Helping Anxious Families: Concrete Strategies for Children, Teens, and Their Parents
Because anxiety is the most common mental health issue in both adults and children, it’s virtually impossible to be in clinical practice and not have anxious families show up, desperate for help. The demand for skilled specialists is high, and clinicians should be using the most effective, active, and creative strategies. Families need a clear plan for HOW to respond when anxiety shows up, and parents must be a key part of treatment.
This course will focus on identifying the important targets for treatment, creating homework assignments for families, working directly with parents, and, above all, ACTIVELY engaging families as quickly as possible.
All orders include the entire presentation with handouts and a CE test.
Streaming videos and audio downloads will be available immediately after checkout
Mailed CD and DVD formats include the printed handouts and CE test in an attractive portfolio
Objectives
Participants will be able to:
· Describe patterns of anxious parenting and how to decrease the modeling of family anxiety.
· Identify the difference between content-based and process-based interventions as it relates to treatment.
· Explain how the worry and anxiety process works in the brain and body to maximize effectiveness of psychoeducation.
· Use targeted relaxation skills and techniques to effectively treat somatic symptoms of anxiety.
· Describe the four critical concepts for creating skill-based interventions for anxious families.
· Create interventions that focus on interrupting the process of OCD in families rather than the content of the OCD.
· Develop active assignments for families that correct the common cognitive traps that bolster both anxiety and depression.
Topics
A process-based approach: what do we do with the
content?
· Teaching the difference to families, knowing it ourselves
· The importance of frontloading
· Active engagement from the first session
Parental involvement as a key to treatment
· Targeting common family patterns
· Staying out of the weeds, avoiding common errors
· Accommodations, safety behaviors
Knowing the skills we need to teach: where’s the gap?
· Identifying the targets
· Creating homework and engaging families in the work
Putting the process-based approach into practice
· Case examples, questions, putting together a plan
· Making “relaxation” count
· 7 puzzle pieces to guide the family plan