Those suffering from generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) are like worry-making machines who become anxious about topics that can concern any of us: money, work, family, our health. The noise of worry is like a boombox in their heads with no offswitch. You will learn how to shift clients’ relationship with their fears and override the responses that perpetuate them. You will explore paradoxical strategies to help clients transform their anxieties and worries from intimidating threats into challenges that they can meet and conquer. The goal is to persuade clients to adopt a self-help protocol to voluntarily, purposely and aggressively seek out the unneeded worries of GAD headon and dispatch with them rather than trying to avoid them.
Karl Rogers said that empathy is the “necessary and sufficient condition” for therapeutic change. Aaron Beck said that Rogers was wrong, and that empathy was necessary but not sufficient, because cognitive techniques are also needed for change. Albert Ellis said that they were both wrong. He insisted that empathy wasn’t necessary, sufficient, or desirable, because patients have to do their “damn homework” if they want to get better. Who was right? And what happens when a computer provides the empathy? And how might this affect your clinical practice? Dr. Burns will describe the unexpected results of a recent beta test with the Feeling Great App.
In the general consideration of Eating Disorders, anxiety symptoms have often been valued only as secondary aspects or even as a non-relevant issue. On the contrary, clinical experience and some recent findings demonstrate that anxiety plays an important role at various critical moments of the disorder and in its treatment process. The incidence of anxiety in ED patients is four times higher than in the general population. A higher anxiety level corresponds to greater severity of the illness. ED symptoms are more intense when accompanied by forms of anxiety. Greater anxiety contributes to poorer outcomes, and follow-up results are less positive. Particularly in BN and AN-B, the tendency toward impulsivity is stronger in accordance with higher levels of anxiety, and If the patient’s body dissatisfaction is high, there is a greater risk of self- injurious behavior and even of suicidal attempts.
Attachment theory is an integrative theory that can be used as a cognitiveinterpersonal framework for understanding the development of depression, and anxiety. The development of attachment theory and neuroscience had offered ways of understanding how interpersonal experience affects neurobiological processes. It created much impact in psychotherapy allowing for new ways for treating issues like marital problems, relational trauma, depression, and anxiety. Our early relationships shape our neurophysiology, and how we relate to others and ourselves. This workshop will address the relational aspects of depression and anxiety, and ways to address them in psychotherapy.
The four primary anxiety disorders— panic, specific phobias, social anxiety, and generalized anxiety—control people by generating an absolute standard for certainty and comfort. They inject rules into consciousness, then use that set of rules to take over mental territory. Assigning various exercises and techniques is the least effective way to promote change. We need to go after these disorders at the metacognitive level to take on anxiety’s process and overall laws. Any directives we might offer clients should consistently be driven by a set of five therapeutic goals that can be expressed to the client as “attitudes.” Lynn and Reid will present each of these attitudes and demonstrate how they can be delivered to clients in a persuasive manner. You will learn ways your clients can employ these principles in specific threatening circumstances.
Patients with relationship problems often complain about others, blaming them for the difficulties in their relationship. This nearly always creates intense barriers to effective treatment because if therapists try to "help,"they suddenly run into a wall of resistance. In this panel, two therapists will discuss research on therapeutic resistance as well as treatment techniques from the attachment and TEAM-CBT perspectives. Outcome Resistance and Process Resistance will be described, and therapeutic strategies will be discussed.
For decades social psychologists have described the phenomenon known as the “contagion of motion,” referring to how a mood state can be spread from one person to another through social interaction. Two very recent events have forced mental health professionals to re- think what we thought we knew about depression that lend support to the phrase “depression is contagious.” The first event is the huge jump in the rates of depression worldwide as a direct consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. The second is the widely disseminated authoritative research that has ultimately shown the “chemical imbalance/shortage of serotonin” hypothesis of depression to be mostly or even entirely incorrect. Given that antidepressant medications are the most common form of treatment, we are at a new nexus for redefining how we think about the nature of depression and the individuals who suffer with depressed mood.
There’s no escaping the dire reports about the high rates of anxiety and depression in teens and young adults. The theories about what is driving the increase are multiple and overlapping, from the pandemic to social media to parenting to the state of the world. And while therapists obviously want to help, are we truly doing what works? Or are we buying into the same mental health trends and assumptions as the young people we’re trying to help? In this keynote, Lynn encourages mental health providers to question the myths, trends, and sometimes surprising approaches to addressing youth mental health and to focus our efforts on treatment based on action, connection, and accurate psychoeducation.
Perfectionism (“I’m not good enough!”) is one of the most common beliefs that patients and therapists alike struggle with. It plays a key role in depression, inadequacy, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, substance abuse, relationship conflicts and more. In this exciting workshop, David Burns, MD and Jill Levitt PhD will present cutting edge techniques to deal with perfectionism. Join us and learn how to heal your patients—AND yourself! Workshop Goals In this workshop you will learn how to : Pinpoint the self-defeating beliefs associated with perfectionism Use Positive Reframing to reduce the perfectionist’s intense resistance to change Challenge perfectionistic thoughts with the Cost-Benefit Analysis, Externalization of Voices, Acceptance Paradox, Self-Disclosure, Feared Fantasy, and more.
This fast-paced training for intermediate and advanced clinicians will teach you the latest innovations of a treatment model that Reid has continually evolved over his 40- year career. Leading from a metacognitive perspective of the disorder, you will learn the step-by-step strategies, supported by paradoxical tactics and persuasive techniques, in a brief-treatment model for this often-complex disorder. You will study how clients can activate the strategies and tactics immediately, moment-by-moment, and use them whenever OCD intrudes, throughout their life. For clients who remain symptomatic after previous exposure and response prevention treatment, you will learn how to offer them a fresh start, with renewed optimism and with determination to push into the territory that is currently controlled by OCD.