Compassionate Exposure & Response Prevention Treatment

6 CEs Recorded: Fall, 2024

With anxiety at an all-time high across all demographics, all mental health professionals must become more adept at effectively understanding, identifying, assessing, and treating various anxiety disorders, phobias, and OCD.

This continuing education workshop promises to help mental health professionals better understand and treat anxiety more effectively using evidence-based treatments like Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) and Compassionate Exposure.

For decades, Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) has been studied as one of the most efficient ways to treat anxiety disorders, OCD, and specific phobias. Exposure & Response Prevention, done well, can change lives and lead to incredible recovery. Many clinicians are unsure or even fearful of learning this treatment because of misunderstanding the treatment model, such as believing ERP is cruel or further traumatizing. Even Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can be a less than warm modality to many providers. Evidence-based practices can be applied with the warmth mental health providers have for clients. This workshop provides an in-depth view at the Exposure & Response Prevention model while centering self-compassion. People living with “doubt disorders” like Generalized Anxiety, Health Anxiety, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Panic, and Specific Phobias experience chronic invalidation, hold a distorted sense of self, feel a heightened idea of responsibility, question their reality (including memory and diagnosis itself), can engage in self-punishing behaviors, feel intense amounts of shame, and experience stigmatization.

It is vital that more clinicians in the community become better knowledgeable and skilled at identifying anxiety disorders and effective treatments, as regular talk therapy will not yield results in the lives of anxiety sufferers. 

This course combines Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) principles with self-compassion tools and interventions. CBT positions thoughts, feelings, and behaviors as simultaneously occurring factors in the human experience. Practicing self-compassion can feel equally dangerous to allow, especially if a person is having deeply troubling worries, obsessions, fears, and self-beliefs. When an individual has a distorted sense of self, which often happens with anxiety, self-compassion can be a beautiful and challenging first step of healing. Self-compassion has been shown to increase therapy efficacies across modalities (Wetterneck et al., 2013). While it might seem logical that therapy outcomes are impacted by a person’s ability to be self-compassionate, applying and living these practices in real life can be challenging, especially during moments of hardship! 

Self-compassion, like exposure and response prevention trials, creates new pathways for thoughts in the brain. However, for many people, especially those in the anxiety-based community, self-compassion does not come naturally and may even bring on discomfort. The practice of self-compassion is correlated with a reduction in symptoms like anxiety, rumination, and depression (Warren et al., 2016). There is much power and healing that compassion can provide. This workshop posits self-compassion work as a primary exposure for the treatment of anxiety-based diagnoses and views self-compassion as a distress tolerance device. In this course, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of the “doubt disorders”; how symptoms, core fears, self-beliefs, criticism, and compassion interact; the tenets of self-compassion; the basic tenets of ERP therapy; and have practical tools for applying self-compassion to the ERP model. Understanding the nuances of diagnoses and how to implement effective treatment through exposure and response prevention and compassion practices will be transformational in your clients' lives. 

Objectives:

• Gain a basic understanding of the tenets of self-compassion.

• Identify “doubt disorders,” (4) main core fears, and at least (4) subtypes of OCD.

• Learn at least one art-based experiential on self-compassion.

• Gain a basic understanding of exposure and response prevention treatment.

• Apply concepts of ERP and Self-compassion to client cases.

• Name and apply the three (3) tenets of self-compassion to ERP interventions.

• Learn one guided meditation practice for self-compassion. 

This workshop draws upon the writings, research, and knowledge of Edna Foa, Frederick Aardema, Karen Lynn Cassiday, Christopher Germer, Jonathan Grayson, Michael Greenberg, Russ Harris, Mike Heady, Jon Hershfield, Eli Liebowitz, Marsha Linehan, Kirstin Neff, Kieron O’Connor, Kimberley Quinlan, Carl Robbins, Michael Twohig, Chad Wetterneck, Sally Winston, and more! 

EPDC CE Hours: 6

Presenter: Sarah Weber, MA, LMHC, ATR-P

Sarah Weber is a licensed mental health counselor and art therapist. She believes the therapeutic relationship to be a collaboration between the client and therapist. Sarah has worked in a variety of settings from community based to partial hospitalization and supports children, families and adults. Sarah is rooted in therapy frameworks including disability, feminist, humanistic, multicultural (cultural humility), and queer theories. She aims to be an ally through continuing education, living with specific values, educating others, and advocating for individuals in and outside the therapeutic space. Sarah practices a relational style of counseling, prioritizing non-judgment and mutual respect. Sarah integrates use of Art Therapy, Acceptance & Commitment Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, Exposure & Response Prevention, Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction and Compassion Focused Therapy.