Undoing the Anxiety Trick: Treating Anxiety Disorders with Acceptance-Based Methods

All chronic anxiety disorders involve a “threat” that does not occur. Panic attacks do not kill, social anxiety does not lead to disgrace and isolation, obsessive doubts about the stove do not cause fires, and worry does not lead to insanity. The feared outcomes recede into the future the way optical illusions recede into the horizon.

Anxiety disorders are so powerfully chronic because a person who is chronically anxious gets tricked by their own efforts to avoid, distract from, and protect against perceived dangers. When those dangers do not come to pass, the person may believe they narrowly escaped from a terrible calamity and feel more vulnerable going forward rather than less vulnerable. The person can become increasingly afraid of more and more improbable events. What the mental health field labels “anxiety disorders” could be more accurately termed “the disorders of excessive self-protection.”

How can mental health clinicians help people with anxiety to recover? Clinicians can do this by teaching people in therapy how to disengage from the self-protective behaviors that trick them. In this 2-hour continuing education web conference, clinicians can learn how to help anxious clients find the evidence of this in their own lives, so they can help them approach and accept, rather than avoid and resist, the experience of anxiety.

In this web conference, Dr. David Carbonell will teach clinicians strategies to empower clients who have anxiety to see themselves as capable, good people who have been misled by anxiety, rather than as defective people who need to be protected. Dr. Carbonell will outline effective strategies from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Metacognitive Therapy, Paradoxical Therapy, and traditional Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help clients rediscover the hopes and dreams they had for life before they were derailed by their struggle against anxiety.

This introductory instructional level web conference is designed to help clinicians:

1. Interview anxious clients from an empathic perspective to help them develop a different viewpoint on their troubles.
2. Present and explain unconventional ideas to skeptical clients.
3. Assist clients to identify, and gradually dismiss, their inventory of safety behaviors.
4. Prepare a treatment plan which helps clients work with, rather than against, the symptoms of chronic anxiety.
5. Utilize a variety of acceptance-based interventions.

Statement of program material's accuracy, utility, and risks: This program presents a clinical innovation that combines traditional cognitive behavioral therapy with methods and interventions from Paradoxical Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Metacognitive Therapy, Narrative Therapy, and Barlow’s Unified Protocol for Transdiagnostic Treatment of emotional disorders. It is consistent with the ethics code of the American Psychological Association. A significant body of research suggests that these exposure methods are effective and safe when properly applied.

Declaration of conflicts of interest and commercial support: The presenter conducts trainings, provides clinical services, and has written books related to the content of this program.

If you have questions or would like information regarding disability accommodations, please contact us here.

Continuing Education (CE) Information

2 CE contact hours will be provided by GoodTherapy for attending this web conference in its entirety. To receive CE credit hours for an archived recording, you will need to complete a survey as well as a 15-question exam, verifying that you listened to or watched the event in its entirety. Archived CE events are generally considered "homestudy" by licensing boards.

GoodTherapy is an Approved Education Provider by NAADAC, The Association for Addiction Professionals (provider #135463). Of the eight counselor skill groups ascribed to by NAADAC, this course is classified within Counseling Services.

GoodTherapy is an NBCC-Approved Continuing Education Provider (ACEPTM) and may offer NBCC-approved clock hours for events that meet NBCC requirements.

GoodTherapy.org, provider #1352, is approved to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Organizations, not individual courses, are approved as ACE providers. State and provincial regulatory boards have the final authority to determine whether an individual course may be accepted for continuing education credit. GoodTherapy.org maintains responsibility for this course. ACE provider approval period: 3/30/2022 – 3/30/2025. Social workers completing this course receive 2 clinical continuing education credits.

GoodTherapy is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. GoodTherapy maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

GoodTherapy, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW-0395. GoodTherapy, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed marriage and family therapists #MFT-0022 and for licensed mental health counselors #MHC-0031.

To receive CE credit hours for an archived event, you will need to complete a survey as well as a 12 or 15-question exam, verifying that you listened to or watched the event in its entirety. Archived CE events generally are considered "homestudy" by licensing boards.

Registration Information

Premium and Pro Membership with GoodTherapy includes access to this web conference at no additional cost, as well as other member benefits such as a profile listing in GoodTherapy's Therapist Directory. Not yet a member? Sign up for a Premium or Pro Membership, here.

Just want CE credits? Sign up for a monthly or annual CE Subscription with GoodTherapy to get unlimited access to our CE Program, including this event, other live CE web conferences, and hundreds of hours of homestudy courses.

Mental health professionals who are not members can access the homestudy recording for $15.50. Sign up here to purchase this CE course and earn a CE certificate.

If the event is canceled by GoodTherapy, registrants who purchased the event will be notified and the charge for the event will be refunded

If you have any questions or would like information regarding disability accommodations, please contact us.

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