Anxiety Disorders in the DSM 5 TR | Symptoms and Diagnosis

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.
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Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) Skills and Counseling Techniques with Dr. Dawn-Elise “Doc” Snipes

 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 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Best Practices for Anxiety Treatment | Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

 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! OIP-2 ☃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!

Best Practices for Anxiety Treatment | Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

 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: OIP-73 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!

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) Skills and Counseling Techniques with Dr. Dawn-Elise “Doc” Snipes

 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.

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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. 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Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) Skills and Counseling Techniques with Dr. Dawn-Elise “Doc” Snipes

 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 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Best Practices for Anxiety Treatment | Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

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™

Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Interventions: Trauma Informed Care

 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 Skills: Counselor Toolbox

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