Getting Started: How to Optimize the Early CBT Sessions

• Principles of CBT – Establish roles and goals
• How to socialize your client to the CBT Session structure
• Getting your client to complete homework
• What not to do (reassurance, rabbit hole)
• Tools for goal setting
• Begin with the end in mind: Termination considerations

Anxiety and the Brain: What Every Client Needs to Know

• Why this is a pivotal point of treatment
• Simple ways to teach clients about anxiety and the brain
• The role of avoidance and safety behaviors
• Medication-what is helpful and what is not

Cognitive Therapy: Change the Way Clients Think about Thinking

• Empower clients to choose how to interpret their thoughts
• Utilize values clarification to motivate change
• Challenge distortions and core beliefs that get in the way of change
• The role of mindfulness in anxiety treatment

Panic Disorder: Interoceptive Exposure Techniques That Work

• Why deep breaths aren’t enough
• Practice breathing to increase CO2
• Identify the fear in panic
• How to induce symptoms of panic to build tolerance of discomfort
• Strategies for choosing a panic behavior to replicate

Kids with Anxiety: Playing with Fear

• Special considerations when working with children
• School refusal, contamination, bad thoughts, PANS/PANDAS
• Add play to your treatment plan
• Strategies for age appropriate interventions
• Teach kids to talk back to their fears
• How to handle parent resistance/therapy interference

Assessment and Treatment Planning: Set the Stage for Successful Treatment

• Diagnosis – why it’s important
• Key questions to ask at intake
• Assessment forms – where to find them
• Teach your clients to use a notebook
• Using a SUDS scale

The Art of Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP)

• Help clients ride the wave of anxiety
• Create a fear hierarchy using SUD scales
• How to set up an exposure
• Strategies to handle resistance to exposure
• What NOT to do and why

Family Involvement: Teach Loved Ones to be a Part of the Solution

• Help families learn healthier ways to talk back to anxiety
• Teach how to respond without reassuring
• Challenge loved ones to face their own fears

Phobias and OCD: Exposure and Response Prevention in Action

• Identify OCD’s tricks
• Strategies for the most common phobias (heights, spiders, small spaces and more!)
• How to get comfortable with extreme exposures
• Vomit phobia, fear of harm, contamination, obsessive thoughts, sexual obsession
• Identify your own obstacles to successful ERP
• Get out of the office!
• When and how to use imaginary scripts
• Demonstrations and practice

Social Anxiety: Paradoxical Treatment Interventions that Get Results

• Going after embarrassment
• Tools to practice mindfulness during conversations
• Build clients’ “I can handle it” muscle
• Help clients improve insight about their fears
• How to remove safety behaviors in social situations

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and Worry: Helping Our Clients Live in the Present

• Challenge the belief that “I won’t be able to handle it”
• Understand worry as a compulsion
• Skills to help clients handle distressing thoughts/feelings
• Mindfulness to get out of the future and into the present
• Write worry scripts, assign time for worry, chase after worry

Termination and Relapse Prevention

• Develop a client wellness plan that sticks
• Help clients identify red flags for future struggles
• Teach clients to do ongoing exposures
• Establish a plan for when to return to therapy
• Risks and limitations of the research