Taming Amy(gdala), Neuroplasticity and More!

A Two Day Workshop for Long-Term Anxiety Relief

12 CEs

Live Webinar

January 30th and 31st, 2025

10:00AM - 4:45PM EST

Trainer: Dr. Heidi Schreiber-Pan

Dr. Heidi Schreiber-Pan’s seminar offers a clinical blueprint that is concise and practical; highlighting a cutting-edge treatment plan for clinicians to treat various types of anxiety disorders. This unique 6-step approach describes a distinctive arrangement of evidence-based therapeutic interventions that reduce symptomology common to the experience of chronic anxiety, panic, and worry.

This course will be teaching how to create calm in the nervous system through the power of neuroplasticity. Furthermore, the course will instruct on powerful strategies to promote emotional resilience with self-compassion, boundary setting, and inner-child work. Attendees will learn how to apply mindfulness-based cognitive and behavioral interventions.

Each step highlights core skills necessary for symptom relief and consequent long-term resiliency. Lastly, this model provides an outline for a comprehensive maintenance plan to assure lasting positive change.

The six steps are:

1. Creating Calm in the Nervous System by Taming Amy(gdala)
2. Introducing and Reinforcing Self-Compassion
3. Applying Mindfulness-based Cognitive and Behavioral Interventions
4. Alleviating Attachment Anxiety
5. Determining Values, Purpose and Meaning
6. Establishing and Executing a Maintenance Plan

You will leave the seminar with competence in using this 6-step treatment plan and the skill to add innovative tools from the following approaches and theories: positive psychology, interpersonal neurobiology, neuroscience, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, Attachment theory, CBT, ACT, and logotherapy.

(Trainer Dr. Heidi Schreiber-Pan is the Clinical Director of the Chesapeake Mental Health Collaborative and the author of Taming the Anxious Mind: A Guidebook to Relieve Stress and Anxiety. Dr. Schreiber-Pan is also a successful psychotherapist, and sought-after nationwide speaker on topics of resilience, anxiety, neuroscience, and occupational burnout. As an affiliate and former faculty member of Loyola University, Maryland, her past research has focused on resiliency and psychological well-being, including nature-based mental health.)

Agenda:

Day 1 

1. Creating Calm in the Nervous System by Taming Amy(gdala)
• Understanding the brain structures and neurological processes involved in the experience of anxiety                  

(30 minutes)

• Neuro-counseling as an empowerment tool for clients
• The power of Neuroplasticity
• The role of the autonomic nervous system       

(45 minutes)

• Role of breath work to help dysregulationRole of body-based tension Role of cognitive defusing through observation and labeling
• Role of focused attention 
• Role of radical acceptance
• Role of auditory sensory overload

(60 minutes)

• Weekly routine to calm sympathetic nervous system activation
• Practice: Letting Go of SNS arousal
• Practice: Let’s Breath: A review of breathing techniques
• Practice: Body Scan    

(45 minutes)

1. Introducing and Reinforcing Self-Compassion
• Self-esteem vs Self-Compassion
• Quieting the inner critic
• Establishing an interior ally
• Mindful acceptance of self

(30 minutes)

• Inner-child-work to encourage forgiveness of self
• A case for self-care
• The role of boundary setting in self-care

(30 minutes)

• Practice: Inner Child Guided Imagery
• Practice: The Bridge – A Boundary Parable
• Practice: Internal Family Member, Anxiety

(30 minutes)

1. Applying Mindfulness-based Cognitive and Behavioral Interventions
• Decentering as a way of disengaging from self-criticism, rumination, and negative thinking patterns
• Identifying and diminishing unhelpful thinking styles
• The healing power of awareness: seeing thoughts as creations of the mind

(20 minutes)

• Reconnecting & befriending feelings
• Narrative/Default Network and Direct Experience Network of the Mind
• The use of coping thoughts                                
• The compassionate use of exposure therapy
• Composing Fear Ladders

(40 minutes)

• Practice: Applying Cognitive De-Fusion
• Practice: What glasses am I wearing today
• Practice: Worry time, Worry Planning & 7 steps to end Rumination

(30 minutes)

Day 2 

1. Alleviating Attachment Anxiety
• The Neuroscience of Attachment
• Activation of Attachment Anxiety
• Attachment through the lifespan                         

(30 minutes)

• Addressing unmet attachment needs
• Therapist, a secure attachment figure?
• Case Study: Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP)                                                           

(60 minutes)

• Practice: Adult Attachment Inventory
• Practice: Hand on Heart
• Practice: Loving-Kindness Meditation

(40 minutes)

1. Determining Values, Purpose and Meaning
• Logotherapy
• Exploring one’s value-lifestyle congruence
• Formation of a spiritual identity                           

(40 minutes)

• Existentialism, worldview & legacy
• The use of metaphor to facility meaning-making

(50 minutes)

• Practice: Value Card Sort
• Practice: Listen to My Values
• Practice: Existential Contemplation

(40 minutes)

1. Establishing and Executing a Maintenance Plan
• Shifting perspectives through gratitude practice
• Positive Neuroplasticity to rewire the brain for resiliency

(40 minutes)

• Meditation, formal & informal
• Nature-based mental health
• Acceptance and Commitment Practices
• Mindful Engagement

(30 minutes)

• Practice: Inventory of your day
• Practice: The Power of Gratitude
• Practice: Thich Nhat Hanh technique for difficult emotions

(30 minutes)

Objectives:

• Ascertain the underlying neurological processes that impact anxious symptoms for clients.
• Develop client engagement in treatment using personalized goals and attendingto the therapeutic relationship.
• Evaluate the differences between amygdala-based and cortex-based anxiety symptoms and identify how these symptoms inform treatment interventions.
• Communicate strategies for calming and training the amygdala in order to alleviate symptoms of anxiety.
• Implement methods for teaching clients to retrain the cortex so that anxiety is resisted rather than exacerbated.
• Analyze how mindfulness impacts neuroplasticity in the brain; identify related treatment implications.
• Communicate strategies for calming and training the amygdala in order to alleviate symptoms of anxiety.
• Implement methods for teaching clients to retrain the cortex so that anxiety is resisted
• Ascertain the underlying neurological processes that impact a client’s relationships with self and others.
• Investigate the therapeutic use of values, life-goals and spirituality to help clients establish value-lifestyle congruence.
• Learn and implement the use of attachment therapy to assist clients in alleviating attachment anxiety.
• Investigate the role of exposure therapy and design suitable exposure exercises.
• Describe cognitive fusion and employ the use of coping thoughts.
• Explore the cognitive and physiological components of anxiety and consequently apply effective cognitive and behavioral interventions.
• Develop client coping through self-compassion which is a form of mindful engagement with self during times of pain and trauma.