Chronic Anxiety Masterclass: Why Self-Protection Backfires & Clinical Strategies to Break the Cycle

Course overview

Chronic anxiety disorders all involve a threat that doesn't actually occur. Panic attacks don't kill. Obsessive doubts about the stove don't cause fires. Social anxiety doesn't lead to disgrace and isolation. Worry doesn't lead to insanity. The feared outcomes recede into the future the way an optical illusion recedes into the horizon. So why are these disorders so powerfully chronic? Why don't the 45 million Americans who are afflicted discover this and recover spontaneously? Because chronically anxious clients get tricked by their own efforts to avoid, distract from, and protect against the perceived dangers. When the feared outcomes don't come to pass, clients believe they had a narrow escape from a terrible calamity and feel more vulnerable going forward not less. They become more and more afraid of more and more improbable events. What we call "anxiety disorders" could be more accurately termed disorders of excessive self-protection because that's exactly how they function. This 6-hour training teaches clinicians how to help anxious clients disengage from the self-protective behaviors that keep them trapped and how to help them approach and accept, rather than avoid and resist, the experience of anxiety itself. Dr. Dave Carbonell guides you through a treatment method that addresses the most difficult experiences with anxiety disorders, integrating effective strategies from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Paradoxical Therapy, Metacognitive Therapy, and traditional Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to help clients rediscover the hopes and dreams they had for life before anxiety hijacked their functioning. Designed for licensed mental health professionals who want a practical, integrative clinical framework for treating chronic anxiety, panic, social anxiety, and generalized anxiety disorder.