Breaking the Anxiety Loop: Neuroscience-Based Strategies for Rewiring the Anxious Brain

Course overview

Humans are by nature fearful and anxious creatures and our brains are designed to search for threats, focus on them, and overestimate and remember them. We need to rewire the brain to resist these tendencies by using interventions shown to calm the amygdala and teach the amygdala and cortex new responses to threats. We know more about the neurological, physical, emotional, and cognitive processes underlying fear and anxiety, and panic than about other emotions. As a result, we know more about the neurological processes underlying anxiety-based disorders than any other disorders. Dr. Pittman provides clear and understandable descriptions of how the amygdala and cortex each influence the production of fear and anxiety. We should be using this information to make changes in the amygdala and cortex. The interventions presented in this course have empirical evidence demonstrating that they impact the brain and provide effective treatment of anxiety disorders. This is a neurologically informed approach to CBT for the effective treatment of anxiety that is accessible to clients of all educational levels. Interventions that target both the amygdala and the cortex for change are presented in this course. Explaining to clients how to change the amygdala and cortex promotes engagement in treatment.