligence and
creativity and those things that can’t be taken away what inherent qualities do they have that
make them awesome people because something once strongly affected people’s lives they should
indefinitely fear it if you got lost you know when little kids get lost it’s terrifying when
you’re grown up if you get lost you turn on the GPS and you figure out your way but some people
still, you know freaked out about getting lost if they got lost once so we want to help people look
back at past episodes that may be contributing to the current anxiety and compare the situation’s
you know are you the same person or is this not a big deal now that you’re older wiser stronger
encourage them to learn from past experiences but not be overly attached to or prejudiced by
them yeah you could have maybe got lost in the past and it was a horrible experience well you
were six I can see where that would be terrifying and a horrible experience but it doesn’t have to
continue to impact you that way now when you’re you know 26 getting lost you know could be an
opportunity to try a new restaurant or something people must have complete control over things
well this doesn’t happen so encourage clients to remember that the past and the future are
uncontrollable we can’t change the past it is what it is we can learn from it so it doesn’t repeat
but we can’t change it and the future is largely uncontrollable I mean there are a lot of things I
can do to stay moving toward a rich and meaningful life but life is going to throw me curveballs
sometimes and there’s nothing I can do to plan for or control that we can control our actions in the
present to stay on our preferred path and general develop general skills to deal with adversity
should it arise so we want to help clients develop those general problem-solving skills and
the general support system so when they are thrown a curveball you know it doesn’t knock them upside
the head people have virtually no control over their emotions and cannot help feeling disturbed
by things well encourage them to think about the fact that they have real control over destructive
emotions if they choose to work at improving the next moment and changing inaccurate thoughts then
they’re not going to experience the destructive emotions as intensely or as frequently when you
feel an emotion you feel how you feel but again you don’t have to wrestle with it fight it and
nurture it you can say this is how I feel how do I improve the next moment when it comes to
cognitive distortions encourage them to find alternatives when they start to personalize things
if somebody laughs when you walk out of the room then the and the person starts getting anxious
thinking oh they were making fun of me I wonder what they thought I wonder if I had something
stuck to the back of my dress and they start getting all panicked about it that doesn’t do
any good encouraging them to think you know what our three alternate explanations that hadn’t but
had nothing to do with you for why they laughed magnification of the worst thing you know taking
something and saying if this happens then it’s going to be a catastrophe and minimization going
along with that a lot of times when people magnify and see a catastrophe they minimize not only
their strengths and resources but all the other stuff that they’ve got going for them all
they’re seeing is this catastrophe so encouraging them to focus on the facts of what is actually
happening and what is the high probability event and encourage them to get information
and look at the broader picture you know yes you got into a car crash and your car is totaled and
that is unfortunate you know it sucks but you know that is not going to cause you to lose
your job and then become homeless and penniless and yadda-yadda it might cause your insurance to
go up but okay so you don’t have a car but what are the resources that you have who can Who do
you work with that might be able to give you a ride to work you know let’s look at the resources
you have and work around so problem-solving helps with magnification and also focusing on you know
let’s be grateful for what didn’t happen you know you could have been killed but you weren’t the
car was totaled it’s replaceable all or nothing thinking again have them think about what else
could have been happening like Brittney suggested finding the exceptions instead of saying she
always does this look for exceptions when has she not done that what else has she done instead
of this selective abstraction and filtering is when people look for the good the bad and the
ugly a selective abstraction means you kind of see what you expect to see so if you expect
something to be devastating you see only the devastating aspects of it which kind of goes with
the magnification and minimization you filter out the stuff a lot of times when people are in a bad
mood or are anxious they see the negative because that’s the state of mind they’re in so encouraging
people to complete the picture alright there’s all this bad stuff now what’s the good stuff you
know to encourage them to look at the good the bad and the ugly so they get a wide view of exactly
what’s going on and encourage them to remember that hindsight is twenty-twenty when people have
something embarrassing happens or they get anxious about something that happened they look back
and they go I should have or I could have or Oh I wish I wouldn’t have when you were in that
situation you did what you did and you know maybe you may have had a reason for it or you know
you may have not had other options or it may have just been a bonehead thing to do but okay so you
made one mistake hindsight is 2020 that’s gonna that mistake is gonna stand out just like the
great big letter on the eye chart because you’re thinking back and you’re looking at it and that’s
all you see but encouraging clients to remember that other people are too busy worrying about
themselves to remember what they did jumping to conclusions encourages clients to remember to
get all the data if your significant other male significant other comes home and is smelling like
perfume don’t just jump to the conclusion that he was cheating on you maybe he went to the
mall to get a new tie and walked through the perfume area and got spritzed or bought you some
perfume or who knows maybe the person sitting next to him at work sprayed her perfume on the desk
and some of it filtered on there are all different reasons that that might happen so encourage people
to get all the data mind reading we can’t do it you know you can’t read somebody’s mind you don’t
know what they’re thinking so ask them what you think about this don’t assume anything and
emotional reasoning encourages people to step back from a situation and ask themselves am I feeling
anxious about this because I’m feeling anxious and I’m looking for reasons that it should be scary
or am I feeling anxious about this because it’s really scary for some reason there are facts
support my anxiety a lot of times when we go into new situations we may feel anxious because it’s
a new situation but when we step back we say you know what there’s nothing to be worried
about here you know no big deal I got this and move on so instead of rolling with it and trying
to figure out okay I feel anxious so there must be a reason not necessarily very likely a false
alarm other psychological interventions relaxation skills encourage people to learn how to relax
not only physically but mentally diaphragmatic breathing helps encourage them to breathe
through their stomach and put their hand on their belly and feel their belly expand and contract
slows breathing down which triggers the rest and digestion reaction in the brain which is calming
meditation can be helpful for some people some people find trying to quiet their minds too
frustrating because they’ve got too much monkey mind going on that can be later or maybe
never for some people we don’t want to increase their anxiety with interventions cute progressive
muscular relaxation also has a lot of research support and remembers with cute progressive
muscular relaxation we’re Sakura getting them to attach a cue AK you word like relax or breathe
with the relaxation response so they tense their muscles and then relax their muscles and as
they relax their muscles they say their “querk”-word like relaxed and they work from head to toe or
from toe to head tensing and relaxing different muscle groups so they become more aware of what a
tense muscle feels like versus a reactive relaxed muscle there are great scripts that are online
that people have already recorded that can walk people walk clients through CPM are I highly
encourage it because once they get used to it then they can just think that cue they can think
relax and as they exhale they will start to feel their entire body kind of relaxing because it’s
trained when it hears that just like when you hear the word pop quiz when you were in high school
you had a stress reaction well we want to use it in reverse and train the body so that when
it hears a cue word relaxes helps them develop self-esteem because fear of failure and rejection
a lot of times come from needing other people’s approval to help them develop a rational idea of
their real self develops compassion self-talk instead of saying I’m an idiot or I’m stupid or
I’ll never measure up to anything encourage them to talk to themself like they would talk to their
child or hopefully their best friend and encourage them to spotlight strengths whenever they feel
like they’ve got an imperfection to identify these three strengths that they have so they’re you know
balancing out the imperfections and the strengths of cognitive restructuring reframes challenges in
terms of current strengths, not past weaknesses so if you’re going to give a presentation in front
of 60 people and you hate public speaking instead of thinking about you know this is terrifying
because the last time I went up in front of people I forgot everything I was going to say and drop
my note cards well that’s a past weakness what is your current strength you’re prepared you know
the material you Jabba-dada so encourages people to look at all the strengths and resources they
currently have them develop an attitude of gratitude and optimism because like I said with
that the positive writing exercise when people are in a grateful optimistic frame of mind they
tend to see more of the good stuff they see the bad stuff too but they can also see more of the
good stuff and some of the bad stuff they see opportunistically instead of as a devastation
acceptance and commitment therapy says that some of the reasons that we’re miserable are
fear we get fused with our thoughts we think I am terrified well if I am terrified then I can’t
I mean if I am I can’t get rid of anything I am if I’m having the thought that I’m terrified
well I can get rid of a thought I can forget things easily encourage people to evaluate their
experience and empower them to look at things as challenges and opportunities instead of hardships
encourage them not to avoid their experiences so things that are scary gradual exposure and
finding exceptions like for me bridges you know I love public speaking so that’s not a
thing but when I go to a bridge you know when I Drive to the bridge you know when I’m on the
bridge somebody else is driving I get used to doing that when I Drive over a bridge than when
I Drive over one of those bridges that opens up I hate those bridges um I know y’all are just like
oh my gosh yeah it’s an irrational fear I realize that but instead of going straight for the bridge
that opens up going for the little bridges first and then thinking back over times that I’ve gone
over bridges and there’s been no problem you know there are exceptions nothing happened it wasn’t a
big deal Sometimes I didn’t even notice it until somebody pointed out hey look down there at that
pretty water and I’m like oh we’re on a bridge so encourage people to not avoid their experiences
get used to them embrace them and learn that they have the power to deal with them and stop reason
giving for behavior you know use the challenging questions if something is fearsome let’s look for
at the evidence for and against it instead of you know making excuses for social interventions
improve their relationship with their self which goes with self-esteem improvement people are going
to feel less anxious about getting their needs and wants to be met if they know what their needs and wants
are so part of that is becoming mindful cuz a lot of our clients don’t know what they need and want
they just want to feel better but they don’t know how they don’t know what they need to feel
better so helping them identify their needs and wants to encourage them to be their own best friend
you know when they get a promotion take themselves out to dinner pat themselves on the back whatever
it is don’t rely onother people to do it because other people it’s not that they don’t care but
other people are often very involved in thinking about their stuff and they may not notice
encourage them to develop a method of internal validation so they can feel like they are all
that ‘no bag of chips and they realize why they are lovable human beings and they accept the
the fact that everybody is not going to like them and nobody is gonna like them all the time and
that’s okay you know my kids don’t like me all the time my husband doesn’t like me all the time
I’m okay with that I know I can be challenging but you know most of the time you know they like me
and that’s okay and there are some people you know who don’t like me at all and okay there’s
nothing I can do about that helping our clients develop an okayness with that helps relieve a lot
of anxiety because a lot of people feel like they have to be liked by everybody and if somebody
doesn’t like them it’s like what did I do wrong oh my gosh encourage them to develop healthy
supportive relationships with good boundaries develop assertiveness skills so they can ask for
help when they need it anxiety a lot of times you know that’s the body saying there’s a threat well
if there’s a threat maybe you need some help you know dealing with it so people need to be willing
and able to ask for help and not feel like that’s going to lead them to be rejected and allow them a
certify this will allow them to say no to requests again without feeling like that’s going to result
in them being fully rejected describe the ideal healthy supportive relationship and encourage
them to separate the ideals from the reals you know let’s look at if you had the best relationship
what would it look like okay you know Warden June Cleaver we got that now how realistic is that
you know let’s look at you know rephrasing this a little bit so it’s less extreme you know warden
June Cleaver never fought their kids were perfect you know all those extreme words let’s look at
what’s real what happens in real relationships encourages people to identify who would be
a good partner in supportive relationships I’m not meaning necessarily romantic I’m meaning
friends and where they can be found you know where would you find people that you could be friends
with and encourage them to play through what it means when gaming cuz a lot of times again this
goes with my reading you know what it means when your friend doesn’t return your text right
away what does it mean when your friend cancels dinner on Friday night what does it mean when
you see where I’m going with this and a lot of times clients with anxiety and rejection issues
and low self-esteem will go to the worst-case scenario so encourage them to go back to finding
the exceptions what else could have been happening what else could it be that caused this and it’s
not about you so anxiety is a natural emotion that serves a survival function excessive anxiety can
develop from lack of sleep nutritional problems neurochemical imbalances failure to develop
adequate coping skills cognitive distortions low self-esteem and a variety of other stuff recovery
Ambala involves improving health behaviors making sure your body’s functioning and making the
neurotransmitters it needs and you know release them as needed to identify and build on current
coping strategies address cognitive distortions and develop a healthy supportive relationship with
self and others if you enjoy this podcast please like and subscribe either in your podcast player
or on youtube, you can attend and participate in our live webinars with Dr. Snipes by subscribing
at all CEUs comm slash counselor toolbox, this episode has been brought to you in part by all
CEUs calmly provide 24/7 multimedia continuing education and pre-certification training to
counselors therapists and nurses since 2006 have used coupon code consular toolbox to get
a 20% discount on your order this month.As found on YouTubeBrain Booster | Blue Heron Health News ⇝ I was losing my memory, focus – and mind! And then… I got it all back again. Case study: Brian Thompson There’s nothing more terrifying than watching your brain health fail. You can feel it… but you can’t stop it. Over and over I asked myself, where is this going to end? What am I going to end up like? And nobody could tell me. Doesn’t matter now. I’m over it. Completely well. This is how I did it!
CEUs are available for this presentation at AllCEUs.com/CBT-CEU Hi everybody and welcome to today’s
presentation on cognitive behavioral therapy skills. Like the other
the presentation we did on assert not assertive community treatment acceptance
and commitment therapy, which is also based on just providing information
about skills that can be used not providing an evidence-based practice
we couldn’t cover that in a full hour or just an hour so over the
next hour we’re going to define cognitive behavioral therapy and its
basic principles a lot of us are familiar with this but it’s going to be
a good review and it also may highlight some nuances that you didn’t know about
will identify factors impacting people’s choice of behaviors explore causes and
impact of thinking errors and identify common thinking errors and their
relationships to cognitive distortions so why do we care well as therapists we
want to help people figure out the best way to live a happy healthy meaningful
goals-driven life for some people that’s going to mean using some cognitive
behavioral interventions that can be in addition to mindfulness that can be in
addition to a lot of other things but it’s important to help people understand
that the way we believe things to be the way we interpret things is going to
affect our reactions so for example think about a situation you know you’ve
walked into and maybe you walked into it with a small child and it was a
different situation it was a new situation but you know it was no big
deal you walked in it was not a threatening situation to you because you
were like hey I got this the little kid walks in and goes oh wow there are a lot
of people walking around here, this is the really scary same situation as two
different perceptions you probably didn’t have much of a stress reaction
going on whereas the little child probably had this fight-or-flight thing
going on grabbing onto your hand like please don’t let go
Atlanta Airport is a perfect example if you’ve ever
taken a little kid through Atlanta Airport it gives you an idea about how
people can perceive things differently and when you enact that fight-or-flight
reaction you’re going to have all those stress hormones you’re going to have all
either anxiety or anger or whatever that goes with it it may serve to
exhaust the person and leave them feeling hopeless and helpless so what we
want to do is help people see that but we also want to help them see that when
they’re depressed when they’re tired when they’re sick things are going to
seem a lot worse a lot of times because they don’t have the energy to perceive
it differently I mean when you’re sick it’s overwhelming to think of going
through Atlanta Airport so this is what we want to help people start
understanding is it’s two sides of the same coin they interact if one is you
know kind of going wonky is going to affect the other one the good thing is
if one’s going really good the other one’s going to go good if you’re
having positive thoughts you’re probably going to feel pretty good
there’s an activity and I think we’re going to talk about it later it’s called
the coin flip activity and I asked client clients to flip a coin in the
morning and in the morning if it turns heads then they have to be the most
positive Pollyanna all day long look for the silver lining and everything smile
walk with their head up hold those nonverbals up and see how they feel at
the end of the day besides a little sore because there are muscles they’re using
they haven’t been used in a while if it lands on tails they can just be their normal
selves which generally if they’re seeing me means that they are depressed anxious
stressed out angry about something in the negative realm then we
talk about how did things seem different on the days when you were feeling better
when you were walking taller when you were smiling even our nonverbals it
doesn’t even have to be sickness it can be our nonverbals that can make us feel
or make our body feel heavy and tired and make it seem like it’s a whole lot
harder to deal with life as a person who perceives the world
generally good and believes they can deal with challenges as
they arise that good old self-efficacy will be able to allow their stress
response system to function normally so if they’re like you know what I can deal
with whatever life throws at me I’ve got it and maybe I need help with it maybe
I’ll need to ask for support but I’ve got it it’s not going to completely
overwhelm me with people who see the world as hostile unsafe and unpredictable you
know for a variety of reasons whatever happened to make their scheme as such
that they don’t believe that people or the world is trustworthy are predictable
they are always on guard they’re always kind of like a hamster in a cage that has
Have you ever had a hamster hamsters don’t recognize you and go hey that’s my own
or human contact score hamsters go run under their little house
and you just kind of open the cage and stick your hand in there and flip over
their house and you’re like come here and give me cuddles and you’re like you
know 200 times bigger than they are so the little hamster is like freaking
out this is what it’s like for people and obviously, I’m exaggerating but this
is what it’s like for people who have a negative perspective a negative view or
a hostile view of the world so kind of keep that little hamster in your mind cognitive behavioral therapy we have
core beliefs those things that are in our hearts when I talk with my clients
about honesty step one and that’s what they’ve got to do to start recovery is
get honest with themselves first and then other people we talk about head
heart and gut honesty do you think it’s right does it seem like the right thing
to do does it feel right in your heart you know does it make you happy it
doesn’t make you feel good and then the spidey senses is your gut saying and or
is your gut fine if one of those is saying this might not be the right
choice and we need to think about what’s going on so we have those core beliefs
and I put them in the heart just because that’s the middle of the head heart and
gut but you have core beliefs about yourself whether you’re good with
you’re bad whether you’re effective at certain things yada yada
you have core beliefs about other people same thing good bad effective
predictable and you have core beliefs about the future and a lot of that goes
with the locus of control but also your past experiences if the world in the past is
seemed unfriendly and uncontrollable and you’ve perceived it that way then you’re
going to expect the future to be uncontrollable so what we want to do is
help people look at their schemas and their core beliefs about themselves
others in the future and figure out kind of what they want it to look like these
schemas are going to affect your behavior and your thoughts and your
feelings and you know you can pick wherever you want to start it doesn’t
matter because all three inter interface with one another so if you haven’t let’s
start with negative thoughts if you have negative thoughts then you might feel
anxious angry stressed dysphoric which will affect the behavior you’re going
to do different things than if you have positive thoughts about something you
feel excited and energized you’re going to have different behavior the best
thing example I can give you is if you’ve ever done public speaking or had
to present something some people detest public speaking it’s just
terrifying for them to get up in front of a group of people so their thoughts
am I going to trip up I going to forget what I’m going to say I’m going
to make a fool of myself I’m going to you know it can go on forever that when
you get on a roll you can get on a negative roll and go on forever or
positive hopefully get on that roll with those thoughts you start holding onto
those thoughts remember as we talked about in a CT the other day when you
hold those thoughts and you kind of mush them around in your mind and you come to
believe them that you’re going to make a fool of yourself and it’s going to be
awful you’re going to start feeling terrified likely which is going to
likely affect your behavior if you go out on the stage and you’re terrified
you’re going to probably stutter you’re probably going to get foggy-headed
you’re going to have that fight-or-flight reaction so there’s an
the adrenaline rush and you start sweating and you can’t focus and you can’t
concentrate you want to away as opposed to somebody like me who
loves public speaking and I’m just like cool I get to go out there and try to
engage however many people are in the audience it’s a game for me because when
I can see your faces I enjoy trying to figure out and make eye
contact with people and figure out what it is that they’re there for what is it
that’s going to make them tick what resonates with them so my behavior as
you can kind of see right now when I go out there I’m excited and I want to
engage people and it’s a fun experience for me again just like the airport the
same experience for two different people and two very different interpretations
and reactions to it so what effects I don’t like the term rational but when
we’re talking about CBT irrationally comes up a lot I like to replace it with
helpful because every behavior in its weird sort of way is or probably was
rational at one time that being said we’re going to get back to that stress
affects our behavioral choices if we’re under stress we can have negative
emotions negative emotions will affect our thoughts if we’re feeling sad we’re
probably going to look at the dark side if we feel sad we’re going to look at
the bottom falling out if we’re happy we’re probably going to look for that
silver lining physical factors if you’re in pain sick sleep-deprived poorly
nourished so your body can’t produce the neurotransmitters it needs to or heaven
forbid intoxicated you’re probably not going to make the same decisions as you
would if you were comfortable healthy well-rested nourished and not
intoxicated any of those things can go impact how you perceive a
situation or how you react in a situation, especially the intoxication
whereas in your non intoxicated State in your sober state, you may think that you
want to do something but then you’ve got that filter that goes not
not a good idea in an intoxicated State or even in a manic state if you’re you
know if you have somebody with bipolar that filter kind of goes away so the
behaviors that someone may normally not do because they have a rational filter
that goes you know punching this guy outs probably not the best idea right
now the filter goes away when you’re sleep-deprived you’re less generally
people are less patient generally people don’t have as much of a filter thing
about watching your children if you have children or your grandchildren or even
yourself I know myself when I’m sleepy I am giddy as all get-out and things I
wouldn’t normally say because they’re you know stupid I’ll just come out and
say anyway and my kids just roll their eyes or the mom you’re overtired could
go to bed, uh but that’s okay you know I’m okay with that
in that situation now if I acted that way at work it would be a worse thing
environmentally if you’re introduced to a new or unique situation and you
perceive it as stressful because the unknown we know can be stressful then
you may not make as rational of a choice or as helpful of a choice because you
maybe trying to escape the same thing as exposure to UNPROFOR bellowing for a
the word here but UNPROFOR ball is the best I could come up with we all prefer
certain situations some people as I said would rather do just about anything
then get up in front of a lecture hall of a hundred and fifty people and talk
but if they have to do it then they’re going to be under stress which may
affect how they do things so we want people to understand that their
perception and their feelings are affected by a lot of other things not
just you know an emotion here or a particular memory there’s a lot that
goes into it and social if peers your family convey
irrational thoughts as necessary very standards for social acceptance
people may tend to cling more to it to those unhelpful thoughts and unhelpful
behaviors you know in CBT they say irrational because quote nobody wants to
associate with those people you know who are those people and why can’t we
associate with them there are a lot of things if you think back think high
school you know high school is pretty rough if we’re going to talk about
having irrational thoughts and cognitions if you have to be part of
this particular group to be accepted you have to do this you have to
do that but do you do those kinds of all-or-nothing statements
are cognitive distortions and while they may have served a purpose in some way
shape or form in the past we need to encourage our clients to take a look at
them now and go are they still helpful ways of thinking is it still helpful for
me to think that I am only successful if I live in a million-dollar house in a
gated community and do this that and the other or can I be can I define success a
different way or do I define success differently and lack supportive
peers to buffer stress so we had those peers that caused stress by talking
about the half dues and categorizing and lots of attributions but then there’s
also not having somebody to go you know does this make any sense
because sometimes we are our own worst enemies and if we go to a friend and we
go you know this is what I’m thinking and I think I have to do this in order
to be acceptable to be loved or you know whatever the case may be
most people are not going to use those exact phrases a good friend is probably
going to listen and go yeah you’re right or no no that’s way off so supportive
peers are essential to reminding us to consciously regularly check in with our
cognitions to make sure that they are hopeful and rational so a note about
irrationality and this is mine this is not from CBT the origins of most beliefs
for rational and helpful given the information, the person had at the time
and their cognitive development their ability to process that information so
concepts and schemas and core beliefs that people formed when they were five
are probably going to be very egocentric you know the person is going to feel
like everybody sees it my way because this is how I see it you know just like
a five-year-old does a five-year-old doesn’t think well you know let me take
Johnny’s perspective is no he assumes that Johnny sees it the same way so it’s
going to be egocentric it’s probably going to be focused on only one aspect
of the situation because small children can’t focus on multiple aspects and it’s
probably going to be dichotomous it’s all-or-nothing
Mommy loves me mommy hates me and it could be personalized you know
everything a lot of kids think that everything has
to do with them so if something happens something bad happens many times
children will take it personally or be afraid it’s going to happen to them
again you know if hurricane katrina hurricane
Andrew those sorts of things you know we saw a lot of trauma in children and they
developed very real fears about thunderstorms and hurricane season
and if you’ve watched Florida hasn’t had a notable hurricane in years now but
there’s a lot of stuff that goes into that but young people
during some of those really bad hurricane seasons perceive those
situations differently okay so we need to help people understand that if we
especially if we use the term irrational those thoughts you formed when you are
knee-high to a grasshopper and they made perfect sense to you back then but now
that you’re an adult you’ve got more experience and you’re
able to take different perspectives your brain is more developed
let’s take a look at it and see if you can look at different perspectives and
come up with something a little more helpful maybe a different way of
perceiving this situation the irrational irrationality or unhelpful Nosov Fox
comes when those beliefs are perpetuated without examination so something a
belief that you formed when you’re five you’re still holding when you’re 35 and
you’ve never questioned it you’ve never gone you know does this make sense is
this is helpful to get me to where I want to be most of us don’t know
we form these attitudes and beliefs when we’re you know growing up when we’re in
elementary school middle school high school from watching TV to being
around our peers from being around our family in our community and we get all
this input of the way things should be and a lot of times people don’t stop to
question and go and go well does this make me happy is this really what
I want and they can be irrational if they continue to be held despite causing
harm to the person so the person continues to hold this belief even
though it is causing them general emotional cognitive harm is making them
miserable we need to look at why what’s motivating them to hold on to that
belief why is that belief so important and how can we make it so they can live
a happy values-driven life emphasis on the happy how can we make it less
harmful sometimes it’s more productive for clients to think of these thoughts
as unhelpful or helpful instead of irrational sometimes when I say
irrational to clients and you know I’m the same way if somebody says you’re
being irrational I’m like oh I’m not it elicits this instantaneous defensive
reaction it’s like when you tell them they’re being resistant they’re like I
am NOT rien resistant so helpful or unhelpful and then we talk about why it
is unhelpful in getting them toward their goals
basic principles of cognitive behavioral therapy we teach or help clients learn
to distinguish between thoughts and feelings I can think something is scary
I’ll probably feel it but if I have an automatic you know feeling I walk into
Atlanta Airport and I see yeah I went to an airport in New York I can’t even
remember which one it was because my plane was diverted and I got off and I
walked out there and I have never seen so many people packed in his place like
sardines before in my life I was just completely overwhelmed that was kind of
an automatic feeling now that was a feeling based on you know who knows it
was overwhelming to be surrounded by that many people so then I had to
separate the thoughts and go okay what am I thinking that’s making me feel so
overwhelmed and at that point you know I didn’t know how to get to my gate and
all that other sort of stuff with traveling I don’t travel well but
encouraging clients to stop and go okay why am I feeling this way what are my
what thoughts am I having that are contributing to these dysphoric feelings
CBT helps people become aware of how thoughts can influence
feelings in ways that are sometimes not helpful
we have hecklers in our gallery the automatic tapes that we plaything
memories that we have whatever you want to call them that when you try something
when you are just going through daily life you hear these voices in the back
of your head and not real voices but that is saying you’re never
going to make this or if you would have just blah blah blah then you’d be a
the better person helping clients become aware of those thoughts and how they’re
negatively influencing their feelings and keeping them kind of stuck is a huge
part of CBT we help them learn about thoughts that seem to occur
automatically without even realizing how they may affect emotions again those
thoughts from they’re saying you’re not good enough
you’re not smart enough and nobody’s gonna like you where did that come from
and do you believe it you know maybe it came from somebody
when you were in high school so was that a valid source maybe it
came from somebody yesterday on Facebook was that a valid source taking in those
thoughts and then figuring out is this something I’m going to hold because it
makes me happy or is this something that I’ve got to deal with because I’m having
a negative reaction constructively evaluate whether these automatic
thoughts and assumptions are accurate or perhaps biased the other thing to
remember is a lot of our clients not all of them but a lot of them hold
themselves to a standard there’s like up here and they hold everybody else to a
standard that’s down here so they are a failure if they don’t achieve this but
everybody else is successful as long as they achieve this so encouraging them to
take a look at how accurate and biased or unbiased are the thoughts and like I
said they may be their thoughts they may be telling themselves these things
evaluate whether the current reactions are a helpful and good use of energy or
unhelpful and a waste of energy that could be used to move toward those
people and things important not impotent important to the person road-rage you’re
in the car you’re driving somebody cuts you off okay natural reaction fight or
flight reaction you’re just like slam on the brakes and do whatever you got to do
aversive maneuvers you’re good so you could let it go at that point ago got
Lucky on that one and keep driving most people not all but most they found that
80% of drivers have reported incidences of road rage which is a
high number but most people will start getting all fired up and irritated
and grumpy and we and just rageful and so my question
would be I hear that and I hear that it made you angry
in retrospect did screaming at the person as you pass them at sixty miles
an hour in your car with the windows rolled up does any good did it do
any good at all what else could you have done with that energy if you wouldn’t
have expended it all yesterday we had to wait for the vet to come by and my
daughter just completely wore herself out worrying about when the vet was
going to get there what he was going to say about her donkeys and was beside
herself so by the time it got to evening and it was time for her to go to her
martial arts class she didn’t have the energy to go she’s like um wiped out I
just want to go to bed in retrospect we’re looking back and saying okay now
tell me what it was that you were so stressed out about and let’s talk about
whether that was a realistic and helpful line of thought to perseverate on all
day long and what could you have done differently because she didn’t bother to
mention any of that to me yesterday and then developed the skills to notice
interrupt and correct these biased thoughts independently causes of these
thinking errors information processing shortcuts when we form schemas and we
encounter a situation that reminds us of something in the past like when I go to
my grandmother’s house I have a schema I have a belief system I have you know
stuff that I know about my grandmother’s house so when I go to my grandmother’s
house it’s kind of a shortcut to knowing what to expect when I walk in and how to
behave how to do different things and it helps me plan and predict if you’re
using outdated or dichotomous all-or-nothing schemas it may cause
thinking errors because you may be now incorrectly processing current events
mental noise some of us have it a lot of us have it
not everybody thinks about trying to focus and study for a final exam in the
middle of a really busy sports bar okay this is a cause of thinking or you’re
going to miss important things you’re not going to be able to focus you’re not
going to necessarily attend to the correct things because there’s just so
much else going on your attention is drawn in 17 different directions and or
the brain’s limited information processing capacity due to age we talked
about that before young kids think all or nothing they think dichotomously
egocentric ly middle school-aged kids and older start developing the ability
for abstract thinking, by the time we get older, you know as adults theoretically
we’re able to you know think pretty well and think pretty clinically about different
events but if we’re in crisis when someone is in crisis and it could be
like what we think of clinically as a crisis or it could be they’re just
completely overwhelmed and burned out and have been burning the candle at both
ends for three months they’re not going to process information quite as well
they’re not going to take in all this stuff because they’re just like
shell-shocked have you ever seen teachers in the hallway of like an
elementary school Oh at the end of the second nine weeks they just kind of
stand there with this blank look on their face they’re not processing as
much as they were the first day of school and you know God loved them they
have a lot to deal with but we need to help our clients
understand that there are some times that they are going to have to really
stop and focus write things down so they can remember or they can make decisions
a little more my guess is most of us have times in our life when we’ve
been able to think through complex problems but then there are other times
where you just can’t keep it all in your head and you’ve got to put it on a
whiteboard maybe that’s just me but we want clients
to understand that they are not broken they’re not faulty they’re doing the
best they can with the tools they have and the knowledge they have and our job
is to help them see where some of this might have gone a little awry other
causes of thinking errors and emotional motivations I feel bad therefore
whatever I’m thinking must be bad if I’m scared that means whatever it’s coming
on the other end of the phone is bad news moral motivations I did it because
it was the right thing to do and that can be an excuse for doing wrong
behaviors as well it can also be you know you can argue on
the moral one social influence well everyone else is doing it so it must not
be bad set that again a lot of times and this is where the frames approaching the
motivational interviewing is helpful f stands for feedback
about the reality of what’s going on is everybody doing it let’s look at
statistics you know not subjective information let’s look at objective
information so the impact of these thinking errors makes people want to
fight or flee when they get upset and we use upset as a kind of this
all-encompassing garbage term emotionally they get depressed or
anxious we don’t want to feel that way anxiety and anger are flee or fight
fight or flee it’s our body saying there’s a threat you got to do something
depression is your body going I give up I just don’t I don’t even have the
energy to do it anymore behaviorally some people withdraw because they
shut down we all know people who get frustrated when they get overwhelmed
when they start feeling hopeless or helpless they just kind of withdraw from
everything and everyone’s addictions numb that out so they don’t have to feel
the dysphoria sleeping problem and changes when we start being on that
constant fight-or-flight hyper-vigilant sort of thing going on in the body is
always sort of turned on which means you’re not going to sleep as well then
the circadian rhythms get messed up which starts causing exhaustion and
lethargy and then everything seems harder because you’re sleep-deprived and
then you start thinking more negatively and more hopelessly you see where this
is going it’s a downward spiral and eating changes some people eat a lot
more because they’re eating comfort foods some people eat a lot less because
their stomach is so torn up from the stress they can’t even think about
holding anything down physical stress-related illnesses fibromyalgia
gastrointestinal problems headaches neck aches backache you know the whole
the gamut of it when you start feeling bad when you start hurting generally it gets
frustrating after a while and that frustration makes it kind of raises the
the bar brings you up a little bit so you’re
that is much closer to kind of just kind of being overwhelmed you don’t have as much
of a cushion as you would if you were happy healthy well nourished not in pain
and socially a lot of times we will get irritable or impatient with other people
or withdrawal when we’re having these negative cognitions these thinking
errors that are keeping us in a dysphoric state these effects of
thinking errors contribute to fatigue and a sense of hopelessness and
helplessness which intensifies thinking errors this is an important concept that
I want my clients to understand and I want to drive home in this presentation
so thinking errors what are they emotional reasoning feelings are not
facts and we want to help people to learn to effectively identify feelings
and separate them from facts so if somebody says I’m terrified
okay that is a feeling what are the facts supporting that feeling why are
you are terrified what is the evidence that you are in some sort of danger
right now you know and danger may not be the right word for your client at that
a particular point in time but what’s the evidence that there’s a threat in what
ways is this similar to other situations maybe it’s triggering something from the
past that was scary or you know you were too little to be able to
handle it but you can handle it now and how if you dealt with similar situations
like this, in the past, we want to help people just step back and get some
distance between their feelings and their thoughts and try to figure out you
know which thoughts are helpful and productive and even if a sought makes
people anxious or angry it can be helpful it may be telling them hey dude
you need to get your butt up and get out of there if it’s helpful it means it’s
moving them toward where they want to be happy healthy safe and values-driven
life so happy and helpful developed a stress tolerance skills when people use
emotional reasoning they feel emotions which then they start attributing
finding the facts to support those emotions instead of looking at all the
facts we want to help them learn to tolerate their distress so they can kind
of let that subside for a second they can accept their feeling they can name
they can say I’m scared I’m stressed I’m angry and whatever but they don’t
have to act on it right then they can tolerate the distress for a minute
without having to try to make it go away and emotional regulation skills they can
feel a feeling without having to make it go from zero to 120
you know if they feel sad they go I feel kind of sad instead of grabbing onto it
and going I wonder what I feel sad about I must feel sad about all these sad
things now I’m going to be sad and devastated so we want to
help people learn how to regulate their emotions identify them accept them
whatever word you want to use and tolerate them because feelings are
there for a reason they’re there to tell you your brain thinks something’s going
now thankfully we have that higher-order cognition stuff going on so
we can contradict our brain and we can go you know maybe that’s not true in
this situation cognitive bias negativity mental filter whatever you want to call
it people who focus on the negative they walk in they get up in the morning and
they look outside and it’s partly cloudy they get to work and they said instead
of saying there was it was very light traffic they said there was a fair
amount of traffic everything is always the flip side of
what somebody who’s optimistic would say so asking them what’s the
benefit to focusing on the negative in what ways is this helpful to you you
know some people say well it keeps me from getting disappointed because I know
it’s going to end up negative anyway so we can trap challenges that know that
whatever it is they think they know and see if there have been exceptions when
it hasn’t turned out that way what are the positives to this situation
I give the example a lot of you know I wash my car or it rains and maybe I
wanted to go out on a run that day but I can perceive it I can look at the
positives you know the rain washed my car for me so I don’t have to do it now
score it watered my garden all the better it knocked down some of the
pollen out of there even better I can find and I can encourage people to find
positives in a situation yes there are negatives there are negatives to every
situation if you want to find them you’re going to find them but if you
want to find the positives you can too which takes us down to what are all the
facts there’s the positive and the negative and the neutral I told you
earlier about the coin toss activity having people toss a coin on the
heads days they act like it is just the greatest day to be alive and see how
things are different when they do their journal because you know I have my
clients do I’m sort of a mindfulness check-in in
the morning and in the evening and preferably at lunchtime how are they
feeling what’s their emotional state what’s their energy level on the happy
days a lot of times it can be less and sometimes they need a little coaching
throughout because some of those old patterns kick in but I want them to
start challenging some of their automatic thoughts that we’re going to
talk about in a minute disqualifying or minimizing the positive most of us can
probably say we’ve had a bunch of clients that do this they are more than
happy to tell you about all the things that they mess up but then when they do
something right they minimize it encouraging people to hold themselves to
the same standard they would hold everyone else to and I know I talked
about that earlier ask them things like would it minimum would you minimize this
if it was your best friend’s experience your best friend came to you and said I
just got into such-and-such college would you say awesome or would you say
anybody can get in there how would that go ask them what is scary about
accepting these positive things that you might have had an
accomplishment for some people it means that it might mean other people expect
more of them for other people they just don’t know how to accept the positive
they don’t know how to accept compliments they don’t know how to be
the center of attention and they don’t like it and then we want to look at why
that is sometimes we disqualify the positive because it fails to meet
someone else’s standards so as people might that be true here you know I know
when I was growing up and going through college and going through school and
everything got my doctorate but I will always be ever and always being not
a real doctor because a Ph.D. is not an MD and I’m like really
so is it somebody else’s standards or can I feel good about having a Ph.D. egocentrism my perspective is the only
perspective I’ll being egocentric but it doesn’t work
most of the time so encouraging people to take alternate perspectives
maybe you’re texting with someone and they say something that is not that you
interpret as not the nicest thing and this happens in text messages a lot and
they get upset now an egocentric thinking error would say that purse is
just grumpy today someone that’s taking other perspectives would stop and go
back and read the text and go I wonder if maybe this could have been taken some
another way you know cuz their reaction is not what I intended
so egocentrism if you hold on to that I don’t understand anybody else because
you know I don’t see a problem with anything personalizing and mind-reading this is when you assume that everybody’s
frowning because of something you did your boss walks down the hallway
and looks at you and grimaces and continues to walk on oh I must have done
something wrong no maybe he just got out of his senior management meeting that
was five hours long and he’s got to go to the bathroom you know there could be
a hundred different explanations for why that happened so encourage clients to
ask themselves what are some alternate explanations for this event that
doesn’t involve me you know why might this have happened if they hold
on to that, I must have done something wrong but as soon as their boss calls
them up and goes hey can you come to my office for a second you know where their
thoughts are going to go I’m getting fired I’m going to get laid off I don’t
know what it was that I did wrong but he walked by me two weeks ago in the
hallway and grimaced and I’m just I’m the worst person in the whole world
but where did that come from so encouraging people to not necessarily
assume they know what’s going on in someone else’s mind and not
automatically attributing every person’s negative behavior to something they did
how often and then ask them how often has it been about you
now think about the last 10 times you’ve taken something personally how many of
those 10 times has it been about something you did versus something with
the other person then the availability heuristic remembering what’s most
prominent in your mind so asking clients what are the facts ah the most obvious
one that we talk about is plane crashes you know it is way dangerous to fly on a
plane because you hear about all those plane crashes well yeah you hear about
A few planes crash but you don’t hear about the 20,000 every day that land
safely so you remember it and it seems more dangerous because that’s what is in
your mind that’s what is available to you that’s what you’ve based your
thought processes on because maybe you didn’t know that 20,000 planes or more
fly and land just perfectly every day this can also be true with people
remembering what’s most prominent in your mind sometimes and this can be very
very true in domestically violent relationships if somebody falls in love
with someone and that person is just the greatest person since sliced bread for
the first four months and then the cycle starts and there’s this little tiny
a sliver of the honeymoon period after the battering cycle and the person’s like
that’s the person I fell in love with that’s what I remember and they try to
focus on that that’s most prominent in their mind and they ignore the rest of
the stuff so we need to encourage people to look objectively at the facts magnification are you confusing high and
low probability outcomes what are the chances that this is going to happen how
many clients have we worked with that have gone to the doctor and gotten in a
physical or get a test run and then the doctor had to call them back and
this could be true for you too and the doctor had to call them back two or
three days later when the tests came back from the lab and that whole three
days they were just in a panic because they
were afraid they were going to get some terminal diagnosis so thinking about
high and low probability outcomes another instance or example of
magnification is somebody that thinks this is the end of the world whatever it
I think I’ve told you before my little story about um tripping when I
was walking down the hall at work and falling and yeah it was embarrassing my
folders went everywhere and yeah but in that big scheme of things will it matter
that much from now you know are people gonna think oh she is such a clutch she
must be a ditz too no I mean they may have thought that at that time I don’t
know but you know in six months nobody’s going to remember and then ask them in
the past when something like this has happened when you’ve had to get a test
done and you’ve had to wait on results or if you’ve done something that was
embarrassing and you didn’t think you thought everybody was going to remember
it forever.
How did you tolerate it how did you learn to deal with it building
on those strengths that they already have all-or-nothing thinking errors
these are things like love versus hate I love them or I hate them it’s all or
nothing she does this all the time or she never does it if I’m going to do it
I’m going to do it perfectly or I’m not going to do it at all thank you all good
intentions or all bad intentions you know sometimes we do things with good
intentions that have some bad repercussions so did we do it with all
bad intentions are all good intentions and the answer is neither most of the
time life is kind of in that middle-ground gray area encouraging clients to
look and find examples where something hasn’t been one of the polls when having
they do something that they’re proud of that wasn’t perfect or when again
when has somebody else do something that they were proud of that wasn’t
perfect remembering that with availability
heuristic remembering how often something happens and how long it’s
been since you’ve seen that behavior and remember that sometimes good times are
amazing but how frequent are they compared with the bad times another thinking error is a belief in a
just world or a fallacy of fairness I just asked clients to identify for good
people you know who’ve had bad things happen and in reality we all have bad
things happen good people do bad people do in between people do attributional
errors and this is a pet of mine you know labeling yourself is not a behavior so
global versus specific and I am stupid versus I’m stupid at math I don’t have
good math skills it’s not about me it’s about the skills I can change skills
stable I am and I always will be versus it’s something I can change it’s
something I can learn internally it’s about me as a person versus it’s about a
skill deficit or something I could learn or change and there’s you know lots of
information on attributions out there on the internet if you need a refresher on
it but we find that a lot of people who have dysphoria have negative global
stable internal attributions so questions for clients remember the
beliefs equal thoughts and facts plus personal interpretation another way of
saying it is reality is 10% perception is 10% reality and 90% interpretation so
what are the facts for and against my belief is the belief based on facts or
feelings does the belief focus on one aspect or the whole situation does the
belief seem to use any thinking errors what are alternate explanations what
would you tell your child or best friend if they had this belief how would you
want someone to tell what would you want someone to tell you about this belief so
if you’re telling somebody about this what are you hoping they’re going to say
in return and finally, how is this belief moving you toward what and who is
important to you or moving you away from what or who is important to you now they
can do a worksheet and have all of these or you can pick one or two of these
questions that are most salient for your clients but they can have kind of at
their fingertips so as they’re going through the day and something happens
they can ask themselves ok what’s an alternate explanation or you know
whatever it is this is salient for that client’s irrational thoughts about how to do these
thoughts impact the client’s emotions health relationships and perceptions of
the world you know this is what we want to ask them how is this thought
impacting you globally how may this thought have been helpful in the past
where did it come from how does it make sense from when you formed it in the
past when you’re dealing with it ask the person if the thought is bringing you
closer to those that are important are there any examples of this thought or
belief not being true and how can the statement be made less global less
all-encompassing so it’s about a specific incident a specific situation
less stable which means you can change it and less internal which means it’s
not about who you are as a person but maybe something that you do or a skill
that you have so we’re going to go through some of these thoughts real
quickly here mistakes are never acceptable and if I make one it means
that I’m incompetent well never is kind of stable and I am incompetent is kind
of global, that’s also that extreme all-or-nothing thinking so you can see
where these cognitive distortions end up leading to unhelpful beliefs
when somebody disagrees with me it’s a personal attack well there’s
personalization if I ever heard it before maybe it’s not about you may be
they’re having a bad day and you just happen to be the unlucky target or maybe
they’re disagreeing with you because they have a different point of view and
it’s not a personal attack it’s just their point of view if someone
criticizes or rejects me there must be something wrong with me
personalization all-or-nothing thinking global stable and internal something
wrong with me as a person to feel good about myself others must approve of me
now this is one we’ve talked about external validation before and we can’t
control other people to feel good about yourself how can you do that
besides necessarily requiring other people to approve of you to be
content in life I must be liked by all people Wow I’ve never met anybody who’s
liked by all people I’ve never even met anybody who’s been hated by all people
but it’s important to help clients see how this is dramatic to say all
people and for them to be content then everybody has to like them
I mean I like to be liked but if everybody doesn’t like me you know
that’s pretty understandable my true value as an individual depends on what
others think of me I would challenge this one this is all you know
also, very personally internally I would challenge people to look at and say it
so your child’s value as an individual depends on what other people think of
he or most people would say no but the perspective thing nothing ever turns
out the way you want it to okay all-or-nothing thinking and probably
availability heuristic if something bad just happened then they may be focusing
on that which causes them to focus on all the other bad things in the past
that have happened not to focus on that is okay you know bad thing
happen but look at all these good things I won’t try anything new unless I will
be good at it this fear of failure fear of rejection
it just really paralyzes a lot of people when they get stuck with that thinking
the area that they have to be perfect I am in total control of anything bad that
happens is my fault well that’s egocentric and personal if
they think they’re in total control that’s their perception of how the world
are they think if they’ve got everybody on marionette strings anything
bad in the world that happens is their fault how powerful are they
I feel happy about uh if I feel happy about life something will go wrong
it happens sometimes but let’s look at times when you’ve been happy that
something hasn’t gone wrong you know let’s get rid of that all-or-nothing
thinking it’s not my fault my life didn’t go the way I wanted could be true
but it seems like that’s making you unhappy so what do we do about that if
I’m not in an intimate relationship I’m alone
no, again that’s pretty extreme I’m either in an intimate relationship, or I
am alone and a loner and you know it’s just me and my 17 cats which follows
with there’s no gray area so encouraging people to look at what these
beliefs are saying important thoughts impact behaviors and emotional and
physical reactions emotional and physical reactions impact thoughts and
interpretations of events so if you do something and it’s pleasurable
and you have a great physical reaction you know let’s take bungee jumping or
skydiving if you go out there and it’s scary but you do it and you’re just like
whoa what a rush your interpretation of that is probably going to be good which
means you’ll probably do it again if you go out there and it’s just the most
horrible experience you’ve ever had you’re probably not going to do it again
and your interpretation of it is going to be not good which is going to make it
hard to understand why other people would do it irrational
thinking patterns are often caused by cognitive distortions so let’s just look
back at some of those because there are a lot fewer cognitive distortions or
general ways of thinking about the world then there are thinking errors because
there are lots and lots of thinking errors cognitive distortions are often schemas
which were formed based on faulty inaccurate or immature knowledge or
understanding and by identifying the thoughts of the hecklers you know the
automatic tapes that are maintaining our unhappiness the person can choose
whether to accept those thoughts or change them As found on YouTubeThe Destroy Depression ꆛ System-Cure Depression Naturally YOUR DEPRESSION HAS BEEN IN CONTROL LONG ENOUGH. It’s Time to Fight Back ☂🗯 “Depression Sufferer Of Over 20 Years Reveals His Simple 7-Step System That Gives You The Power To Destroy Your Depression, End Your Feelings Of Sadness And Hopelessness, And Get Your Life Back.” “This didn’t just change my life, it saved my life.“
CEUs are available for this presentation at AllCEUs.com/CBT-CEU Hi everybody and welcome to today’s
presentation on cognitive behavioral therapy skills. Like the other
the presentation we did on assert not assertive community treatment acceptance
and commitment therapy, which is also based on just providing information
about skills that can be used not providing an evidence-based practice
we couldn’t cover that in a full hour or just an hour so over the
next hour we’re going to define cognitive behavioral therapy and its
basic principles a lot of us are familiar with this but it’s going to be
a good review and it also may highlight some nuances that you didn’t know about
will identify factors impacting people’s choice of behaviors explore causes and
impact of thinking errors and identify common thinking errors and their
relationships to cognitive distortions so why do we care well as therapists we
want to help people figure out the best way to live a happy healthy meaningful
goals-driven life for some people that’s going to mean using some cognitive
behavioral interventions that can be in addition to mindfulness that can be in
addition to a lot of other things but it’s important to help people understand
that the way we believe things to be the way we interpret things is going to
affect our reactions so for example think about a situation you know you’ve
walked into and maybe you walked into it with a small child and it was a
different situation it was a new situation but you know it was no big
deal you walked in it was not a threatening situation to you because you
were like hey I got this the little kid walks in and goes oh wow there are a lot
of people walking around here, this is the really scary same situation as two
different perceptions you probably didn’t have much of a stress reaction
going on whereas the little child probably had this fight-or-flight thing
going on grabbing onto your hand like please don’t let go
Atlanta Airport is a perfect example if you’ve ever
taken a little kid through Atlanta Airport gives you an idea about how
people can perceive things differently and when you enact that fight-or-flight
the reaction you’re going to have all those stress hormones you’re going to have all
either anxiety or anger or whatever that goes with it it may serve to
exhaust the person and leave them feeling hopeless and helpless so what we
want to do is help people see that but we also want to help them see that when
they’re depressed when they’re tired when they’re sick things are going to
seem a lot worse a lot of times because they don’t have the energy to perceive
it differently I mean when you’re sick it’s overwhelming to think of going
through Atlanta Airport so this is what we want to help people start
understanding is it’s two sides of the same coin they interact if one is you
know kind of going wonky is going to affect the other one the good thing is
if one’s going well the other one’s going to go well if you’re
having positive thoughts you’re probably going to feel pretty good
there’s an activity and I think we’re going to talk about it later it’s called
the coin flip activity and I asked client clients to flip a coin in the
morning and in the morning if it turns heads then they have to be the most
positive Pollyanna all day long look for the silver lining and everything smile
walk with their head up hold those nonverbals up and see how they feel at
the end of the day besides a little sore because there are muscles they’re using
they haven’t used in a while if it lands on tails they can just be their normal
selves which generally if they’re seeing me means that they are depressed anxious
stressed out angry about something in the negative realm then we
talk about how did things seem different on the days when you were feeling better
when you were walking taller when you were smiling even our nonverbals it
doesn’t even have to be sickness it can be our nonverbals that can make us feel
or make our body feel heavy and tired and make it seem like it’s a whole lot
harder to deal with life as a person who perceives the world
generally good and believes they can deal with challenges as
they arise that good old self-efficacy will be able to allow their stress
response system to function normally so if they’re like you know what I can deal
with whatever life throws at me I’ve got it and maybe I need help with it maybe
I’ll need to ask for support but I’ve got it it’s not going to completely
overwhelm me with people who see the world as hostile unsafe and unpredictable you
know for a variety of reasons whatever happened to make their scheme as such
that they don’t believe that people or the world is trustworthy are predictable
they are always on guard they’re always kind of like a hamster in a cage that has
Have you ever had hamster hamsters don’t recognize you and go hey that’s my own
or human contact score hamsters go run under their little house
and you just kind of open the cage and stick your hand in there and flip over
their house and you’re like come here and give me cuddles and you’re like you
know 200 times bigger than they are so the little hamster is like freaking
out this is what it’s like for people and obviously, I’m exaggerating but this
is what it’s like for people who have a negative perspective a negative view or
a hostile view of the world so kind of keep that little hamster in your mind cognitive behavioral therapy we have
core beliefs those things that are in our hearts when I talk with my clients
about honesty step one and that’s what they’ve got to do to start recovery is
get honest with themselves first and then other people we talk about head
heart and gut honesty do you think it’s right does it seem like the right thing
to do does it feel right in your heart you know does it make you happy it
doesn’t make you feel good and then the spidey senses is your gut saying and or
is your gut fine if one of those is saying this might not be the right
choice and we need to think about what’s going on so we have those core beliefs
and I put them in the heart just because that’s the middle of the head heart and
gut but you have core beliefs about yourself whether you’re good with
you’re bad whether you’re effective at certain things ya ya
you have core beliefs about other people same thing good bad effective
predictable and you have core beliefs about the future and a lot of that goes
with the locus of control but also your past experiences if the world in the past is
seemed unfriendly and uncontrollable and you’ve perceived it that way then you’re
going to expect the future to be uncontrollable so what we want to do is
help people look at their schemas and their core beliefs about themselves
others in the future and figure out kind of what they want it to look like these
schemas are going to affect your behavior and your thoughts and your
feelings and you know you can pick wherever you want to start it doesn’t
matter because all three inter interface with one another so if you haven’t let’s
start with negative thoughts if you have negative thoughts then you might feel
anxious angry stressed dysphoric which will affect the behavior you’re going
to do different things than if you have positive thoughts about something you
feel excited and energized you’re going to have different behavior the best
thing example I can give you is if you’ve ever done public speaking or had
to present something some people detest public speaking it’s just
terrifying for them to get up in front of a group of people so their thoughts
am I going to trip up I going to forget what I’m going to say I’m going
to make a fool of myself I’m going to you know it can go on forever that when
you get on a roll you can get on a negative roll and go on forever or
positive hopefully get on that roll with those thoughts you start holding onto
those thoughts remember as we talked about in a CT the other day when you
hold those thoughts and you kind of mush them around in your mind and you come to
believe them that you’re going to make a fool of yourself and it’s going to be
awful you’re going to start feeling terrified likely which is going to
likely affect your behavior if you go out on the stage and you’re terrified
you’re going to probably stutter you’re probably going to get foggy-headed
you’re going to have that fight-or-flight reaction so there’s an
the adrenaline rush and you start sweating and you can’t focus and you can’t
concentrate you want to away as opposed to somebody like me who
loves public speaking and I’m just like cool I get to go out there and try to
engage however many people are in the audience it’s a game for me because when
I can see your faces I enjoy trying to figure out and make eye
contact with people and figure out what it is that they’re there for what is it
that’s going to make them tick what resonates with them so my behavior as
you can kind of see right now when I go out there I’m excited and I want to
engage people and it’s a fun experience for me again just like the airport the
same experience for two different people and two very different interpretations
and reactions to it so what effects I don’t like the term rational but when
we’re talking about CBT irrationally comes up a lot I like to replace it with
helpful because every behavior in its weird sort of way is or probably was
rational at one time that being said we’re going to get back to that stress
affects our behavioral choices if we’re under stress we can have negative
emotions negative emotions will affect our thoughts if we’re feeling sad we’re
probably going to look at the dark side if we feel sad we’re going to look at
the bottom falling out if we’re happy we’re probably going to look for that
silver lining physical factors if you’re in pain sick sleep-deprived poorly
nourished so your body can’t produce the neurotransmitters it needs to or heaven
forbid intoxicated you’re probably not going to make the same decisions as you
would if you were comfortable healthy well-rested nourished and not
intoxicated any of those things can go impact how you perceive a
situation or how you react in a situation, especially the intoxication
whereas in your non intoxicated State in your sober state, you may think that you
want to do something but then you’ve got that filter that goes not
not a good idea in an intoxicated State or even in a manic state if you’re you
know if you have somebody with bipolar that filter kind of goes away so the
behaviors that someone may normally not do because they have a rational filter
that goes you know punching this guy outs probably not the best idea right
now the filter goes away when you’re sleep-deprived you’re less generally
people are less patient generally people don’t have as much of a filter thing
about watching your children if you have children or your grandchildren or even
yourself I know myself when I’m sleepy I am giddy as all get-out and things I
wouldn’t normally say because they’re you know stupid I’ll just come out and
say anyway and my kids just roll their eyes or mom you’re overtired could
go to bed, uh but that’s okay you know I’m okay with that
in that situation now if I acted that way at work it would be a worse thing
environmentally if you’re introduced to a new or unique situation and you
perceive it as stressful because the unknown we know can be stressful then
you may not make as rational of a choice or as helpful of a choice because you
maybe trying to escape the same thing as exposure to UNPROFOR bellowing for a
the word here but UNPROFOR ball is the best I could come up with we all prefer
certain situations some people as I said would rather do just about anything
then get up in front of a lecture hall of a hundred and fifty people and talk
but if they have to do it then they’re going to be under stress which may
affect how they do things so we want people to understand that their
perception and their feelings are affected by a lot of other things not
just you know an emotion here or a particular memory there’s a lot that
goes into it and social if peers your family convey
irrational thoughts as necessary very standards for social acceptance
people may tend to cling more to it to those unhelpful thoughts and unhelpful
behaviors you know in CBT they say irrational because quote nobody wants to
associate with those people you know who are those people and why can’t we
associate with them there are a lot of things if you think back think high
the school you know high school is pretty rough if we’re going to talk about
having irrational thoughts and cognitions if you have to be part of
this particular group to be accepted you have to do this you have to
do that but do you really so those kinds of all-or-nothing statements
are cognitive distortions and while they may have served a purpose in some way
shape or form in the past we need to encourage our clients to take a look at
them now and go are they still helpful ways of thinking is it still helpful for
me to think that I am only successful if I live in a million-dollar house in a
gated community and do this that and the other or can I be can I define success a
different way or do I define success differently and lack supportive
peers to buffer stress so we had those peers that caused stress by talking
about the half dues and categorizing and lots of attributions but then there’s
also not having somebody to go you know does this make any sense
because sometimes we are our own worst enemies and if we go to a friend and we
go you know this is what I’m thinking and I think I have to do this in order
to be acceptable to be loved or you know whatever the case may be
most people are not going to use those exact phrases a good friend is probably
going to listen and go yeah you’re right or no no that’s way off so supportive
peers are essential to reminding us to consciously regularly check in with our
cognitions to make sure that they are hopeful and rational so a note about
irrationality and this is mine this is not from CBT the origins of most beliefs
for rational and helpful given the information the person had at the time
and their cognitive development their ability to process that information so
concepts and schemas and core beliefs that people formed when they were five
are probably going to be very egocentric you know the person is going to feel
like everybody sees it my way because this is how I see it you know just like
a five-year-old does a five-year-old doesn’t think well you know let me take
Johnny’s perspective is no he assumes that Johnny sees it the same way so it’s
going to be egocentric it’s probably going to be focused on only one aspect
of the situation because small children can’t focus on multiple aspects and it’s
probably going to be dichotomous it’s all-or-nothing
mommy loves me mommy hates me and it could be personalized you know
everything a lot of kids think that everything has
to do with them so if something happens something bad happens many times
children will take it personally or be afraid it’s going to happen to them
again you know if hurricane Katrina hurricane
Andrew those sorts of things you know we saw a lot of trauma in children and they
developed very real fears about thunderstorms and hurricane season
and if you’ve watched Florida hasn’t had a notable hurricane in years now but
there’s a lot of stuff that goes into that but young people
during some of those really bad hurricane seasons perceive those
situations differently okay so we need to help people understand that if we
especially if we use the term irrational those thoughts you formed when you are
knee-high to a grasshopper and they made perfect sense to you back then but now
that you’re an adult you’ve got more experience and you’re
able to take different perspectives your brain is more developed
let’s take a look at it and see if you can look at different perspectives and
come up with something a little more helpful maybe a different way of
perceiving this situation the irrational irrationality or unhelpful Nosov Fox
comes when those beliefs are perpetuated without an examination so something a
the belief that you formed when you’re five you’re still holding when you’re 35 and
you’ve never questioned it you’ve never gone you know does this make sense is
this is helpful to get me to where I want to be most of us don’t know
we form these attitudes and beliefs when we’re you know growing up when we’re in
elementary school middle school high school from watching TV to being
around our peers from being around our family in our community and we get all
this input of the way things should be and a lot of times people don’t stop to
question and go and go well does this make me happy is this really what
I want and they can be irrational if they continue to be held despite causing
harm to the person so the person continues to hold this belief even
though it is causing them general emotional cognitive harm is making them
miserable we need to look at why what’s motivating them to hold on to that
belief why is that belief so important and how can we make it so they can live
a happy values-driven life emphasis on the happy how can we make it less
harmful sometimes it’s more productive for clients to think of these thoughts
as unhelpful or helpful instead of irrational sometimes when I say
irrational to clients and you know I’m the same way if somebody says you’re
being irrational I’m like oh I’m not it elicits this instantaneous defensive
the reaction’s like when you tell them they’re being resistant they’re like I
am NOT being resistant so helpful or unhelpful and then we talk about why it
is unhelpful in getting them toward their goals
basic principles of cognitive behavioral therapy we teach or help clients learn
to distinguish between thoughts and feelings I can think something is scary
I’ll probably feel it but if I have an automatic you know feeling I walk into
Atlanta Airport and I see yeah I went to an airport in New York I can’t even
remember which one it was because my plane was diverted and I got off and I
walked out there and I have never seen so many people packed in his place like
sardines before in my life I was just completely overwhelmed that was kind of
an automatic feeling now that was a feeling based on you know who knows it
was overwhelming to be surrounded by that many people so then I had to
separate the thoughts and go okay what am I thinking that’s making me feel so
overwhelmed and at that point you know I didn’t know how to get to my gate and
all that other sort of stuff with traveling I don’t travel well but
encouraging clients to stop and go okay why am I feeling this way what are my
what thoughts am I having that are contributing to these dysphoric feelings
CBT helps people become aware of how thoughts can influence
feelings in ways that are sometimes not helpful
we have hecklers in our gallery the automatic tapes that we plaything
memories that we have whatever you want to call them that when you try something
when you are just going through daily life you hear these voices in the back
of your head and not real voices but that is saying you’re never
going to make this or if you would have just blah blah blah then you’d be a
the better person helping clients become aware of those thoughts and how they’re
negatively influencing their feelings and keeping them kind of stuck is a huge
part of CBT we help them learn about thoughts that seem to occur
automatically without even realizing how they may affect emotions again those
thoughts from they’re saying you’re not good enough
you’re not smart enough and nobody’s gonna like you where did that come from
and do you believe it you know maybe it came from somebody
when you were in high school so was that a valid source maybe it
came from somebody yesterday on Facebook was that a valid source taking in those
thoughts and then figuring out is this something I’m going to hold because it
makes me happy or is this something that I’ve got to deal with because I’m having
a negative reaction constructively evaluate whether these automatic
thoughts and assumptions are accurate or perhaps biased the other thing to
remember is a lot of our clients not all of them but a lot of them hold
themselves to a standard there’s like up here and they hold everybody else to a
standard that’s down here so they are a failure if they don’t achieve this but
everybody else is successful as long as they achieve this so encouraging them to
take a look at how accurate and biased or unbiased are the thoughts and like I
said they may be their thoughts they may be telling themselves these things
evaluate whether the current reactions are a helpful and good use of energy or
unhelpful and a waste of energy that could be used to move toward those
people and things important not impotent important to the person road-rage you’re
in the car, you’re driving somebody cuts you off okay natural reaction fight or
flight reaction you’re just like slam on the brakes and do whatever you got to do
aversive maneuvers you’re good so you could let it go at that point ago got
lucky on that one and keep driving most people not all but most they found that
80% of drivers have reported incidences of road rage which is a
high number but most people will start getting all fired up and irritated
and grumpy and we and just rageful and so my question
would be I hear that and I hear that it made you angry
in retrospect did screaming at the person as you pass them at sixty miles
an hour in your car with the windows rolled up does any good did it do
any good at all what else could you have done with that energy if you wouldn’t
have expended it all yesterday we had to wait for the vet to come by and my
daughter just completely wore herself out worrying about when the vet was
going to get there what he was going to say about her donkeys and was beside
herself so by the time it got to evening and it was time for her to go to her
martial arts class she didn’t have the energy to go she’s like um wiped out I
just want to go to bed in retrospect we’re looking back and saying okay now
tell me what it was that you were so stressed out about and let’s talk about
whether that was a realistic and helpful line of thought to perseverate on all
day long and what could you have done differently because she didn’t bother to
mention any of that to me yesterday and then developed the skills to notice
interrupt and correct these biased thoughts independently causes of these
thinking errors information processing shortcuts when we form schemas and we
encounter a situation that reminds us of something in the past like when I go to
my grandmother’s house I have a schema I have a belief system I have you know
stuff that I know about my grandmother’s house so when I go to my grandmother’s
house it’s kind of a shortcut to knowing what to expect when I walk in and how to
behave how to do different things and it helps me plan and predict if you’re
using outdated or dichotomous all-or-nothing schemas it may cause
thinking errors because you may be now incorrectly processing current events
mental noise some of us have it a lot of us have it
not everybody thinks about trying to focus and study for a final exam in the
middle of a really busy sports bar, okay this is a cause of thinking or you’re
going to miss important things you’re not going to be able to focus you’re not
going to necessarily attend to the correct things because there’s just so
much else going on your attention is drawn in 17 different directions and or
the brain’s limited information processing capacity due to age we talked
about that before young kids think all or nothing they think dichotomously
egocentric ly middle school-aged kids and older start developing the ability
for abstract thinking by the time we get older, you know as adults theoretically
we’re able to you know think pretty well and think pretty clinically about different
events but if we’re in crisis when someone is in crisis and it could be
like what we think of clinically as a crisis or it could be they’re just
completely overwhelmed and burned out and have been burning the candle at both
ends for three months they’re not going to process information quite as well
they’re not going to take in all this stuff because they’re just like
shell-shocked have you ever seen teachers in the hallway of like an
elementary school Oh at the end of the second nine weeks they just kind of
stand there with this blank look on their face they’re not processing as
much as they were the first day of school and you know God loved them they
have a lot to deal with but we need to help our clients
understand that there are some times that they are going to have to really
stop and focus write things down so they can remember or they can make decisions
a little more my guess is most of us have times in our life when we’ve
been able to think through complex problems but then there are other times
where you just can’t keep it all in your head and you’ve got to put it on a
whiteboard maybe that’s just me but we want clients
to understand that they are not broken they’re not faulty they’re doing the
best they can with the tools they have and the knowledge they have and our job
is to help them see where some of this might have gone a little awry other
causes of thinking errors and emotional motivations I feel bad therefore
whatever I’m thinking must be bad if I’m scared that means whatever it’s coming
on the other end of the phone is bad news moral motivations I did it because
it was the right thing to do and that can be an excuse for doing wrong
behaviors as well it can also be you know you can argue on
the moral one social influence well everyone else is doing it so it must not
be bad set that again a lot of times and this is where the frames approaching the
motivational interviewing is helpful f stands for feedback
about the reality of what’s going on is everybody doing it let’s look at
statistics you know not subjective information let’s look at objective
information so the impact of these thinking errors makes people want to
fight or flee when they get upset and we use upset as a kind of this
all-encompassing garbage term emotionally they get depressed or
anxious we don’t want to feel that way anxiety and anger are flee or fight
fight or flee it’s our body saying there’s a threat you got to do something
depression is your body going I give up I just don’t I don’t even have the
energy to do it anymore behaviorally some people withdraw they
shut down we all know people who get frustrated when they get overwhelmed
when they start feeling hopeless or helpless they just kind of withdraw from
everything and everyone’s addictions numb that out so they don’t have to feel
the dysphoria sleeping problem and changes when we start being on that
constant fight-or-flight hyper-vigilant sort of thing going on in the body is
always sort of turned on which means you’re not going to sleep as well then
the circadian rhythms get messed up which starts causing exhaustion and
lethargy and then everything seems harder because you’re sleep-deprived and
then you start thinking more negatively and more hopelessly you see where this
is going it’s a downward spiral and eating changes some people eat a lot
more because they’re eating comfort foods some people eat a lot less because
their stomach is so torn up from the stress they can’t even think about
holding anything down physical stress-related illnesses fibromyalgia
gastrointestinal problems headaches neck aches backaches you know the whole
the gamut of it when you start feeling bad when you start hurting generally it gets
frustrating after a while and that frustration makes it kind of raises the
the bar brings you up a little bit so you’re
that is much closer to kind of just kind of being overwhelmed you don’t have as much
of a cushion as you would if you were happy healthy well nourished not in pain
and socially a lot of times we will get irritable or impatient with other people
or withdrawal when we’re having these negative cognitions these thinking
errors that are keeping us in a dysphoric state these effects of
thinking errors contribute to fatigue and a sense of hopelessness and
helplessness which intensifies thinking errors this is an important concept that
I want my clients to understand and I want to drive home in this presentation
so thinking errors what are they emotional reasoning feelings are not
facts and we want to help people to learn to effectively identify feelings
and separate them from facts so if somebody says I’m terrified
okay that is a feeling what are the facts supporting that feeling why are
you are terrified what is the evidence that you are in some sort of danger
right now you know and danger may not be the right word for your client at that
a particular point in time but what’s the evidence that there’s a threat in what
ways are this similar to other situations maybe it’s triggering something from the
scary past or you know you were too little to be able to
handle it but you can handle it now and how if you dealt with similar situations
like this, in the past, we want to help people just step back and get some
distance between their feelings and their thoughts and try to figure out you
know which thoughts are helpful and productive and even if a sought makes
people anxious or angry it can be helpful it may be telling them hey dude
you need to get your butt up and get out of there if it’s helpful it means it’s
moving them toward where they want to be happy healthy safe and values-driven
life so happy and helpful developed a stress tolerance skills when people use
emotional reasoning they feel emotions which then they start attributing
finding the facts to support those emotions instead of looking at all the
facts we want to help them learn to tolerate their distress so they can kind
of let that subside for a second they can accept their feeling they can name
they can say I’m scared I’m stressed I’m angry and whatever but they don’t
have to act on it right then they can tolerate the distress for a minute
without having to try to make it go away and emotional regulation skills they can
feel a feeling without having to make it go from zero to 120
you know if they feel sad they go I feel kind of sad instead of grabbing onto it
and going I wonder what I feel sad about I must feel sad about all these sad
things now I’m going to be sad and devastated so we want to
help people learn how to regulate their emotions identify them accept them
whatever word you want to use and tolerate them because feelings are
there for a reason, they’re to tell you your brain thinks something’s going
now thankfully we have that higher-order cognition stuff going on so
we can contradict our brain and we can go you know maybe that’s not true in
this situation cognitive bias negativity mental filter whatever you want to call
it people who focus on the negative they walk in they get up in the morning and
they look outside and it’s partly cloudy they get to work and they said instead
of saying there was it was very light traffic they said there was a fair
amount of traffic everything is always the flip side of
what somebody who’s optimistic would say so asking them what’s the
benefit to focusing on the negative in what ways is this helpful to you you
know some people say well it keeps me from getting disappointed because I know
it’s going to end up negative anyway so we can trap challenges that know that
whatever it is they think they know and see if there have been exceptions when
it hasn’t turned out that way what are the positives to this situation
I give the example a lot of you know I wash my car or it rains and maybe I
wanted to go out on a run that day but I can perceive it I can look at the
positives you know the rain washed my car for me so I don’t have to do it now
score it watered my garden all the better it knocked down some of the
pollen out of there even better I can find and I can encourage people to find
positives in a situation yes there are negatives to every
situation if you want to find them you’re going to find them but if you
want to find the positives you can too which takes us down to what are all the
facts there’s the positive and the negative and the neutral I told you
earlier about the coin toss activity having people toss a coin on the
heads days they act like it is just the greatest day to be alive and see how
things are different when they do their journal because you know I have my
clients do I’m sort of a mindfulness check-in in
the morning and in the evening and preferably at lunchtime how are they
feeling what’s their emotional state what’s their energy level on the happy
days a lot of times it can be less and sometimes they need a little coaching
throughout because some of those old patterns kick in but I want them to
start challenging some of their automatic thoughts that we’re going to
talk about in a minute disqualifying or minimizing the positive most of us can
probably say we’ve had a bunch of clients that do this they are more than
happy to tell you about all the things that they mess up but then when they do
something right they minimize it encouraging people to hold themselves to
the same standard they would hold everyone else to and I know I talked
about that earlier ask them things like would it minimum would you minimize this
if it was your best friend’s experience your best friend came to you and said I
just got into such-and-such college would you say awesome or would you say
anybody can get in there how would that go ask them what is scary about
accepting these positive things that you might have had an
accomplishment for some people it means that it might mean other people expect
more of them for other people they just don’t know how to accept the positive
they don’t know how to accept compliments they don’t know how to be
the center of attention and they don’t like it and then we want to look at why
that is sometimes we disqualify the positive because it fails to meet
someone else’s standards so as people might that be true here you know I know
when I was growing up and going through college and going through school and
everything got my doctorate but I will always be ever and always being not
a real doctor because a Ph.D. is not an MD and I’m like really
so is it somebody else’s standards or can I feel good about having a Ph.D. egocentrism my perspective is the only
perspective I’ll being egocentric but it doesn’t work
most of the time so encouraging people to take alternate perspectives
maybe you’re texting with someone and they say something that is not that you
interpret as not the nicest thing and this happens in a text messages a lot and
they get upset now an egocentric thinking error would say that purse is
just grumpy today someone that’s taking other perspectives would stop and go
back and read the text and go I wonder if maybe this could have been taken some
another way you know cuz their reaction is not what I intended
so egocentrism if you hold on to that I don’t understand anybody else because
you know I don’t see a problem with anything personalizing and mind-reading this is when you assume that everybody’s
frowning because of something you did your boss walks down the hallway
and looks at you and grimaces and continues to walk on oh I must have done
something wrong no maybe he just got out of his senior management meeting that
was five hours long and he’s got to go to the bathroom you know there could be
a hundred different explanations for why that happened so encourage clients to
ask themselves what are some alternate explanations for this event that
doesn’t involve me you know why might this have happened if they hold
on to that, I must have done something wrong but as soon as their boss calls
them up and goes hey can you come to my office for a second you know where their
thoughts are going to go I’m getting fired I’m going to get laid off I don’t
know what it was that I did wrong but he walked by me two weeks ago in the
hallway and grimaced and I’m just I’m the worst person in the whole world
but where did that come from so encouraging people to not necessarily
assume they know what’s going on in someone else’s mind and not
automatically attributing every person’s negative behavior to something they did
how often and then ask them how often has it been about you
now think about the last 10 times you’ve taken something personally how many of
those 10 times has it been about something you did versus something with
the other person then the availability heuristic remembering what’s most
prominent in your mind so asking clients what are the facts ah the most obvious
one that we talk about is plane crashes you know it is way dangerous to fly on a
plane because you hear about all those plane crashes well yeah you hear about
A few planes crash but you don’t hear about the 20,000 every day that land
safely so you remember it and it seems more dangerous because that’s what is in
your mind that’s what is available to you that’s what you’ve based your
thought processes on because maybe you didn’t know that 20,000 planes or more
fly and land just perfectly every day this can also be true with people
remembering what’s most prominent in your mind sometimes and this can be very
very true in domestically violent relationships if somebody falls in love
with someone and that person is just the greatest person since sliced bread for
the first four months and then the cycle starts and there’s this little tiny
a sliver of the honeymoon period after the battering cycle and the person’s like
that’s the person I fell in love with that’s what I remember and they try to
focus on what’s most prominent in their mind and they ignore the rest of
the stuff so we need to encourage people to look objectively at the facts magnification are you confusing high and
low probability outcomes what are the chances that this is going to happen how
many clients have we worked with that have gone to the doctor and gotten in a
physical or get a test run and then the doctor had to call them back and
this could be true for you too and the doctor had to call them back two or
three days later when the tests came back from the lab and that whole three
days they were just in a panic because they
were afraid they were going to get some terminal diagnosis so thinking about
high and low probability outcomes another instance or example of
magnification is somebody that thinks this is the end of the world whatever it
I think I’ve told you before my little story about um tripping when I
was walking down the hall at work and falling and yeah it was embarrassing my
folders went everywhere and yeah but in that big scheme of things will it matter
that much from now you know are people gonna think oh she is such a clutch she
must be a ditz too no I mean they may have thought that at that time I don’t
know but you know in six months nobody’s going to remember and then ask them in
the past when something like this has happened when you’ve had to get a test
done and you’ve had to wait on results or if you’ve done something that was
embarrassing and you didn’t think you thought everybody was going to remember
it forever how did you tolerate it how did you learn to deal with it building
on those strengths that they already have all-or-nothing thinking errors
these are things like love versus hate I love them or I hate them it’s all or
nothing she does this all the time or she never does it if I’m going to do it
I’m going to do it perfectly or I’m not going to do it at all thank you all good
intentions or all bad intentions you know sometimes we do things with good
intentions that have some bad repercussions so did we do it with all
bad intentions are all good intentions and the answer is neither most of the
time life is kind of in that middle-ground gray area encouraging clients to
look and find examples where something hasn’t been one of the polls when having
they do something that they’re proud of that wasn’t perfect or when again
when has somebody else done something that they were proud of that wasn’t
perfect remembering that with availability
heuristic remembering how often something really happens and how long it’s
been since you’ve seen that behavior and remember that sometimes good times are
amazing but how frequent are they compared with the bad times another thinking error is a belief in a
just world or a fallacy of fairness I just asked clients to identify for good
people you know who’ve had bad things happen and in reality we all have bad
things happen good people do bad people do in between people do attributional
errors and this is a pet of mine you know labeling yourself is not a behavior so
global versus specific and I am stupid versus I’m stupid at math I don’t have
good math skills it’s not about me it’s about the skills I can change skills
stable I am and I always will be versus it’s something I can change it’s
something I can learn internally it’s about me as a person versus it’s about a
skill deficit or something I could learn or change and there’s you know lots of
information on attributions out there on the internet if you need a refresher on
it but we find that a lot of people who have dysphoria have negative global
stable internal attributions so questions for clients remember the
beliefs equal thoughts and facts plus personal interpretation another way of
saying it is reality is 10% perception is 10% reality and 90% interpretation so
what are the facts for and against my belief is the belief based on facts or
feelings do the belief focus on one aspect or the whole situation does the
belief seem to use any thinking errors what are alternate explanations what
would you tell your child or best friend if they had this belief how would you
want someone to tell what would you want someone to tell you about this belief so
if you’re telling somebody about this what are you hoping they’re going to say
in return and finally, how is this belief moving you toward what and who is
important to you or moving you away from what or who is important to you now they
can do a worksheet and have all of these or you can pick one or two of these
questions that are most salient for your clients but they can have kind of at
their fingertips so as they’re going through the day and something happens
they can ask themselves ok what’s an alternate explanation or you know
whatever it is this is salient for that client’s irrational thoughts about how to do these
thoughts impact the client’s emotions health relationships and perceptions of
the world you know this is what we want to ask them how is this thought
impacting you globally how may this thought has been helpful in the past
where did it come from how does it make sense from when you formed it in the
past when you’re dealing with it ask the person if the thought is bringing you
closer to those that are important are there any examples of this thought or
belief not being true and how can the statement be made less global less
all-encompassing so it’s about a specific incident a specific situation
less stable which means you can change it and less internal which means it’s
not about who you are as a person but maybe something that you do or a skill
that you have so we’re going to go through some of these thoughts real
quickly here mistakes are never acceptable and if I make one it means
that I’m incompetent well never is kind of stable and I am incompetent is kind
of global that’s also that extreme all-or-nothing thinking so you can see
where these cognitive distortions end up leading to unhelpful beliefs
when somebody disagrees with me it’s a personal attack well there’s
personalization if I ever heard it before maybe it’s not about you may be
they’re having a bad day and you just happen to be the unlucky target or maybe
they’re disagreeing with you because they have a different point of view and
it’s not a personal attack it’s just their point of view if someone
criticizes or rejects me there must be something wrong with me
personalization all-or-nothing thinking global stable and internal something
wrong with me as a person to feel good about myself others must approve of me
now this is one we’ve talked about external validation before and we can’t
control other people to feel good about yourself how can you do that
besides necessarily requiring other people to approve of you to be
content in the life I must be liked by all people Wow I’ve never met anybody who’s
liked by all people I’ve never even met anybody who’s been hated by all people
but it’s important to help clients see how this is dramatic to say all
people and for them to be content then everybody has to like them
I mean I like to be liked but if everybody doesn’t like me you know
that’s pretty understandable my true value as an individual depends on what
others think of me I would challenge this one this is all you know
also, very personal internal I would challenge people to look at and say it
so your child’s value as an individual depends on what other people think of
he or most people would say no but the perspective thing nothing ever turns
out the way, you want it to okay all-or-nothing thinking and probably
the availability heuristic if something bad just happened then they may be focusing
on that which causes them to focus on all the other bad things in the past
that have happened not to focus on that is okay you know bad thing
happen but look at all these good things I won’t try anything new unless I will
be good at it this fear of failure fear of rejection
it just really paralyzes a lot of people when they get stuck with that thinking
the area that they have to be perfect I am in total control of anything bad that
happens is my fault well that’s egocentric and personal if
they think they’re in total control that’s their perception of how the world
are they think if they’ve got everybody on marionette strings anything
bad in the world that happens is their fault how powerful are they
I feel happy about uh if I feel happy about life something will go wrong
it happens sometimes but let’s look at times when you’ve been happy that
something hasn’t gone wrong you know let’s get rid of that all-or-nothing
thinking it’s not my fault my life didn’t go the way I wanted could be true
but it seems like that’s making you unhappy so what do we do about that if
I’m not in an intimate relationship I’m alone
no, again that’s pretty extreme I’m either in an intimate relationship, or I
am alone and a loner and you know it’s just me and my 17 cats which follows
with there’s no gray area so encouraging people to look at what these
beliefs are saying important thoughts impacts behaviors and emotional and
physical reactions emotional and physical reactions impact thoughts and
interpretations of events so if you do something and it’s pleasurable
and you have a great physical reaction you know let’s take bungee jumping or
skydiving if you go out there and it’s scary but you do it and you’re just like
whoa what a rush your interpretation of that is probably going to be good which
means you’ll probably do it again if you go out there and it’s just the most
horrible experience you’ve ever had you’re probably not going to do it again
and your interpretation of it is going to be not good which is going to make it
hard to understand why other people would do it irrational
thinking patterns are often caused by cognitive distortions so let’s just look
back at some of those because there are a lot fewer cognitive distortions or
general ways of thinking about the world then there are thinking errors because
there are lots and lots of thinking errors cognitive distortions are often schemas
which were formed based on faulty inaccurate or immature knowledge or
understanding and by identifying the thoughts of the hecklers you know the
automatic tapes that are maintaining our unhappiness the person can choose
whether to accept those thoughts or change them As found on YouTubeThis solution reverses kidney disease! Guaranteed to be effective or your money back: Beat kidney disease. Just by following a simple treatment plan, you can reverse kidney disease. No matter how old you are! Just listen to what people who have tried this solution have to say. “Thank God I came across your solution by accident! Dad’s kidney function decreased from 36% to 73% in just two months. He’s 90 years old! His doctor said people his age shouldn’t have kidneys that efficient!” Graeme Asham, QLD, Australia, And this… “No more dizzy spells! My creatinine has gone down from a staggering 1800 to 1100. My blood count has greatly improved and I’ve been taken off my blood pressure medication. Your solution works! ” Joe Taliana, 55, Malta Simply follow the scientifically backed solution and restore your kidneys, fast! => This solution reverses kidney disease! ← https://www.facebook.com/100000332115031/videos/590895892954739/ яαℓρн ℓєαмαи
this episode was pre-recorded
as part of a live continuing education webinar on-demand CEUs are
still available for this presentation AllCEUs.com/Anxiety-CEU I’d like to welcome everybody to today’s
presentation on best practices for the treatment of anxiety I am your host, Dr. Dawn Elise Snipes now not too long ago we did
a presentation on strengths-based biopsychosocial approaches to addressing anxiety while
those are wonderful you know I thought maybe we ought to look at you know what’re some of the
current research so I went into PubMed which is I don’t know it’s a playground for me it’s where
you find a lot of journal articles and you can sort I sorted by articles that were
done and meta-analyses that were done within the past five years so that gives us an idea
about current research I mean there’s a lot of stuff that is still the same like some of
the medications that were known to work ten years ago are still known to be you know good
first-line treatments but there are also some newcomers that we’ll talk about and there are
also, some changes that we’re going to talk about so we’re going to explore some common causes
for anxiety symptoms to treat, we need to and of course, this does play into
the biopsychosocial aspect we need to understand kind of what causes it because anxiety
that’s caused by for example somebody having a racing heart may be different than anxiety that’s
caused for somebody who has abandonment issues so we’re gonna treat the two things differently so
we want to look at some of the common causes we’re gonna look at some common triggers for anxiety
Do you know what are some of these common themes that we see in practice I will ask you to share
some of the themes that you see that underline or underlie a lot of your client’s anxiety and
identify current best practices for anxiety management including counseling interventions
medications physical interventions and supportive treatments so we care because anxiety can
be debilitating and a lot of our clients have anxiety a lot of our clients have anxiety
comorbid with depression and they’re looking at us going how can I feel anxious and stressed out
and like I can’t sit still and be depressed at the same time you know when you’re depressed you’re
supposed to want to sleep well a lot of times people who have both issues want to
sleep but they can’t so I want to help clients understand that also sometimes anxiety when
people are anxious for long enough the body starts kind of holding on to the cortisol the body
recognizes at a certain point this is a losing battle I’m not going to put energy into
this anymore so it starts withdrawing some of its excitatory neurotransmitters so to speak and
people will start to feel depressed the brain has already said this is hopeless this is
you’re helpless to change the situation so then people start feeling hopeless and helpless
which is sort of the definition if you will of depression low-grade chronic stress and anxiety
arose energy and people’s ability to concentrate so if we’re going to help them become their uber
selves we need to help them figure out how to address anxiety not just generalized overwhelming
debilitating anxiety but also panic social anxiety and those minor anxiety triggers that come along
that may not meet the threshold for diagnosis anxiety is a major trigger for addiction relapse
if you have a client who is self-medicated before or had an addiction for some reason anxiety is a
major trigger increased physical pain when anxiety goes up people tend to tense their muscles when
they tense their muscles they tend to feel more pain I mean think about when you’re stressed you
tend to have more pain like in your neck your back and things that already hurt may hurt more
why because serotonin which is one of our major anti-anxiety neurotransmitters is also one of our
major pain modulators so when serotonin levels are too low because anxiety is high then our pain
perception is going to be more acute and people can have sleep problems if they’re stressed out
your body thinks there’s a threat you’re not going to be able to get into that deep restful
sleep you may have you may sleep a lot but it’s probably not quality sleep which
means your neurotransmitters may get out of whack your hormones make it out of whack and your body
is going to start perceiving yourself in a persistent state of stress when you’re exhausted
the body knows that we may be the weakest link in the herd so it continues to secrete cortisol
to keep you on alert a little bit so you may again you may be resting kind of like when
you have a new baby at home those first couple of months that my children were home from the
the hospital I slept but I didn’t sleep well I mean the slightest little noise and I was awake and I
was looking around and you know I felt it I felt exhausted and a lot of new parents do so triggers
for anxiety abandonment and rejection and we’re going to talk about ways we might want to deal
with these things but some of the underlying themes that I’ve seen in a lot of clients and when
I do the research and a lot of what themes that come out include low self-esteem if someone has
low self-esteem they’re looking to be externally validated oftentimes they’re looking for somebody
else to tell them you’re lovable you’re okay so that can lead to anxiety about not having
people to tell them you’re okay which makes their relationships tenuous and can make them
dysfunctional irrational thoughts and cognitive distortions may lead people to believe that if I’m
not perfect for example I am not lovable so we’re going to look at some irrational thoughts and
cognitive distortions unhealthy social supports and relationships when you’re in a relationship
it takes two to tango and even if your client is relatively mentally and physically healthy if they
are in a dysfunctional relationship they can fear abandonment and rejection if that other person
is always saying if you don’t do X I’m going to leave you or if that other person is always
cheating on them or whatever so relationships can trigger abandonment anxiety and ineffective
interpersonal skills can lead to relationship turmoil and social exile if our clients are in
relationships even if they’re not completely dysfunctional if our clients are not able to ask
for what they need and set appropriate boundaries and manage conflict effectively because conflict
happens in every relationship then they may start to argue more which may lead to fearing may lead
to relationships ending in the past and them going well every relationship I get into ends which
means I must not be lovable so they start fearing abandonment and rejection these are four areas
that we can look at one more assessing clients another issue is the unknown and loss of control
a lot of times negative self-talk and cognitive distortions can contribute to that if I don’t have
control of everything then it’s all going to be a disaster negative others when clients hang out
or when people hang out with negative people it kind of wears on you after a while you notice
that people who tend to be more negative pessimistic conspiracy-minded tend to hang out
with people who are also negatively pessimistic and conspiracy-minded so if you’re hanging out with
somebody who tends to be anxious then the anxiety can be palpable and it can kind of permeate
physical complaints can lead people to be anxious because they don’t know what’s causing it
like I said earlier sometimes if your heart starts to race if you don’t know what’s causing it for you
can start thinking I’m having a heart attack or I’m gonna die when people have panic attacks for
the example they truly think they’re having a heart attack and it’s I’ve had them they are very
very unpleasant experiences but when people start having physical complaints and it can be you
know they have a weird rash that they can’t get to go away or whatever but when they don’t know
what it is and they can’t control it they can’t make it go away they start thinking about all
the worst-case scenarios and going online and getting on WebMD which usually gives you all the
worst-case scenarios um so physical complaints are important we need to normalize the fact that
nobody’s pain-free all the time and you know the fact that you may have an ache or a pain or a lump
or a bump or you know a cough most likely you know when we look at probability the probability of it
being something significant is pretty small now do you want to get it checked out probably but
you know the probability that is anything to be worried about is relatively small and a sense
of powerlessness can trigger fear of the unknown and loss of control for somebody who doesn’t
feel like they have any agency in their life if they have an external locus of control or
if they felt victimized all of their life then they may fear not being in control they may be
holding on and saying okay this is the one area of my life I can control when I grew up you know
I grew up in a very chaotic environment I had no control I was bounced around in the foster system
yadda yadda yadda now that I’m an adult you know I can control these things and I am going to hold
on with white knuckles and if I can’t control everything then that terrifies me to death and
loss are other triggers for anxiety and it can be people or pets and pets are important I don’t
want to minimize pets because you know they are little parts of a lot of our families so making
sure we check that my daughter’s dog for example is it’s getting old she’s getting older she’s 14
now I think and you know she’s in decent health we took her to the vet and the vet said yeah she’s
got a little heart murmur but that’s expected for a 14-year-old dog and but when she goes out if she
doesn’t come back when I call her I have this rush of anxiety for a second oh my gosh I hope this
wasn’t the day so anxious around losing people and you know if she when she crosses the bridge
she will and you know I’m okay with that I’m I have a harder time dealing with my daughter’s
emotional turmoil when that happens and because she’s grown up with this dog so you know those
are the types of things that we want to talk about with our clients what things are weighing on you
that you may not even be thinking about because I know in the back of my mind there’s always that
worry about one of our donkeys and her dog jobs and promotions can trigger anxiety if people are
afraid they’re gonna lose their job if they’re always afraid that you know they’re gonna walk in
and get a pink slip or get fired you know we want to help them look at how realistic they are
you doing what you need to do to achieve and keep your job and sometimes it’s not easy to
the answer I mean the first thought that a lot of us have is well you know if you’re doing the right
a thing so just do it but there are those bosses out there and I’ve had some amazing bosses
a lot of them and I’ve had two horrendous bosses and those two bosses I could never I
never felt like I was able to do anything right and so going to those jobs there was always this
anxiety about what I’m what am I going to get in trouble for today so you want to talk with people
about does your job cause anxiety what can you do to moderate that anxiety the same thing with
promotions people may get anxious about whether they’re going to get promoted to safety and security
you know when you lose safety and security you can feel anxious so if there’s a break-in at
the house next door or shooting down the road or you start watching the news you can feel very
unsafe and insecure quickly so we want to help people figure out how safe and secure are you
really and a lot of it goes back to looking at facts when people lose their dreams and hopes
or fear that they’re going to lose their dreams and hopes they can start to get anxious you know
they have this dream that they’re going to be a doctor or I just finished the presentation on
helping high school students transition to college and a lot of high school students for example
start college with these wide eyes and hopes to save the world and they want to be doctors
and engineers and this and that and they get into it and they realize that it’s a lot harder
then they thought or they realize that you know what I don’t like this but I’ve already
committed to it so what do I do I want to help people but I can’t I can’t cut it doing this you
know for me I figured out in my second year that I wasn’t going to medical school because I wasn’t
going to pass calculus and that caused a lot of anxiety it was like okay what am I gonna do now
Do you know what career should I choose to help people figure out do they have dreams that have
maybe kind of crashed and burned and you have to find new ones you know okay that one we’ve got to
accept it figure out that it’s not going to be and what can you do now people may also have dreams
about relationships they get into relationships and see themselves with this person forever
and then this relationship ends and or starts to get rocky and they’re like but that’s my dream
what happens if that’s got to happen because it’s my dream I don’t know how to function if
that goes away we want to help people be able to rewrite their narrative and then sickness spiders
and other phobias kind of go in with death a lot of times when people get sick they start getting
anxious that oh my gosh what if this is terminal oh my gosh what if this is you know incurable
if I get bit by a spider it’s gonna kill me and which is rare you know there are very few spiders
that is actually that poisonous same thing with snakes going over bridges I’ve shared with you all
that is not one of my irrational fears you know I am just terrified that you know something’s going
to happen and I’m going to get pushed off the side of the bridge which is completely irrational but
we need to help people look at those and identify the thoughts that they’re telling themself about
those phobias and dealing with that anxiety failure is another –trigger for anxiety especially in
this culture our culture American culture is large part puts a high premium on success
and perfectionism so when people realize that they’re not perfect they may start to get anxious
because they feel like if I’m not perfect then I’m a failure you know those cognitive distortions of
all-or-nothing thinking and they start with that negative self-talk you know you can’t do anything
right so those are some of the issues that you know we often see in counseling sessions so what
do we do you know somebody comes in and is like I can’t live this way doc anxiety depression and
substance disorders as well as a range of physical disorders are often comorbid so this is the first
the thing we need to realize is that we’re very rarely dealing with a very simple
the diagnosis you know when somebody comes in we need to figure out you know if they come in and they’re
presenting with depression all right let’s talk about that and then we start realizing that there
depression started to occur after a long period of being anxious okay so we need
to deal with that but we also need to help them with their sense of hopelessness and helplessness
we need to develop that sense of empowerment and then substance disorders we know that substance
use is often a way of self-medicating but we also know that it monkeys with the neurochemicals
in the brain and can contribute to anxiety and depression the same thing to physical issues pain
from physical disorders anxiety about having physical disorders medications you’re taking for
physical disorders can all contribute to anxiety so we need to look at the person as a whole and go
what are all the things that are contributing to the anxiety and what are all the things that the
anxiety is contributing to so we have started having this big list of stuff that needs to be
addressed and then we can start figuring out okay where we start so knowing that these things
are comorbid helps researchers explore pathways to mental disorders so they can start figuring
out you know what little string can we pull to unravel this blanket of anxiety so it doesn’t
suffocate somebody and for us, as clinicians, it provides us key opportunities to intervene in you
know sometimes clients will come in and start talking about their
anxiety and their physical issues you know maybe their anxieties about you know heart
palpitations and because that’s a common one we may want to encourage them to go see the doctor to
get that ruled out you know rule out anything that has to do with hormone imbalances or you know
heart conditions or anything else that might be contributing to it which can help them address
it and if they do have physical disorders let’s go with hormone imbalances that are contributing
to the heart palpitations then they can start to treat that if they don’t start to treat that then
no amount of talk therapy we do is going to get them to the quality of life that they’re looking
for because they’re still gonna feel those so we want to make sure that we’re addressing them
holistically anxiety disorders should be treated with psychological therapy pharmacy therapy or a
combination of both and what they found and this is no surprise this is kind of old news is that
counseling Plus pharmacotherapy tends to have the best outcomes but separating the two have
similar outcomes in many cases but that’s just looking at and I hate to call it simple anxiety
but we’re just looking at anxiety symptoms here we’re not looking at the full quality of life and we
want to make sure that we’re also including any medical issues behavioral therapy is regarded
as the psychotherapy with the highest level of evidence, there are a variety of cognitive
behavioral approaches ranging from acceptance and commitment therapy to dialectical behavior
therapy to CBT to debt you know any of those that deal with the thoughts and the cognitions that fall in
that realm and it is effective in the current conceptualization of the etiology
of anxiety disorders includes an interaction of psychosocial factors such as childhood adversity
or stressful events and a genetic vulnerability so the psychosocial factors and these are other
things when we do our assessment we want to pay attention to because our approach to treatment
is going to be different for people for example who have trauma-related brain changes maybe
then for somebody who doesn’t so, we want to look at childhood adversity and stressful events
that it may have caused basically what I tell clients is like rewiring of the brain there
are trauma-related brain changes in soldiers and especially in children or in people who’ve been
exposed to extreme trauma that is designed to protect them but it also can cause complications
kind of later on in dealing with anxiety coping skills that were learned that are ineffective you
know sometimes people grow up in a household or an environment or a situation where they don’t learn
effective coping skills so we need to kind of help them unlearn those and learn new ones build on
their strengths and trauma issues that may still need to be dealt with such as domestic violence
you know if they grew up a lot around a lot of domestic violence they may think you know I’m
out of that situation it’s over I don’t want to think about it it’s not bothering me anymore or a
parental absence and I put absence because it can be death it can be a parent that just packed up
and left it could be a child that got put up for adoption whatever put the child in a position of
feeling like they were rejected by a parent can be very traumatic and bullying among other things
but there are a lot of trauma issues that people once they’re out of that situation often say you
know I’m out of it it’s not a big deal I dealt with it let’s move on and they don’t realize the
full ramifications and how that’s contributing to their current anxiety and their current self-talk
and cognitions of current stressors if somebody has a lot of current stressors that are also going to
impact whether they develop generalized anxiety you know we’re kind of stacking the deck here and
the current availability of social support if they don’t have effective current social support then
they’re gonna have difficulty bearing the weight of everything on their shoulders so we want
to look at all these psychosocial factors when we do our assessment now going back to the trauma
issues if you’ve taken the trauma courses at all CEUs you know that some people are not ready
to acknowledge that the trauma is still bothering them or work on the trauma and that’s okay we
can educate them that it might be an issue and then let them choose how to address it but
we want to bear in mind the fact that you know this could be sort of an underlying force
motivating some of the current cognitions and genetic vulnerability so you take any three
people and you put them or 300 people and you put them through roughly the same psychosocial
situations they’re all probably going to react a little bit differently based on their prior
experiences but also because of their genetic makeup there are certain permutations and they
found four we’ll talk about later that make the brain more or less responsive to stress and
more or less responsive to serotonin which is your calming chemical so brains that are less
responsive to serotonin isn’t going to you know send out as much or send out serotonin as easily
so people can stay kind of tensed and wired that’s an oversimplified explanation but that’s
all you need for right now so genetic vulnerability impacts people’s susceptibility
to the effects and development of dependence on certain substances which can increase anxiety
when people are detoxing from alcohol when they’re detoxing from benzos when they’re detoxing from
opiates they can feel high levels of anxiety when they take opiates some people find that opiates
have wonderful anti-anxiety properties not that I am advocating for the use of opiates I’m
just client experiences have shown that that can be true so some people are going to be
more susceptible to the anti-anxiety effects of certain substances and some people are going
to be Cerrone to become dependent on substances where others may not and that part of that is
genetic vulnerability and they estimate about 30% the predictability of the development
of anxiety disorders is genetic and genetics also impact which medications are effective
if you have genetic makeup then SSRIs might be helpful if you have genetic makeup be then
atypical antipsychotics may be more effective and SSRIs might not do anything which is why
a lot of our clients get so frustrated because they know there’s no way to figure out exactly what I
guess there is now that there’s genetic testing out there but up until then it was harder to
figure out which medications to start with and most physicians matter of fact I don’t know of
a single physician that starts by saying well let’s do a genetic profile to see
what med to start you out with most we’ll start with events as with an SSRI or some other
anti-anxiety medication some sort of benzo that’s been my experience so we may want
to encourage clients to consider genetic testing if they’re having difficulty finding a
medication regime that works for them and they are feeling like they have to have medication
genetic vulnerability also affects what’s going to make somebody more vulnerable now than all of you
in class today you know thinking about sleep you know sleep may not be a big deal for some of you
I know people who can go days or weeks with four or five hours of sleep and they feel fine it’s
not a big deal, not me I need eight or nine hours of sleep so genetically for whatever reason I am
programmed to need a lot of sleep so when I don’t get that much sleep I tend to be it tends to be
harder for me to deal with life on life’s terms and I know that that makes me more vulnerable to
being irritable so genetic vulnerability affects who can become addicted and affects what medications
work best and affects what situations are going to tend to make somebody more vulnerable to
anxiety so our medications and I know the type on here is small but we’re going to go through
the first-line drugs are the SSRIs selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and SNRs is
selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors now the names are a little bit deceptive because
selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors also increase available serotonin but the mechanism
of action is different the mechanism of action for each SSRI is a little bit different as well
which is why you can put somebody on Prozac and they have an awful experience and you can put them
on Zoloft and they have a much better experience like I said earlier a lot of the research pre
five years ago had been done on medications and Zoloft Paxil luvox Lexapro Celexa and their
generics have all been found to be effective at treating anxiety in certain people no one
the medication works for everybody in the last five years Effexor has come on the radar and it has
been found effective according to the hamilton rating scale for anxiety so that’s another one to
consider if clients are not successful or getting the treatment effect that they need for on some
of the other medications obviously, none of us probably are prescribers but we do need to educate
clients about why the first drug or even the third drug that the doc tries may not work so they
don’t start feeling helpless and hopeless like I said earlier there are at least four different
genetic variations which are correlated with the development of generalized anxiety disorder and
different medications are more or less effective depending on the genetic makeup of the person
there’s a high mortality rate moving on to two benzos the recommendation has switched
to back off from the use of benzos now for some doctors will prescribe an SSRI and for the
first four weeks while the SSRI is building up in the system they will also prescribe a benzo
to be taken as needed to moderate the anxiety and you know you could argue on either side
of that, if somebody has a history of substance use or substance dependence benzos are really
a bad idea because they do have a high rate of dependence but the other reasons that they are now
cautioning against the use of benzodiazepines is that there’s a higher mortality rate among benzo
users compared with non-users there’s an increased risk for dependence with use for more than six
months and that’s a long time to be using benzo and when we’re talking about dependence and six
months we’re talking about somebody who uses it like every four hours or every eight hours
depending on your benzo every single day not a PRN user if somebody’s using it at night to
help them go to sleep or you know three or four times a week when the anxiety gets high
the risk of dependence is relatively low but a lot of people with anxiety because if they find
the right benzo makes them feel so much better they may not want to be off of it and for a lot of
people when that benzo reaches its half-life and starts getting out of the system even more their
anxiety spikes you know they have rebound anxiety which they want to medicate with more benzos
that’s gonna be an issue for them to discuss with their doctor there’s also an increased risk
of dementia identified in long-term benzodiazepine users again this is for the people who use you
know throughout the day every day for six months or relatively every day for six months or more
and it doesn’t matter if it’s you know we’re talking about somebody who’s 65 or somebody
who’s 35 who’s been using benzos for you know six months a year two years the risk of later
life dementia is greatly increased according to the research benzodiazepines also don’t treat
depression okay so if you’ve got somebody who has concurrent anxiety and depression there’s a much
higher suicide risk if they’re on benzodiazepines so being aware and generally that suicide risk
comes from overdosing on benzodiazepines but not always other treatment options you know if the
benzos aren’t something that people want to touch you know they scare the living daylights out of
me and SSRIs and SNRIs don’t seem to be working then tricyclic antidepressants can be tried on those
your older generation antidepressant Seroquel is used a lot and there are some there’s some
research that shows it can be effective with anxiety like some of the antidepressants and
depending on the person the benzos Seroquel can make people very very very sleepy so you know
it may not be the side effects of the Seroquel the weight gain and the fatigue and you know
sleepiness may be an unacceptable side effect for some clients and boosts perón is the third option
boost Barone works more like an anti-depressive serotonin reuptake inhibitor and that it takes
you know four weeks or so to kind of build up in the system studies have shown that there’s really
no long-term benefit to taking it but after six months to eighteen months of use it has been shown to
be effective in talking with clients a lot of clients report that boost bar when they take it
doesn’t necessarily help them stop being anxious like a benzodiazepine does but it helps them not
go from zero to 200 in 2.3 seconds it kind of you know keeps them from having this gush of a freak
out reaction every time something goes wrong which a lot of clients report helps because they feel
more stable throughout the day after remission medication should be continued for six to twelve
months and during that last six months first six months keep it as is last six months you know
they say that tapering is best it’s best not to stop somebody cold turkey on any of these but
it’s important for people once they’re in remission to not just suddenly go okay I feel
better I don’t need any of this anymore they need to work into it and make sure they’ve developed
the skills and tools that they need to deal with some of the anxiety that is going to
happen in life so physical signs and symptoms of anxiety may include fatigue irritability muscle
tension or muscle aches try laying feeling twitchy being easily startled trouble sleeping nausea
diarrhea irritable bowel syndrome headaches so the first thing we want to do with clients when we’re
talking to them well second thing first thing is to say get a physical to let’s rule out physiological
causes of this but we can also help clients look at you know what might be causing these
things that you can do to mitigate it what might be contributing to your fatigue what might be
contributing to your irritability and your muscle tension or your muscle aches I mean let’s look at
economics did you recently get a new bed or do you need to get a new bed what about your desk chair I
know you know I get more muscle tension and muscle achy when I do a lot of mousing because I have
deplorable posture being becoming aware of that helps and then I’m like okay well I know it caused
unfortunately, it’s unpleasant but it’s not a big deal trembling or feeling twitchy you know
that can be caused by low blood sugar that can be caused anxiety that can also be caused
by early onset Parkinson’s symptoms you know there’s you know it can be worst case scenario
or it can be something benign so we want to have people figure out you know when you start
trembling or feeling twitchy is there something that it’s related to you know I know when my
son gets excited he’s he just sits there and you can see him almost shake because he’s so
excited about something so we want to have people prevent misidentification we don’t want them
to jump to that worst-case scenario we don’t want them to go onto WebMD and go oh my gosh I’ve
got cancer I’ve got this debilitating disease and I’m going to die in six months probabilistic Lee
speaking it’s not gonna happen yes get a doctor’s opinion I’m certainly not going to tell them it’s
all in your head I want them to get an evaluation but I do want to in the meantime
help them think about how likely is this and other things for headaches and this is
one another one of those that can be frustrating as we get older our eyesight starts to go and
you know there was a period there I did fine and then after I hit 45 my eyesight just started
to like steadily and kind of rapidly in my mind decline so I have to get my eyeglass prescription
changed every couple of years and that can cause headaches so instead of starting to worry
about oh my gosh I’ve got a headache all the time maybe I’ve got a brain tumor you know I know that
it’s probably my glasses or I’m grinding my teeth so other biological interventions that
have been evaluated there’s something called the floatation rest system that reduced environmental
stimulation therapy reduces sensory input into the nervous system through the act of floating
supine which is on your back in a pool of water saturated with Epsom salt you know I’m looking at
this going sounds good and you can’t quite get the same experience in a bathtub because
you’re not floating you’ve got pressure points and you’re still hearing stuff clients can sort of
simulate it with you know earplugs or whatever but it’s if they can access this it’s been shown
to be effective the float experience is calibrated so that sensory signals from visual
auditory olfactory gustatory thermal tactile or tactile vestibular gravitational and preceptive
channels are minimized which means you don’t see here taste touch smell feel nothing as is most
movement and speech so you want people to lay just like completely motionless and not talk which can
be hard for some people with anxiety in the study the study I looked at fifty participants
reported significant reductions in stress muscle tension pain depression and negative effects and it
was accompanied by significant improvement in mood characterized by increases in relaxation happiness
and well-being I read the study I’m like where can I sign up you know it sounds in looking at some of
the research this was more effective for addressing anxiety than something like a massage
Tai Chi also produced significant reductions in anxiety there was approximately a 20% treatment
effect 25% treatment effect in patients with anxiety and fibromyalgia who practiced twice a
week for a year now you know we want to look at the confounding things here is it the Tai Chi
itself or is it learning to control the muscles and becoming more in tune with your body and
learning to control your breathing helps people reduce their anxiety either way you know
Tai Chi helps people do that and it was shown that after a year after the first six months, there was
a significant treatment effect but after a year you know it kept growing and after a year it was
about 25% so Tai Chi can be effective acupuncture at the HT 7 median Meridian can
attenuate anxiety-like behavior induced by withdrawal from chronic morphine treatment through
the meditation of the GABA receptor system what does that mean that means if you if the
acupuncture is done in very certain places the anxiety behavior the GABA a receptor
system GABA is your main calming relaxation neurochemical that is triggered and causes your
body to sort of flood that receptor system and this research was done on people who were detoxing
from morphine treatment but we can look at generalizing the results and I would be interested
to see further studies on it pain other things we need to do to help people with anxiety when people
are in chronic pain they often have anxiety that oh my gosh this is getting worse or it’s never
gonna get better or I just can’t take this pain anymore or they may get anxious that they’re going
to be rejected because they can’t do some of the things they used to do because they’re in so much
pain so there’s a lot of guilt and anxiety that can kind of revolve around pain what can we do
to help clients guided imagery is generally very helpful if we can help them imagine you know if
that pain in their shoulder imagine the pain is like the color red flowing out of their arm
or other focus mindfulness so you know when you think about something you know when you get a shot
if I don’t think about it it doesn’t hurt near as much as if the nurse says okay now one two three
and you know she’s counting down and I’m getting prepared and I’m focused on it I had
another nurse one time who she was just talking to me and you know put the alcohol on my arm
and just kept on talking and didn’t tell me she was getting ready to give me a shot and before I knew
it she had given me a shot and she was like okay we’re done I’m like you didn’t give me a shot yet
she said yes I did it’s like oh so not focusing on it and next time you have an itch for example
if you’ve ever been driving on the interstate and you can reach on your foot I get those on
the bottom of my foot sometimes and I’m like okay I’m not going to pull over to each my foot if you
focus on something besides the itch eventually it goes away I’m not saying the pain is gonna completely
go away but the more people focus on it the more it hurts physical therapy can help so encourage
them to get a referral and encourage them to do a self-evaluation if nothing else of ergonomics in
their car at work where they watch TV and spend most of their time at home and they’re sleeping
so those are the four places that they spend most of their time what do their ergonomics look like
and that can help a lot of people mitigate a lot of pain hormones are another thing that
we need to look at imbalances of estrogen and testosterone can contribute to anxiety symptoms
heart palpitations fatigue irritability having people get a physical we can’t as clinicians do
anything about it but doctors can rapid heart weight rate sweating palpitations are not uncommon
in women in perimenopause or menopause so a lot of women start feeling like they’re developing
generalized anxiety and/or something’s going wrong when they start reaching that mid-40s to mid-50s
area and they start having some of these symptoms again we’re not going to diagnose it but we do
want them to recognize that it may not be anything you know is catastrophic this is something that a
a lot of women experience and help them figure out how to deal with that supportive care biologically
now you know this isn’t gonna treat anything but we can help them minimize their vulnerabilities
help them create a sleep routine so their brain and body can rebalance this can help repair any
adrenal issues that may be going on and improve energy levels people with anxiety don’t sleep well
so helping them figure out how to get some quality sleep is important nutrition minimizing caffeine
and other stimulants are going to be a big help because those make people feel anxious and encourage
them to work with a nutritionist to try to prevent spikes and drops in blood sugar which can trigger
the stress response when your blood sugar goes way up or way down you can start getting kind of shaky
and feel weird and that can cause people anxiety because they might think oh my gosh I’m having a
stroke or a heart attack or you know I don’t know what these tremors are so it’s important that
they don’t miss identify symptoms and encourage them to drink enough water dehydration can lead
to toxic Ardea which is increased heart rate sunlight vitamin D deficiency is implicated
in both depression and anxiety mood issues vitamin D has been found in those main areas where
serotonin receptors are found vitamin D receptors are found so we know the serotonin and vitamin D
have something going on sunlight prompts the skin to tell the brain to produce neurotransmitters and
set circadian rhythms which impact the release of serotonin your calming neurochemical melatonin
which is made from breaking down serotonin and helps you sleep and GABA so sunlight actually
helps increase the release of GABA when it’s time to start calming down and going to sleep
exercise studies have shown that exercise can have a relaxing effect and encourage clients to start
slowly there’s not a whole lot of new research on exercise and anxiety aromatherapy has been
used a lot, especially in other countries in the treatment of people with anxiety people with
hospital anxiety people women who are giving birth and they have some birth anxiety there they’ve
been found to be effective in a lot of those studies essential oils for anxiety include
lavender rose Bedevere ylang ylang bergamot chamomile frankincense and Clary sage encourage
clients to just go to a health food store and you know sniff some of these and see if it makes them
feel happy and calm and content the aromatherapy molecules enter the nasal membranes and they
will start triggering neurochemical reactions and so you don’t need to apply it you don’t need
to ingest it all you need to do is so encourage clients if they’re open to it to think about this
because aromatherapy can be integrated into their bedroom for example with an atomizer or a Mr.It
can be incorporated in a lot of different places again where they’re not applying it or ingesting
it in any way all they’re doing is smelling it they’ve used it in defusing aromatherapy in
hospital emergency rooms and they found that it reduces stress and irritability the people in
emergency rooms and I’ve been to enough emergency rooms over the years to know that
people who are in ers typically are not in the best mood so if it can help those people then
it’s probably going to have some sort of an effect so psychologically helping clients realize
that their body thinks there’s a threat for some reason that’s why it triggered the threat response
a system which is what they call anxiety so they need to figure out why is there a threat
you know sometimes it’s like the fire alarm going off in my house it just means that the windows are
open and there’s a strong breeze there is no fire there is no problem there’s just a malfunction
it’s a false alarm a lot of times clients get this threat reaction they get this stress
reaction and it’s not a big deal right now so they can start modifying what their brain responds to
and again those basic fears that a lot of people worry about failure rejection loss of control the
unknown and death and loss distress tolerance is one of those cognitive interventions that have
taken center stage in anxiety research and it isn’t about controlling your anxiety you know
helping people recognize their anxiety acknowledge it and say okay I’m anxious it is what it is
how can I improve the next moment instead of saying I’m anxious I shouldn’t be anxious I hate
being anxious and slang with that anxiety let it go just accept it is what it is have the client
learn to start saying I am feeling anxious okay so distract don’t react because I explain to them
the whole notion of feelings comes in the crest and goes out in about 20 minutes it’s like a wave so once they
acknowledge their feeling if they can distract themselves for twenty or thirty minutes you know
they figured out there was no real threat if they can distract themselves for twenty or
thirty minutes those emotions can go down and then they can deal with it in their wise mind and encourage
them to use distancing techniques instead of saying I am anxious or I am terrified or whatever
have them say I am having the thought that this is the worst thing in the world I am having the
thought that I cannot handle this because thoughts come and go and that comes from acceptance and
commitment therapy functional analysis makes it possible to specify where and when with what frequency
with what intensity and under what circumstances the anxious response is triggered so it’s
important that we help clients develop the ability to do functional analyses on their own so
when they start feeling anxious they can stop and say okay where am I what’s going on how intense
is it what are the circumstances and they start trying to figure out what causes this for
them so they can identify any common themes from their psychoeducation about cognitive distortions
and techniques to prevent those circumstances or mitigate them can be provided so if the client
knows that they get anxious before they go into a meeting with their boss and it’s usually a high
the intensity of anxiety okay so we can educate them and help them identify what fears may be related
to techniques to slow their breathing and calm their stress reaction and help them figure out
times in the past when they’ve handled going in and talking to their boss and it wasn’t
the end of the world you know there’s lots of different things we can do there for them there
but the first key and it gives them a lot of a huge sense of empowerment to start becoming
detectives in their own life and going okay now under what situations does this happen positive
writing this was another cool study each day for 30 days the experimental group and this
was high school-aged youth in China but you know the experimental group engaged in 20 minutes of
writing about positive emotions they felt that day so they’re writing about anything positive
that make them happy that made them enthusiastic gave them hope whatever long-term expressive
writing positive emotions so after 30 days it appeared to help reduce test anxiety by helping
they develop insight and use positive emotional words so it got them out of the habit of using
the destruction and doom words and encouraged them to get in the habit of looking at the positive
things and being more optimistic it’s a cool activity that clients can try it’s not gonna
hurt anything if you have them journal each day for 30 days mindfulness also came up in the
research and was shown to be effective in a meta-analysis of six articles about mindfulness
based stress reduction four about mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and three about fear of
negative appraisal and emotion regulation was reviewed all of these showed that mindfulness
was an effective strategy for the treatment of mood and anxiety disorders and is an effective
in therapy protocols with different structures including virtual modalities so you know if you’re
doing it via teleconference mindfulness can still be helpful mindfulness helps people start learning
how to observe what’s going on and become aware of what’s going on more aware of those circumstances
which will help them complete their functional analysis but it also helps them become aware of
vulnerabilities and head off things in the past and if they’re taking better care of themselves
that they’re living more mindfully then they may not experience as many situations that trigger
their anxiety mindfulness also encourages clients to learn acceptance that radical acceptance of
it is what it is I’m not gonna fight it I’m angry right now I am anxious right now however I’m
feeling right now is how I feel and that’s okay it’s hard for clients to get to that but once
they get a hold of that and they truly believe it and they can say all right it’s fine I’m not gonna
feel this way forever I’m gonna do something else until the feeling passes it helps and that’s where
the labeling and letting go comes in mindfulness can also help them identify trigger thoughts
what thought were you having right before you started feeling anxious if people are mindful or
let’s start back when people are not mindful they often notice or don’t notice that they’re getting
anxious until they’re like super anxious when people are mindful they become more aware of
subtle cues address unhelpful thoughts when they say or believe it’s a dire necessity for adults
to be loved by significant others for almost everything they do always running gonna happen
why is it a necessity what we can encourage them to do is concentrate on their self-respect
on winning approval for practical purposes you know for promotions or whatever but it’s not about
me being lovable it’s about me getting a promotion and making more money and focusing on loving
rather than being loved because when we give love we generally get love back with unhelpful thought
number two people feel they aren’t able to stand it if things are not the way they want them to be
or are not in their control so encourage clients to focus on the parts that are in their control
and other things in life which are going well and to which they’re committed number three misery
is invariably externally caused and is forced on us by outside people and events just by reading
that makes me feel disempowered so encouraging clients to focus on the fact that reactions such
as misery or happiness are largely caused by the view that people take of the conditions so if
you see it as a tragedy and devastating then it’s probably going to produce misery if you
see it as an opportunity and a challenge it’s probably going to produce a different emotional
reaction, if something is or may be dangerous or fearsome people, should be upset and
endlessly upset about obsessing about it a lot of people with anxiety get stuck on this you know
if I feel like it’s fearsome I need to worry about it getting on a plane for example if I fear that
that’s dangerous that I need to think about it and worry about it that’s not going to do any
good so encourage clients to figure out how to face it and render it harmless if possible and
when that’s not possible accept the inevitable so looking at airplanes you know facing it means
researching to figure out how dangerous is it really and realizing that it’s not
that dangerous so that helps render it a little bit harmless in their mind it proves to them
that it’s not as dangerous as it could be and when it’s not possible accepting the inevitable you
know you got a fly so getting on there figuring out how you’re gonna get through it hurricanes
are the same way people especially in places like Texas Louisiana Florida may obsess as soon
as it starts coming to hurricane season or if a hurricane is spotted out in the Atlantic somewhere
they start checking the weather every hour or more wondering what the path is going to be and you
know what there’s you can’t change the path of the hurricane so all you can do is board up your house
evacuate if necessary and deal with the fallout child driving is just another example I’ll give
you know my children are learning how to drive and that’s kind of scary and fearsome you know what’s
gonna happen when they’re out there you know you see crashes all the time well render it harmless
by making sure they’ve got good training on how to drive make sure they’re good drivers and then
accepting that some things are just not within my control it’s easier to avoid than face life
difficulties and responsibilities well running from fear is usually much harder in the long run
so encourage clients to look back at times when they’ve avoided difficulties and responsibilities
and the eventual outcome you know what happened there people believe they should be thoroughly
competent in achieving in all possible respects or they will be isolated rejected and failures we
need to encourage clients to accept themselves as imperfect with human limitations and flaws and
focus on what makes them loveable human being what qualities like courage and intelligence and
creativity and those things that can’t be taken away what inherent qualities do they have that
make them awesome people because something once strongly affected people’s lives they should
indefinitely fear it if you got lost you know when little kids get lost it’s terrifying when
you’re grown up if you get lost you turn on the GPS and you figure out your way but some people
still, you know freaked out about getting lost if they got lost once so we want to help people look
back at past episodes that may be contributing to the current anxiety and compare the situation’s
you know are you the same person or is this not a big deal now that you’re older wiser stronger
encourage them to learn from past experiences but not be overly attached to or prejudiced by
them yeah you could have maybe got lost in the past and it was a horrible experience well you
were six I can see where that would be terrifying and a horrible experience but it doesn’t have to
continue to impact you that way now when you’re you know 26 getting lost you know could be an
opportunity to try a new restaurant or something people must have complete control over things
well this doesn’t happen so encourage clients to remember that the past and the future are
uncontrollable we can’t change the past it is what it is we can learn from it so it doesn’t repeat
but we can’t change it and the future is largely uncontrollable I mean there are a lot of things I
can do to stay moving toward a rich and meaningful life but life is going to throw me curveballs
sometimes and there’s nothing I can do to plan for or control that we can control our actions in the
present to stay on our preferred path and general develop general skills to deal with adversity
should it arise so we want to help clients develop those general problem-solving skills and
the general support system so when they are thrown a curveball you know it doesn’t knock them upside
the head people have virtually no control over their emotions and cannot help feeling disturbed
by things well encourage them to think about the fact that they have real control over destructive
emotions if they choose to work at improving the next moment and changing inaccurate thoughts then
they’re not going to experience the destructive emotions as intensely or as frequently when you
feel an emotion you feel how you feel but again you don’t have to wrestle with it fight it and
nurture it you can say this is how I feel how do I improve the next moment when it comes to
cognitive distortions encourage them to find alternatives when they start to personalize things
if somebody laughs when you walk out of the room then the and the person starts getting anxious
thinking oh they were making fun of me I wonder what they thought I wonder if I had something
stuck to the back of my dress and they start getting all panicked about it that doesn’t do
any good encouraging them to think you know what our three alternate explanations that hadn’t but
had nothing to do with you for why they laughed magnification of the worst thing you know taking
something and saying if this happens then it’s going to be a catastrophe and minimization going
along with that a lot of times when people magnify and see a catastrophe they minimize not only
their strengths and resources but all the other stuff that they’ve got going for them all
they’re seeing is this catastrophe so encouraging them to focus on the facts of what is actually
happening and what is the high probability event and encourage them to get information
and look at the broader picture you know yes you got into a car crash and your car is totaled and
that is unfortunate you know it sucks but you know that is not going to cause you to lose
your job and then become homeless and penniless and yadda-yadda it might cause your insurance to
go up but okay so you don’t have a car but what are the resources that you have who can who do
you work with that might be able to give you a ride to work you know let’s look at the resources
you have and work around so problem-solving helps with magnification and also focusing on you know
let’s be grateful for what didn’t happen you know you could have been killed but you weren’t the
car was totaled it’s replaceable all or nothing thinking again have them think about what else
could have been happening like Brittney suggested finding the exceptions instead of saying she
always does this look for exceptions when has she not done that what else has she done instead
of this selective abstraction and filtering is when people look for the good the bad and the
ugly a selective abstraction means you kind of see what you expect to see so if you expect
something to be devastating you see only the devastating aspects of it which kind of goes with
the magnification and minimization you filter out the stuff a lot of times when people are in a bad
mood or are anxious they see the negative because that’s the state of mind they’re in so encouraging
people to complete the picture alright there’s all this bad stuff now what’s the good stuff you
know to encourage them to look at the good the bad and the ugly so they get a wide view of exactly
what’s going on and encourage them to remember that hindsight is twenty-twenty when people have
something embarrassing happens or they get anxious about something that happened they look back
and they go I should have or I could have or oh I wish I wouldn’t have when you were in that
the situation you did what you did and you know maybe you may have had a reason for it or you know
you may have not had other options or it may have just been a bonehead thing to do but okay so you
made one mistake hindsight is 2020 that’s gonna that mistake is gonna stand out just like the
great big letter on the eye chart because you’re thinking back and you’re looking at it and that’s
all you see but encouraging clients to remember that other people are too busy worrying about
themselves to remember what they did jumping to conclusions encourages clients to remember to
get all the data if your significant other male significant other comes home and is smelling like
perfume don’t just jump to the conclusion that he was cheating on you maybe he went to the
mall to get a new tie and walked through the perfume area and got spritzed or bought you some
perfume or who knows maybe the person sitting next to him at work sprayed her perfume on the desk
and some of it filtered on there are all different reasons that that might happen so encourage people
to get all the data mind reading we can’t do it you know you can’t read somebody’s mind you don’t
know what they’re thinking so ask them what you think about this don’t assume anything and
emotional reasoning encourages people to step back from a situation and ask themselves am I feeling
anxious about this because I’m feeling anxious and I’m looking for reasons that it should be scary
or am I feeling anxious about this because it’s really scary for some reason there are facts
support my anxiety a lot of times when we go into new situations we may feel anxious because it’s
a new situation but when we step back we say you know what there’s nothing to be worried
about here you know no big deal I got this and move on so instead of rolling with it and trying
to figure out okay I feel anxious so there must be a reason not necessarily very likely a false
alarm other psychological interventions relaxation skills encourage people to learn how to relax
not only physically but mentally diaphragmatic breathing helps encourage them to breathe
through their stomach and put their hand on their belly and feel their belly expand and contract
slows breathing down which triggers the rest and digestion reaction in the brain which is calming
meditation can be helpful for some people some people find trying to quiet their minds too
frustrating because they’ve got too much monkey mind going on that can be later or maybe
never for some people, we don’t want to increase their anxiety with interventions cute progressive
muscular relaxation also has a lot of research support and remembers with cute progressive
muscular relaxation we’re Sakura get them to attach a cue AK you word like relax or breathe
with the relaxation response so they tense their muscles and then relax their muscles and as
they relax their muscles they say their “quack”-word like relaxed and they work from head to toe or
from toe to head tensing and relaxing different muscle groups so they become more aware of what a
tense muscle feels like versus a reactive relaxed muscle there are great scripts that are online
that people have already recorded that can walk people walk clients through CPM are I highly
encourage it because once they get used to it then they can just think that cue they can think
relax and as they exhale they will start to feel their entire body kind of relaxing because it’s
trained when it hears that just like when you hear the word pop quiz when you were in high school
you had a stress reaction well we want to use it in reverse and train the body so that when
it hears a cue word relaxes helps them develop self-esteem because fear of failure and rejection
a lot of times come from needing other people’s approval to help them develop a rational idea of
their real self develops compassion self-talk instead of saying I’m an idiot or I’m stupid or
I’ll never measure up to anything encourage them to talk to themself like they would talk to their
child or hopefully their best friend and encourage them to spotlight strengths whenever they feel
like they’ve got an imperfection to identify these three strengths that they have so they’re you know
balancing out the imperfections and the strengths of cognitive restructuring reframes challenges in
terms of current strengths, not past weaknesses so if you’re going to give a presentation in front
of 60 people and you hate public speaking instead of thinking about you know this is terrifying
because the last time I went up in front of people I forgot everything I was going to say and drop
my note cards well that’s a past weakness what is your current strength you’re prepared to know
the material you ‘yoyo’ so encourage people to look at all the strengths and resources they
currently, have them develop an attitude of gratitude and optimism because as I said with
that the positive writing exercise when people are in a grateful optimistic frame of mind they
tend to see more of the good stuff they see the bad stuff too but they can also see more of the
good stuff and some of the bad stuff they see opportunistically instead of as a devastation
acceptance and commitment therapy says that some of the reasons that we’re miserable are
fear we get fused with our thoughts we think I am terrified well if I am terrified then I can’t
I mean if I am I can’t get rid of anything I am if I’m having the thought that I’m terrified
well I can get rid of a thought I can forget things easily encourage people to evaluate their
experience and empower them to look at things as challenges and opportunities instead of hardships
encourage them not to avoid their experiences so things that are scary gradual exposure and
finding exceptions like for me bridges you know I love public speaking so that’s not a
thing but when I go to a bridge you know when I Drive to the bridge you know when I’m on the
bridge somebody else is driving I get used to doing that when I Drive over a bridge than when
I Drive over one of those bridges that open up I hate those bridges um I know y’all are just like
oh my gosh yeah it’s an irrational fear I realize that but instead of going straight for the bridge
that opens up going for the little bridges first and then thinking back over times that I’ve gone
over bridges and there’s been no problem you know there are exceptions nothing happened it wasn’t a
big deal sometimes I didn’t even notice it until somebody pointed out hey look down there at that
pretty water and I’m like oh we’re on a bridge so encourage people to not avoid their experiences
get used to them embrace them and learn that they have the power to deal with them and stop reason
giving for the behavior you know use the challenging questions if something is fearsome let’s look for
at the evidence for and against it instead of you know making excuses for social interventions
improve their relationship with their self which goes with self-esteem improvement people are going
to feel less anxious about getting their needs and wants to be met if they know what their needs and wants
are so part of that is becoming mindful cuz a lot of our clients don’t know what they need and want
they just want to feel better but they don’t know how they don’t know what they need to feel
better so helping them identify their needs and wants and encouraging them to be their own best friend
you know when they get a promotion take themselves out to dinner pat themselves on the back whatever
it is don’t rely on other people to do it because other people it’s not that they don’t care but
other people are often very involved in thinking about their stuff and they may not notice
encourage them to develop a method of internal validation so they can feel like they are all
that ‘no bag of chips and they realize why they are lovable human beings and they accept the
the fact that everybody is not going to like them and nobody is gonna like them all the time and
that’s okay you know my kids don’t like me all the time my husband doesn’t like me all the time
I’m okay with that I know I can be challenging but you know most of the time you know they like me
and that’s okay and there are some people you know who don’t like me at all and okay there’s
nothing I can do about that helping our clients develop an okayness with that helps relieve a lot
of anxiety because a lot of people feel like they have to be liked by everybody and if somebody
doesn’t like them it’s like what did I do wrong oh my gosh encourage them to develop healthily
supportive relationships with good boundaries develop assertiveness skills so they can ask for
help when they need it anxiety a lot of times you know that’s the body saying there’s a threat well
if there’s a threat maybe you need some help you know dealing with it so people need to be willing
and able to ask for help and not feel like that’s going to lead them to be rejected and allow them a
certify this will allow them to say no to requests again without feeling like that’s going to result
in them being fully rejected describe the ideal healthy supportive relationship and encourage
them to separate the ideals from the reals you know let’s look at if you had the best relationship
what would it look like okay you know warden June Cleaver we got that now how realistic is that
you know let’s look at you know rephrasing this a little bit so it’s less extreme you know warden
June Cleaver never fought their kids were perfect you know all those extreme words let’s look at
what’s real what happens in real relationships encourages people to identify who would be
a good partner in supportive relationships I’m not meaning necessarily romantic I’m meaning
friends and where they can be found you know where would you find people that you could be friends
with and encourage them to play through what it means when gaming cuz a lot of times again this
goes with my reading you know what it means when your friend doesn’t return your text right
away what does it mean when your friend cancels dinner on Friday night what does it mean when
you see where I’m going with this and a lot of times clients with anxiety and rejection issues
and low self-esteem will go to the worst-case scenario so encourage them to go back to finding
the exceptions what else could have been happening what else could it be that caused this and it’s
not about you so anxiety is a natural emotion that serves a survival function excessive anxiety can
develop from lack of sleep nutritional problems neurochemical imbalances failure to develop
adequate coping skills cognitive distortions low self-esteem and a variety of another stuff recovery
Ambala involves improving health behaviors making sure your body’s functioning and making the
neurotransmitters it needs and you know release them as needed to identify and build on current
coping strategies address cognitive distortions and develop a healthy supportive relationship with
self and others if you enjoy this podcast please like and subscribe either in your podcast player
or on YouTube, you can attend and participate in our live webinars with dr.Snipes by subscribing
at all CEUs comm slash counselor toolbox, this episode has been brought to you in part by all
CEUs calmly provide 24/7 multimedia continuing education and pre-certification training to
counselors therapists and nurses since 2006 have used coupon code consular toolbox to get
a 20% discount on your order this month.As found on YouTubeAnimated Video Maker – Create Amazing Explainer Videos | VidToon™ #1 Top Video Animation Software To Make Explainer, Marketing, Animated Videos Online It’s EASIER, PRODUCTIVE, FASTER Get Commercial Rights INCLUDED when you act NOW Get Vidtoon™
this episode was pre-recorded
as part of a live continuing education webinar on-demand, CEUs are
still available for this presentation through all CEUs register at allceus.com/counselortoolbox I’d like to welcome everybody to today’s
presentation on trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy part 1 treating trauma and
traumatic grief in children and adolescents in this first part we’re going to define
trauma-focused CBT and talk about what we’re dealing with here because trauma-focused
CBT is a best practice and it is a manualized best practice so you’re going to learn about it
today but you’re not going to have enough skills where you can say you are certified in TF
CBT however I will provide your resources should you want to go out and pursue those so we are
going to talk about TF CBT as a best practice and implementing fidelity but I’m going to
also take a few detours and as I always do and talk about how this might be able be
useful with adults who have a history of trauma in childhood we’ll explore the components
of trauma-focused CBT and their intended functions, we’re not going to get through all of
those today but we’re going to start and we’re going to explore ways to use TF CBT with adult
clients so TF CBT works for children who have experienced any trauma including multiple traumas
so what we’re talking about is children who come to your office who are presenting with
trauma-related issues it’s effective with children from diverse backgrounds and works
in as few as 12 treatment sessions so a lot can be accomplished in 12 sessions they’re not
necessarily weekly sessions they can be spaced out a little bit part of it depends on the age
level of the child how long ago the trauma was any concurrent developmental or mental health
issues that might be present yada yada yada so it may be a little bit longer it may be a little
a bit shorter in terms of calendar time but you can also extend the number of sessions because
some of these things for example when they start talking about cognitive coping differentiating
between thoughts and feelings, some children take a while to get the hang of the
the nuance between the difference between thoughts and feelings so you might have to do two or
three sessions helped them to identify feelings and use the feelings thermometer this
has been used successfully in clinics schools homes foster care residential treatment facilities
and inpatient settings so there’s not an environment in which it can’t be used provided
that there is a supportive caregiver that can be of assistance obviously if you’re working with
a 10 or 11-year-old or a little bit younger or an older adolescent but you know any child who may
need some support outside of session we don’t want to be creating a crisis and then leaving them
kind of defend for themselves between sessions without some sort of emotional and cognitive
support so there must be a relationship that there is a bond if you will a
the rapport between the clinician and the caregiver who may not be the biological parent or the caregiver
and the child it does work even if there is no parent or caregiver to participate in treatment
however again we need to be selective about how we’re using that so if you have a child and
you’re going to use this particular approach and there’s no parent or caregiver to participate
it may be safer to use it in a residential setting or an inpatient setting where there is a
clinician somewhere where they can get emotional support because as you’ll see when we get into
the trauma narrative gets intense TF CBT is intended for children with a trauma history
whose primary symptoms or behavioral reactions are related to the trauma so if you’ve got someone
who has an unfortunate childhood but you think their behaviors may be more related to the peer group
maybe more related to conducting disorder or FASD or something else that may not be appropriate
because what we’re going to look at with TF CBT is reducing the PTSD symptoms the hyper-vigilance
avoidance behaviors etc as well as improving social skills and helping the person identify and
communicate their feelings and needs traumatic stress reactions can be more than simply symptoms
of PTSD and also present as difficulties with affect regulation we’ve talked before about how
people who are experienced who have experienced trauma may develop a situation where they are more
likely to experience emotional dysregulation the HPA axis kind of tightens up and holds on to the
stress hormones hold on to the stress reaction but then when it does perceive a stressor it goes
from 0 to 250 there’s no I’m going to get a little bit upset it is either nothing or it is a huge
mountain there’s no mole hills there so there may be problems with affect regulation there may
be problems in relationships because of difficulty trusting other people because of difficulties with
their self-perception and systems of meaning which you know we’re getting to in a few minutes but
the way they conceptualize the world because all of a sudden their world was turned upside down
somatization feelings coming out as physical symptoms so headaches body aches more illnesses
more days where they just don’t feel well and you know sometimes they just really don’t feel well
however, is it because of a bacteria or a virus or is it because of a stress reaction that is
kicking off all kinds of imbalances in hormones and neurotransmitters so we want to look at what
the effect are these traumas having on this youth or person and if we address this trauma and if we
help help them come to some sort of resolution or acceptance of the trauma and integration into
their world view of why this trauma happened and making meaning from it will help improve
these areas will help them reduce their hyper-vigilance etc and for many clients the answer is
yes and I talked earlier about the fact that this may be useful now it was designed for children
and adolescents but many of the adults I’ve worked with are very Alex thymic they are very unable
to identify their emotions their very unable to express their feelings sometimes they don’t even
know where their fear is coming from they’re just sort of paralyzed with fear and don’t trust the
world and they’re angry at everybody and if it comes from a traumatic experience then helping
them explore how that trauma is impacting them in the present can be useful in their
recovery process so these issues that TF CBT may help improve aren’t just limited to children and
adolescents they can present in adults who were traumatized as children and who didn’t develop
the skill to effectively deal with the trauma components of CBT TF CBT psychoeducation we’re
going to start by teaching them what they need to know about the trauma we’re going to talk about in
depth about these so I’m not going to detail them very much here parenting skills and if you’re
dealing with an adult oftentimes I will provide what I call reap Aron ting skills if your parent
were here or if your parent would have responded how you would have wanted how would they have
responded how can you do that for yourself now because sometimes you don’t have a significant
other or a caregiver with an adult client either but we want to help them figure out how to self
nurture if needed relaxation and stress management skills because some of the stuff we’re fixing to
talk about is going to be extremely distressful so you have some wiggle room if you will in terms of
what skills do you teach here they prescribe some but as far as relaxation and stress management affect
expression and modulation DBT skills seem to fit well into this framework for helping
people tolerate the distress not act on their impulses understand where the emotions are coming
from and preventing vulnerabilities and all that other stuff that can help them function outside of
session and when they’re not doing their homework help them feel like they’re able to focus on
something besides the trauma because we’re just kind of ripping the band-aid off that wound
at a certain point and they may have difficulty focusing on anything else likewise some children
and adolescents will come to you when that trauma is still relatively present and all they can think
about is that trauma or it regularly comes up for them and so we can help them learn skills so
they can start living more of what they might consider a meaningful life that’s not dominated
by memories of this trauma while we’re working through the process we want to give them a little hope
that there’s relief in sight cognitive coping and processing are provided next and enhanced by
illustrating the relationships among thoughts feelings and behaviors so initially cognitive
coping skills are taught and then all of this is going to be applied later as soon as we
get into the trauma narration helping the youth work through narrating the trauma and cope
with the feelings and thoughts that come up in vivo mastery of trauma reminders so any of those
triggers that are triggering flashbacks that are kicking off hyper-vigilant situations we’re going
to address as they come up in the trauma narration we’re going to help the person identify what it
is about certain situations that bring up this particular memory and how we master how to do
we deal with it and then finally conjoint Parent Child sessions and these don’t come till the end
all along the parents or the caregivers are participating in the process assuming there is a
parent or caregiver and understand learning a little bit more about what’s going on but we’ll
talk about what the clinician does in the parent sessions as well as what the clinician does in
the child sessions as we go through each stage effects of TF CBT reduction in intrusive and
upsetting memory so that’s awesome and you know if you think about what’s the function of these
intrusive memories a lot of times it is because either they haven’t been integrated into the
person’s schema of the world and well-being and or they still feel unsafe they have some cognitions
that is telling them they need to be alert they need to be aware they’re not safe so helping them
identify any cognitions and triggers that may be causing intrusive and upsetting memories
and addressing those again in the in vivo desensitization avoidance helping people reduce
their avoidance of certain situations and certain activities so they don’t feel like they are
confined basically to their prison it helps reduce the emotional numbing of a lot of people when they
go through trauma it’s so overwhelming and they’re so afraid if they feel they won’t be able to stop
feeling so they numb emotionally it’s protective it makes sense and as they develop the skills to
handle this and as they learn they can tolerate the distress of the memories of the trauma it
empowers a lot of clients there’s a reduction in hyperarousal depression and anxiety behavior
problems when you’re dealing with adolescents or children, especially ones who don’t have the
ability to articulate their feelings and their thoughts that are underlying these
feelings and how they relate to the trauma I don’t know many adults that can do that so
children typically act out physically to either protect themselves or try to get some
sort of protection comfort attention so they feel more secure so it’ll help reduce some of
that as we empower the child to identify what’s going on and articulate their needs more effectively
communicate with their parent and also deal with some of the stuff that’s making them still feel
threatened or afraid reductions in sexualized behaviors trauma-related shame interpersonal
distrust and again social skills deficits if a youth has been dealing with this trauma issue
for a while, they may have avoided other people because they don’t trust other people they’re
afraid of other people haven’t made sense of it so they may not have developed the social skills
that other youth have developed because they have been avoidant situations that might trigger
the trauma memories so who is is inappropriate for if the primary issue is defiant or conduct
disordered it if you don’t believe from a clinical standpoint that this is coming from a
the root of trauma history and addressing trauma is probably not going to do it now do these
children who are oppositional defiant conduct disordered have traumas in their history sure
probably they do but are those traumas causing the behavior or are those traumas sort of
irrelevant and one thing that you’ll find is a lot of we’ll talk about it more in a minute
a lot of people have multiple traumas but they may have resolved certain ones and be okay with
they but others are still open wounds don’t use it if the child is suicidal homicidal or severely
depressed if a child is in that particular state we don’t want to start poking the bear
especially in an outpatient setting but even in residential and even residential with adults I
was always extraordinarily cautious and hesitant to do any sort of trauma work in the first 30 to
60 days I had a client in residential substance abuse treatment I mean the first 30 days they’re
still kind of sobering up there are a lot of impulse issues and in the next 30 days there’s usually a
a lot of mood issues so I want them to feel like they’ve got a handle on things before we start
ripping band-aids off open wounds if possible and if you’re obviously if you’re dealing with a
a child the safety and ethics would just tell you when this might not be appropriate additionally
when children remain in high-risk situations with a continuing possibility of harm such as in
many cases of physical abuse or exposure to domestic violence some aspects of TF CBT may
not be appropriate for example attempting to desensitize to trauma memories is contraindicated
when real danger is present I took that verbatim from the TF CBT training or one of them
that is cited in your booklet or your class it is important to understand that not all of
these children are coming or existing living in an environment that is healthy and you may
have a parent who is court-ordered or ordered by child welfare to bring the youth to counseling
to address trauma issues but that child is going back to a chaotic situation so again it’s going to
be an ethical decision on your part once you have all of the training and you’ve become
certified and TF CBT it would be an ethical decision at that point whether or not to implement
the program to fidelity and you know we want to make sure that the child is cognizant
of any real and present dangerous challenges, they always come up, especially when you’re dealing with
families if the carrot parent or caregiver does not agree that the trauma occurred and we’ve all
dealt with this whether you deal with adults who were traumatized as children and they say nobody
believed me when I was a child and I tried to get somebody to here or whether you’re dealing
with a child right now who is with a caregiver or removed from a caregiver it doesn’t matter
but the caregiver was present at the time and the caregiver doesn’t believe the trauma occurred
it can be a huge barrier because that caregiver is not going to be able to be as supportive if the
The caregiver agrees the trauma occurred but believes that it is not affecting the child significantly
or thinks that addressing it will make matters worse then we can do some education here we can
identify symptoms that are coming out that are present which may be caused by the trauma and we
can show the research of TF CBT as well as other methods if you choose not to use TF CBT but you
can show the caregiver how addressing this trauma can mediate or mitigate some of those symptoms if
the parent is overwhelmed or highly distressed by his or her emotional reactions and is not
able to attend to the child’s experience so if the parent feels guilty for what happened or you
know such as in the cases of domestic violence the parent is dealing with their trauma
because they are surviving domestic violence they may not be able to attend to the issues of the
child at that point and it’s not a judgment it’s just how much energy you have and if you’re
trying to survive yourself you’re probably not going to be able to devote your full attention to
jr. Over here so we need to look at timing if the parent is suspicious distrustful or doesn’t
believe in the value of therapy again we can do some education here rapport building and go
slow if the client and I my experience has been this occurs when the client is court-ordered or
ordered by child welfare the parent does not trust the system and by the fact the system
referred them to you you’re part of the system so start low go slow try to be as compassionate
open and honest as possible I try with all of my clients but especially with my clients who are
involuntary I am very open about what’s in my records and what I write down because that could
go to the court which could you know potentially reflect upon them you know we talked about what’s
going in into the chart I don’t use subjective judgment everything’s objective unless we talk
about something and they say yeah I’ve made progress here or I feel like I’m backsliding here
and then we talk about how to how that’s going to be put in the notes I don’t lie I don’t cover-up
but I do want to make them feel more comfortable with what’s being written in that magic file that
gets stored away that nobody can see if the parent is facing many concrete problems such as housing
but consume a great deal of energy again if it’s a domestic violence issue and they’ve moved out
and they’re living in a homeless shelter or a domestic violence shelter the parents may be
exhausted and just not able to fully attend to the increased emotional and psychological demands
of the child during this therapy you know they’re going to be doing good to help junior through
the present crisis let alone anything else or if the parent is not willing or prepared to
change parenting practices even though this may be important for treatment to succeed and
there are few and far between situations where this may happen one of the situations would be
if you have a parent who is the biological parent and you have a boyfriend or girlfriend
who is abusing the child and you know that comes out and there needs to be some change in the
the way that children are introduced to new people or there may need to be some change in another
situation and how to indiscipline there are a lot of variations that may come up but ultimately
we need the parent’s full buy-in we need them to be willing to work with children on emotions
identification and cognitive coping and all this other stuff which ultimately ends up helping them
most of the time anyway because I don’t believe any of these skills can be harmful to a person at
At least the initial skills of the trauma narrative if it’s done inappropriately or incorrectly can be
very very harmful but we’ll get there specific strategies that can be undertaken through perseverance
in establishing the therapeutic alliance reach out to contact and try not to serve as the all-knowing
omniscient person but asking them what they need asking them what changed with jr. Asking them for
feedback and suggestions about what helps when jr. gets like this and so you can brainstorm put
the parent in the expert role of being the parent imagines that explore past negative interactions
with social service agencies or therapy not that we can undo that but we can make sure not to
repeat it and if they start acting disengaged we can evaluate the situation and come back and
say is this reminding you of that prior situation or you know are you feeling disempowered again or
whatever the case may be being fully aware that n TF CBT you have two very distinct clients plus a
the third one is the family so you’ve got a lot of different things to juggle if you want to explore
the parent’s concerns that may make them feel as if they’re not being understood or accepted
the lead listens to or is respected and that gets a little dicey sometimes especially when we start
talking about cultural sensitivity about belief about why the trauma occurred or a
variety of other things that we’ll talk about it’s important to be able to hear the parent and
come from a culturally sensitive and culturally informed perspective it’s also important if
the parent feels guilty for some reason you know and sometimes they will be cognizant of
any nonverbals or any statements that you make that might make them feel that way and if it comes
out or if there’s no other way to say it you know talk about any feelings they may have that about
being not believed or not respected and how can you best facilitate making them feel respected
and accepted and all that stuff explore and help them to come overcome barriers to participating
in treatment, if it’s transportation if it’s a job if it’s something else there may be some
brainstorming that’s required and a little bit of case management and I recognize that most of us
when we work in private practice or agency work don’t get any credit for billable hours for
case management but it has to be done in the best interest of the client and emphasize the centrality
of the caregiver’s role in the child’s recovery making sure that they understand that this can’t
succeed without their help by using parent sessions to reduce parent caregiver distress and guide them
through structured activities that empower them in interactions with the child so you’re going to
bring them in each week and you’re going to talk to the parent independently about what’s going on
what you’re covering how juniors behaving how you can help them help jr. Etc sometimes you need to
delay joint sessions until the parent or caregiver can offer the child support and sometimes that
means not even starting treatment really until the parent and caregiver parent or caregiver
can be on board now you can get started with psychoeducation emotions identification feelings
identification and stress management and coping skills you know there were not really
poking a bunch of bears so you can probably safely get started on that if it’s sometimes it’s
court-ordered and they have to start treatment by April 1st or something so there are things you can
do but you may need to delay the actual beginning of the trauma narrative until the parent is
able to be available to educate everybody on how therapy works and instill in everyone not just
the parent optima optimist that well optimism about the child’s potential for recovery you
know sometimes they’ve been dealing with this child’s acting out behaviors for so long they’re
just like you know we’ve already been to three other therapists I don’t know what’s going to
fix it or I’ve done everything I know how to do good luck so we can talk about you know a
different approach or we can talk about what they’ve done that’s worked for a short period
of time and build on those strengths to instill optimism and hope and empowerment so
initially, when we talk about psycho-education it’s important to provide accurate information
about the trauma when children are traumatized they can be confused and not completely understand
what happened they may blame themselves and they may hold on to myths because they’ve been misled
and/or deliberately given incorrect information so one of the best ways we can help is to correct
that information provides information about how often this happens and whether you know it’s okay
to do this that or the other psychoeducation clarifies inappropriate information children may
have obtained directly from the perpetrator or on their own so the perpetrator may have told them
that this is how I express love or this is how you need to be disciplined because you don’t learn
this is how I was disciplined whatever it is or they could have gotten it on their own they could
have gotten it from school from the internet or just come up with it in their little heads trying
to make sense of what happened psychoeducation also helps them identify safety issues the
difference between safe situations and dangerous situations and as we get through this I really
want you to get away from the notion that TF CBT and childhood trauma are only physical and sexual
abuse there are so many other traumas as evidenced by the adverse childhood experiences survey that
I want you to wrap your head around that and there are things they didn’t cover in the aces such as
bullying and natural disasters so we want to help children whatever the trauma is the trauma made
they feel unsafe so we want to identify safety issues if the trauma was a hurricane then we want
to talk about what hurricanes are how often they hit what to safety plan etc so every time a
the thunderstorm comes they don’t freak out and we want to use psychoeducation to provide another
way to target faulty or maladaptive beliefs by helping to normalize thoughts and feelings about
the traumatic experience you know it makes sense that that was scary and makes sense that
you’re angry it makes sense that you feel this way and we can talk about why that makes
sense and why it makes you feel that way through cycle education you’re getting the child to start
talking about the specific trauma that he or she experienced in a less anxiety-provoking way by
talking in Jen wrong about the type of trauma so you’re talking about natural disasters you’re
talking about plane crashes you’re talking about domestic violence so they start learning about
it and then eventually you’re going to move down to their experience with it so like I said there
are a ton of different traumas and the ACE study even acknowledges that these are just the ten most
common ones that they heard however there are many many many different traumas and types of trauma
some of the biggest ones are physical and sexual abuse physical neglect emotional abuse
and neglect and the Aces identified mother treated violently I would say anyone in the household
treated violently it’s not just the mother’s substance misuse within the household and that
can be by the parents or by siblings household mental illness parental separation or divorce and
an incarcerated household member so those were aces but then like I said there’s also bullying
the death of a parent or sibling is extremely traumatic hurricane tornado natural disaster and
then I put the fire out separately because sometimes fire can be man-made sometimes it can be a wiring
problem but sometimes it can be Jr was playing with matches now even if jr. Accidentally started
the fire does that make it any less traumatic no it probably makes it more traumatic because then
there’s a whole sense of guilt and responsibility but it’s still a trauma that has to be dealt
with so I put a link to the adverse childhood experiences website if you want to go look more
about that but we’re going to move on psycho-education involves specific information about
the traumatic events the child has experienced not the child’s event we’re not going to go
into police records or something, we’re just going to talk about specific information about
domestic violence or whatever body awareness and sex education in cases of physical or sexual
maltreatment and there are caveats for getting parental consent and permission and all that other
stuff and Risk Reduction skills to decrease the risk of future traumatization now going back to
those other things it’s not just about physical or sexual abuse so we want to look at what was the
the risk created by you know how can you reduce your risk of being bullied how can you reduce your
risk of being traumatized in a tornado you know you can’t stop the tornado from coming
and they’re everywhere so what do you do and talk about a safety plan the same thing with fire
information needs to be tailored to fit a child’s particularly particular experiences and level
of knowledge obviously, you’re going to provide different information to a seven-year-old than
you are to a 17-year-old provide caregivers with handout materials to reinforce the information
discussed in session so this may help educate the parents about some of it but it lets them
know what you talked about and it gets us all on the literal same page you’re providing them a
handout of everything you went over with Junior and we want to encourage caregivers to discuss
this information at home reinforces accurate information about how safe or unsafe they
are and obviously, we’re going towards safe and reinforced accurate information and develop
a safety plan so they feel confident that at home they’re going to be taken care of when you
start psychoeducation you do want to get a sense of what the child already knows and you can use
a question-and-answer game format in which the child gets points for answering questions which I
love this suggestion so you can ask them if you know what is a hurricane or is a tornado and see
if they know and see if they know how much time and much-advanced warning we have for a tornado
versus a hurricane or you know whatever situation you’re talking about you see I did a lot of posts
Hurricane Katrina counseling in northern Florida so that’s one of those things that comes up for
I am talking with children about how likely is it that a category 5 hurricane is going to hit
again but encouraging them to give your aunt’s give answers and if they give the wrong answer you
know it’s great to try now you know try to coach them into a correct answer or provide them the correct
one but give them credit for at least making an effort sample questions might include what is
you know and put in the type of trauma what is bullying how often do you think bullying happens
and why does bullying happen you know those are some questions you can ask to just open a dialogue
about bullying, if this child has been a victim of bullying and is and is traumatized so cultural
considerations meet the child and family where they are by presenting information in a way which
they can relate it to their belief system and you may need to consult with their spiritual
guidance guides leaders whether it be a pastor or you know whatever to get some guidance
on how to handle certain aspects of whether it was the will of God and in the case of sexual abuse
how to handle the concept of virginity and how to handle the concept of bad things happening to bad
people and whatever else they think is coming from or their parents are instilling in them in a
belief system we want to make sure that we’re not necessarily contradicting it and going oh mom dad
and the church is wrong but we also want to help them try to integrate this in a way that can help
they have strong self-esteem so reaching out to those spiritual leaders and the family asking what
their belief system about certain things can be very helpful assess the general beliefs about
the trauma if something happened or when something happens ask the parent or the family that’s there
not necessarily the child but you want to get a sense of what the family stance is on why this
happened what it means how it’s going to impact life hence foreign henceforth and forever more
focus on the events they perceive as traumatic to the family but most especially the child if the
child’s going back to the Aces you know maybe the parents got divorced but the child doesn’t
see that as traumatic because there was domestic violence ahead of time the domestic violence was
traumatic the divorce was a relief so wherever the child is with each trauma we want to
be respectful of what they perceive is traumatic and tailor the information so the family can be
more receptive to it as supportive as possible and sometimes you need to make sure that the language
you know make sure the language is not jargony about general views of mental health and mental health
treatment should also be assessed and addressed in the psychoeducation piece not only with the child
but also with the family, if they are suspicious of it don’t understand it think that you’re just
going to magically fix Junior we want to demystify the process and talk about what is the purpose of
the assessment what is the purpose of each one of these activities and why am I doing this or why
are we doing this as a team and how can it help and then we also want to provide information to
D stigmatize and normalize mental health issues and seeking treatment some cultures are still
resistant to seeking treatment and I use the term cultures broadly because there’s
a stigma associated with it so normalizing for them how many people go to treatment how common
PTSD is or whatever the situation you’re dealing with it doesn’t mean they have to like it but at
At least it will give them a little bit of a nugget to understand that they’re not the only ones if
they are from a cultural group a minority cultural group of some sort you might want to provide
information about how common this particular issue is in their group I’ve done a lot of work
with law enforcement and emergency responders and they’re kind of their little group so
we talk about how common depression is among law enforcement and emergent emergency responders
specifically, because they face so much so many different stressors than you know Joe Schmo over
here so it D stigmatizes and normalizes a little bit now they still may not talk about it and
go well hey you know 37% of us have clinical depression no that’s probably not going to happen
but at least in the back of their mind, they can go you know what I’m looking around this room and
I can bet that at least one other person’s on antidepressants or something and feel a little
less unique and isolated in parent sessions you want to provide a rationale and overview of the
treatment model educates parents about the trauma and talks about the child’s trauma-related symptoms
so we’re going to go over what is hyper-vigilance what is the function it why people become
hypervigilant after trauma and what might it look like in a child because it presents very
differently for different children so we might want to give some ideas and say does this sound
like Johnny or does this sound like Johnny and help them understand why these behaviors may
be coming out we want to talk about how early treatment helps prevent long-term problems okay
maybe the trauma happened three years ago but still, it’s better than waiting ten more years and
you know Johnny’s still not having any Ellucian will want to talk about the importance of talking
directly about the trauma to help the children cope with their experiences and not hedging and
this will be on a case-by-case basis but the manual walks you through handling this discussion with
the parents about exactly how much detail do I go into if Johnny brings it up at home reassure
parents that children will first be taught skills to help them cope with their discomfort
and that talking about the trauma will be done slowly with a great deal of support so we’re not
just going to plop them down and go okay and tell me about the day that all this happened which
is what the child has experienced already if it was reported to law enforcement and/or the child
welfare they’ve probably had somebody sit down and say get right to the nitty-gritty at least
once or twice and it’s completely dehumanizing so we want to reassure parents that we’re not
going to do that to the child again will help the caregiver understand their role in the child’s
treatment since this modified since this model emphasizes working together as a team so I’m not
just going to be educating you it’s not going to be a parallel thing where I go in and I work with
Johnny and then I tell you what I did and then I work with Johnny I’m going to work with Johnny
and then we’re going to discuss what Johnny and I did in session and I’m going to get input from
you and we’re going to talk about how you feel about it and then I’m going to provide you with tools
so you can help Johnny outside of the session because you’re going to be with them for six-and-a-half
other days that I’m not and this can’t work if it’s just one hour once a week and we want to
elicit parent input questions and suggestions as much as possible because they’ve been living with
their kid for you know however many years so they probably have an idea about what works and what
doesn’t so we’ll start with both parents and children in their respective sessions helping
them understand what control breathing is and how it helps slow the heart rate and trigger the
wrist and digest sort of reaction in your body when your breathing slows your heart naturally
slows because the stress reaction tells your brain you’ve got to breathe fast and the heart
rates got to go fast well when you override that then you’re kind of overriding the whole system
and we’ll also talk about thought stopping and this is especially helpful if the trauma is recent
or and/or ever-present in the mind of the youth so they can say I am NOT going to talk about that right
now I’m not going to think about that right talk about distraction techniques go back to
your DBT stuff talks about improving the moment and accepts to help the child develop skills to
handle and work through when those thoughts pop up replace unthawed unwanted thoughts with
a pleasant one so talk about it in session when thoughts like that come up what would you
prefer to think about and then really get into the Nitty Gritty the five senses what do you see
smell hear taste you know help me get into that situation or that thought this teaches that
thoughts even unexpected and intrusive ones can be controlled so that gives them hope and again we’re
not exacerbating the thoughts right now we’re not bringing up their particular trauma and
having them get into detail we are just helping them deal with what’s happening normally on a
day-to-day basis so they feel like they have more control for the older kids you can have them
people log about when this technique is used what they were thinking about and how effective the
thought stopping was and then review it and help them tune it up if it’s not really effective and
give them praise for when they use it effectively relaxation training persons of Asian or Hispanic
origin tend to express stress in more somatic or physical terms so just be aware of that but that
doesn’t mean that Caucasians don’t relaxation training is good for anyone and the medical
school of South Carolina training recommended that relaxation is stress-free and
workbook by Davis Schulman and McKay so and it is still in publication when deciding how to
present relaxation techniques are creative have the child help you to integrate the elements
into the technique that makes it more relevant to them so, what are you thinking about when you
relax you know I know I like to go to the woods but maybe this kid likes to think about a video
game or play with their dog whatever it is but helps them make it relevant to them and then have
they identify other things they do to relax like drawing listening to music walking and making a
list of those things so they can refer to it when you’re teaching relaxation training especially if
you’re doing something like progressive muscular relaxation be sensitive to the child’s wishes if
they don’t wish to close their eyes or lie down which could trigger memories of the trauma we’re
not going there yet so if they feel vulnerable lying down or taking orders like that because
you can imagine how being told to lie down and close their eyes might be a trigger for certain
abuse survivors you know be cognizant of that and say you know get into a comfortable position
or how where would you like to sit while we talk about this like I said parents can often
benefit from the relaxation training as well so because they’re dealing with their issues
about the trauma but they’re also dealing with trying to figure out how to help Johnny and any
of them deal with any of Johnny’s misbehaviors or problematic behaviors then they move on to
feelings identification so it helps the therapist judge the child’s ability to articulate feelings
if you can tell me what makes you happy that’s great but if you can’t then you know we need to
work on figuring out what makes you happy you also want to help the child rate the intensity
of the emotion don’t let them stick with happy mad sad glad and afraid you know let’s talk about
different emotions and use the emotion chart with little faces on it or you can use the emotion
thermometer so is it a hot emotion or is it a cool emotion and helps the child
learn how to express feelings appropriately in different situations I mean sometimes they’re
going to be angry but it might not be appropriate to you know get up and stomp out of the room or
whatever however they communicate it so help them figure out how to articulate that so they can be
heard and supported some children have difficulty discussing or identifying their feelings so
you might try stepping back and discussing the feelings of other children or characters from
books or stories so you know think about Puff the Magic Dragon if they’ve read that you know
that dates me a little bit there but you know how did the little boy feel and talking about things
different characters and different stories where there are elements of anger and shame and loss and
all of that stuff helps children identify how they experience emotions if they seem detached
from the experience because sometimes they just they’ve shut it off it was just too overwhelming
so we want to talk about you know when you’re happy what does that feel like or when you’re
angry what happens what does your body feel like when you’re angry and they might be able
to tell you they hear their heartbeat in their ears or everything gets all fuzzy or whatever
but help them start tuning in to how they react and connecting that with an emotional word and then
after all, that’s done they can identify feelings they can identify feeling intensity now we want to
differentiate between thoughts and feelings many children describe thoughts when they’ve been
asked about a feeling so if you ask them how they feel they may say I want to run away so
you want to say okay well I hear that you want to run away so I’m wondering if you are bored and you
you’re bored and want to get away from it or if you’re scared can you tell me a little bit more
about what it means to you to want to run away during feelings identification the parent
sessions normalize what is going on with their child and help the parent understand that some
children may be seemingly in constant distress or detached from the trauma and that’s okay
we all react differently to traumas so again we’re going to share with the parents what we’re
Do let them know any specific difficulties if any juniors have encouraged the parent to praise
the child for appropriate management of difficult motions and I put in parenthesis successive
approximations because they’re not going to get it a hundred percent right every time so if they
try to effectively manage their emotions even a little bit let’s give them praise for that and
then help them figure out how to do it a little bit better the next time so instead of having a
complete meltdown maybe they got up and stomped out of the room well that’s an improvement so
then we want to talk about how to shape that behavior so it’s a more appropriate communication
if parents have difficulty identifying their own emotions provide them with examples so
continually ask them questions about how you feel when it’s a rainy day outside and how to do you
feel when somebody’s supposed to call you and they don’t how do you feel when and have about 15 or 20
examples and you can have them on a piece of paper and even give it to the parent to take home for
their homework if parents are overcome with their own emotions about the trauma validate
their feelings and explain how children need to see that their parents can handle talking
about the trauma so there the children need to see the strength and the parents which is what you’re
going to work on in parent sessions to make sure that the parents have the resolve and the skills
handle talking about this topic with junior TFC BT can be an effective intervention
for children or adolescents whose primary presenting issue is trauma-related emotional or
behavioral dysregulation TF CBT is not appropriate for clients who are actively suicidal and severely
depressed or currently abusing substances we want to make sure they’re clean
and sober as much as possible TF CBT starts with psychoeducation and then teaches stress
management and coping skills to aid in the management of distressing feelings psycho IDI
helps to clarify the inappropriate information children may have and start getting them a little
a bit more comfortable talking about the topic in general before we start going deeper and
feelings identification helps participants start effectively labeling and communicating their
feelings so they can receive the support and nurturance they need from their caregivers
and their support system if you enjoy this podcast please like and subscribe either in your
podcast player or on YouTube you can attend and participate in our live webinars with dr. Snipes
by subscribing to all CEUs comm slash counselor toolbox this episode has been brought to you in
part by all CEUs calm providing 24/7 multimedia continuing education and pre-certification
training to counselors therapists and nurses since 2006 use coupon code consular toolbox to
get a 20% discount on your order this month.As found on YouTubeAlzheimer’s Dementia Brain Health ➫➬ ꆛシ➫ I was losing my memory, focus – and mind! And then… I got it all back again. Case study: Brian Thompson There’s nothing more terrifying than watching your brain health fail. You can feel it… but you can’t stop it.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helps people identify unhelpful thoughts and get unstuck from negative thinking, anxiety, depression and anger. CEs can be earned for this presentation at: https://www.allceus.com/member/cart/index/product/id/520/c/AllCEUs provides counseling education and CEs for LPCs, LMHCs, LMFTs and LCSWs as well as addiction counselor precertification training and continuing education.
Live, Interactive Webinars ($5): https://www.allceus.com/live-interactive-webinars/
Unlimited Counseling CEs for $59 https://www.allceus.com/
Specialty Certificate tracks starting at $89 https://www.allceus.com/certificate-tracks/
Live Webinars $5/hour https://www.allceus.com/live-interactive-webinars/
Pinterest: drsnipes
Podcast: https://www.allceus.com/counselortoolbox/Nurses, addiction and mental health counselors, social workers and marriage and family therapists can earn CEs for this and other presentations at AllCEUs.comAllCEUs is also approved as an education provider for NAADAC, the States of Florida and Texas Boards of Social Work and Mental Health/Professional Counseling, the California Consortium for Addiction Professionals and Professions. Our courses are accepted in most states through those approvals.addiction counseling
counseling continuing education
ADACB
addiction and mental health training
addiction and recovery professionals
addiction assessment training
addiction certification training
addiction ceu
addiction continuing education
addiction counseling
addiction counselling
addiction counsellor
addiction counselor
addiction counselor certification board
addiction counselor training
addiction specialist training
Addiction studies
addiction training
addiction treatment continuing education
addiction treatment counselor training
addiction worker training
addictions counselling
alberta
alcohol and drug counselor
american counseling association continuing education
army substance abuse
Australia
belfast
cadc
calgary
California Board Behavioral sciences
canadian addiction counselors certification federation
cap
ccapp
ccdc
ce
certified addiction counselor
certified counselor
certified substance abuse counselor
ceu
ceu for addiction professionals
chemical addiction counselor
chemical dependency ce
chemical dependency counselor
christian counseling continuing education
clinical social worker
connecticut certification board
continuing education
continuing education for nurses in addiction
continuing education mental health counseling
continuing education units for addiction counselors
co-occurring disorders
counsel certificate
counsel certification
counsel webinar
counseling ce
counseling ceu
counseling ceu webinar
counseling continuing education
counseling continuing education credits
counseling continuing education online
counseling continuing education units
counseling continuing education Webinars
counseling training
counseling webinars free
counselor ce
counselor continuing education
distance learning
drug abuse counselor training
drug addiction counselor
drug and alcohol counselor continuing education
Dublin
education
european addiction training institute
FCB
florida addiction counselor training
Florida Board
Florida Certification board
georgia addiction
georgia professional counselor continuing education
glasgow
grief counseling continuing education
institute
Ireland
laban
addiction specific training
ladac
ladc
lcdc
licensed chemical dependency counselor training
licensed professional counselor continuing education
lmhc
london
lpc
lpc ce
lpc ceu
manchester
maryland addiction counselor certification board
mental health
mental health continuing education
mental health counseling
mental health counselor
naadac ce
naadac training
national addiction training programme
national certified counselor continuing education
nbcc approved continuing education online
nbcc ce
nbcc continuing education
nbcc continuing education courses
nbcc continuing education credits
nbcc continuing education online
nbcc-approved continuing education provider
NCC ce
online addiction continuing education
online ce credits for counselors
online ceu counselors
online ceu courses for counselors
online chemical dependency certificate programs
online continuing education addiction counselors
online continuing education counselors
online training
programme
recovery coach
scotland
south africa
substance abuse awareness training army
substance abuse counselor programs online
substance abuse counselor training
substance abuse training online
tennessee
Texas Board of Examiners
therapist continuing education
toronto
trauma certification
UK
vancouver
Virginia
webinar counseling training
winnepeg