Anxiety Conference

Introduction

In this training our three speakers explore the experience of anxiety, and how we can effectively work with clients experiencing these symptoms in therapy.

The neuroscience of anxiety, the function of anxiety in everyday life and the experience of collective anxiety experienced in response to world events are all explored.

The training offers ideas about why some people become overwhelmed with anxiety and panic, including early causes around attachment rupture, and also offers some ways to work with anxiety and panic, including somatic/body-based approaches.

Victoria Settle: Care Giving or Scare Giving?

 In this presentation Tori Settle discusses the neuroscience of anxiety, and explores anxiety from an attachment perspective.

The impact of parental anxiety on sons and daughters can be profound, and adult children of these parents can often suffer from all sorts of seemingly irrational fears later on in life.

Our sense of safety in the world is a learnt security from our primary attachment figures and when those attachment figures fill us with insecurity, we equally learn that the world is a frightening place in which to live. With this fundamental underlying existential sense of insecurity, learnt from the adults around us, seemingly small events can induce a panic in some of us which can literally feel life threatening.

Attachment theory can offer fresh insights into the source of panic attacks in adults and can offer ways of working therapeutically to mitigate these fears.

Smita Rajput Kamble – Case Studies in Anxiety

In this presentation Smita Rajput Kamble shares some of Freud’s original ideas on anxiety, and discusses how we might define anxiety, how it manifests and how it functions.

She explores a number of case studies that show how early traumatic experiences can lead to separation (attachment-related) and castration anxiety (body parts and its internalised components) and its role in human development.

Smita also explores how psychotherapy can contribute to the ‘lessening/reduction’ of anxiety disorders.

Suzanne Worrica – Anxiety as a Whole-Body Experience

Suzanne Worrica  examines the whole-body experience of anxiety drawing on contemporary research, clinical vignettes and inviting viewers to reflect on their own embodied experiences of anxiety.

She looks at the function of anxiety as a way of informing us about how we are experiencing the world now.  Through vignettes she links chronic anxiety as a secondary symptom of childhood relational rupture and discusses the ways in which it can present in adults.

Suzanne also considers collective anxieties of the CoVid pandemic and recent socio-cultural changes (e.g. BLM, war in Europe) and explores the impact this has on our threat system and how we relate to others.

Finally, Suzanne discusses ways in which to work experientially with clients who present with chronic anxiety.

Testimonials:

“This event touched me more personally than some of the online training I’ve attended before and has given me new theory, useful new applications for client work, and material for personal and professional reflection also. How lovely to have all this in one event.”

“Grounding & uplifting!”

“Amazing, insightful, well delivered training. I came away with so much to think about.”