Healing the Angry Brain: Treating Angry, Aggressive, & Violent Clients

Date course created: July 2020

International anger expert Dr. Ron Potter-Efron will have your clinical toolbox overflowing with proven anger strategies for long-term change of aggressive, raging and violent behaviors. In this brand new workshop, Dr. Potter – Efron will bring together neuroscience and a powerful range of anger treatment plans to change the brains and behaviors of your most challenging clients.

This workshop is full of proven techniques, skill building and treatment interventions for your clients who:

• Get angry at a moment’s notice.
• Have trouble thinking or planning because their anger is so strong.
• Act impulsively on anger.
• Have difficulty listening.
• Hold on to anger until overloaded with resentment.
• Fly into dangerous rages.
• Develop a world view in which most or all people are perceived as enemies.

You will bring back to your practice actionable forms and worksheets for clients to create their own personal treatment plans. Dr. Potter- Efron will guide you through development and implementation of these proven tools, rooted in Dr. Potter-Efron’s 30 plus years of counselling experience and success.

This workshop will present an approach to helping clients design their own step-by-step brain change plans to help them retrain their brains to be less volatile, reduce “blame” triggers, and reframe relationships. You’ll learn first how to help clients understand the distorted workings and primitive nature of the angry brain. Next you’ll learn how to help them recognize and avoid triggers, while at the same time committing themselves to behavior change plans. We’ll discuss how to motivate them and keep them accountable—not just via a personal journal and weekly reports to a group, but also by making this new behavior “their” plan. By the end of the session, you’ll have a complete strategy for helping these clients own their behavior and learn how to better manage their angry brains.

**This is a 5-CE noninteractive, self-paced online video course delivered in home study format via an industry-standard online learning platform**

Agenda:

00:00 – 01:00: Understanding Anger

0100 – 0200: Working with Angry Clients

02:00 – 03:00: Critiquing Anger Management

03:00 – 04:00: The Angry Brain

04:00 – 05:00: Empathy Training 

Objectives:

a). After completing this training, participants will be able to apply effective methods to help angry clients commit to and implement neuroplastic change in their brains.

b). After completing this training, participants will be able to develop personalized treatment plans to guide change in angry, aggressive and violent clients.

c). After completing this training, participants will be able to resolve deeper therapeutic issues such as attachment failure and trauma by linking anger, violence and acts of domestic abuse.

d). After completing this training, participants will be able to discuss correlations between anger/aggression and substance abuse.

e). After completing this training, participants will be able to differentiate predatory from defensive anger/aggression.

f). After completing this training, participants will be able to improve empathy skills by examining how the empathy process involves both unconscious and conscious brain processes.

g). After completing this training, participants will be able to acquire skills on how to communicate with angry clients, including critically important information about how the brain develops and maintains a bias toward anger.

Target Audience:

The target audience for this event includes psychologists, licensed clinical social workers, licensed counselors, MFT’s, and other clinical mental health professionals.

Instructional Level: Intermediate

Instructor(s): Ronald Potter-Efron, Ph.D., CADCIII, LICSW

Material Author(s): Ronald Potter-Efron, Ph.D., CADCIII, LICSW

Ronald Potter-Efron, Ph.D., CADCIII, LICSW, is a clinical psychotherapist, Director of the Anger Management Program at First Things First Counseling and Consulting Center in Altoona, WI, and a internationally recognized anger expert. He has more than 30 years of clinical experience and in his private practice, he specializes in the treatment of individuals with severe aggression and domestic violence concerns. Dr. Potter-Efron is also author of 15 books, including Handbook of Anger Management (for professional readers); Angry All the Time; Letting Go of Anger and Letting Go of Shame (both with Patricia Potter-Efron), and his newest release Healing The Angry Brain (New Harbinger, 2012), a self-help book intended for chronically angry and aggressive persons. Dr. Potter-Efron is also Diplomate of the National Anger Management Association. Dr. Potter-Efron currently facilitates a 50 session domestic violence prevention program that utilizes the principles of neuroplastic change (long-term potentiation) to help clients devise and implement individualized brain-based behavioral change plans. He has trained thousands in professional seminars internationally. He is known for his ability to make difficult material easier to understand and utilize, as well as for his good sense of humor and practical orientation toward therapeutic change.

For additional information about this course, the instructors, or the material authors, please contact Content Assistance at content@onlinececredits.com.

Course Materials & Delivery Method:

• Course materials – The course is composed of a recorded presentation and written materials (e.g. a slide deck and/or other worksheets, manuals, or handouts as provided by the instructor). The slide deck and any additional worksheets or handouts (as provided by the instructor) are made available inside the Lesson module after a course is purchased.
• Delivery Method – this course is a recorded asynchronous, self-paced webinar training, and there is no access time limit or due date to complete it once enrolled. The enrolled learner will stream the recorded presentation and view the materials from their internet connected device via an industry-standard online learning platform.

CE Approvals:

Online CE Credits has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 6795. Programs that do not quality for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Online CE Credits is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.

Mind Works Professional Education, Inc. DBA Online CE Credits, #1974, is approved as an ACE provider to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Regulatory boards are the final authority on courses accepted for continuing education credit. ACE provider approval period: July 23, 2024 – July 23, 2025. Social workers completing this course receive [see advertisement] asynchronous distance learning continuing education credits.

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