Our current brain disease model of trauma/addiction desperately needs a fresh approach, one that honors the wisdom of the body. The Felt Sense Polyvagal Model™ (FSPM) shifts the current pathologizing paradigm to a strength-based approach. A mixture of didactic information, experiential practices, demonstrations, and case examples will guide the clinician in applying the model.

Just as the body’s immune system can attack itself with a “good response gone bad”, so can the body’s stress response become stuck in a pattern of “false alarms” resulting in misfiring stress responses that turn into chronic anxiety disorders. Learn how to help people with Autostress disorders retune their nervous system and manage anxiety for good!

Traditional anxiety treatment approaches involve a heavy reliance on classic exposure-based tools that often fail to take advantage of values-based strategies that can assist the client in a more complete transformation of their overall relationship to anxiety. Learn actionable skills and see live demonstrations that will help you apply ACT’s 6 core processes of change to defeat anxiety!

We know from the research that trauma most often precedes addiction. We also know that cognitive techniques carry a bulk of the research evidence for safe and effective treatment of most co-occurring mental health disorders. Given these documented outcomes, clinicians are beginning to find new ways to employ cognitive therapy mechanisms that pack a bigger punch than vanilla CBT. Just when you think you had cognitive therapy all figured out – wait for this one!

We’ve all heard this on the news and morning talk shows: the body is a system – physical health status affects mental health status and vice versa, lifestyle and behavior impacts physical health which also influences behavioral health, etc. But what does it all mean for overall wellness and how we help clients in the therapy room?