Anxiety Specialization

What you'll learn

1. 1Mapping the Three Faces of Anxiety. Distinguish panic, generalized worry, and somatic anxiety by their distinct markers — the surge and crash of a panic attack, the looping what-ifs of generalized worry, and the chest tightness, gut distress, and restlessness of body-led anxiety. Learn how each presents in the first session and why they call for different responses.
2. 2The Anxiety Cycle and the Spiral. Trace how a trigger becomes a thought, a sensation, an interpretation, and an avoidance — and how avoidance feeds the next loop. You will diagram the spiral for a client and for yourself, identifying the exact points where it can be interrupted.
3. 3A First-Contact Session Protocol. A step-by-step structure from intake to stabilization: opening containment, mapping the presenting anxiety, establishing safety, setting a working frame, and closing each session so the client leaves more regulated than they arrived. Includes language for the panic-in-the-room scenario.
4. 4Grounding, Breath, and Down-Regulation Techniques. Practical, teachable tools — paced breathing, the physiological sigh, sensory grounding, and graded exposure framing — that calm an activated nervous system. You practice each one on yourself first so you can deliver it with credibility.
5. 5Working With Anticipatory Worry and Rumination. Methods for loosening the grip of future-focused dread: worry scheduling, uncertainty tolerance, and separating productive concern from rumination. Covers how to hold these patterns in psychoanalytic frame without promising to eliminate them.
6. 6Scope, Safety, and Knowing When to Refer. Recognize the boundary between anxiety you work with supportively and presentations requiring medical or licensed clinical care — suicidal ideation, suspected panic-masking cardiac issues, severe agoraphobia. Build a referral network and document responsibly.