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Presenter: Assen Alladin, PhD

This Workshop is based on the recent publications: Integrative CBT for Anxiety Disorders: An Evidence-Based Approach to Enhancing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy with Mindfulness and Hypnotherapy (Alladin, 2016) and the AJCH Special Issue on Emotional Disorders and the Wounded Self (July 2016). The Workshop will describe a comprehensive evidence-based treatment protocol for the management of anxiety disorders. The treatment approach is based on the wounded self model of anxiety disorders (Alladin, 2016; Wolfe, 2005), which can be defined as patients? chronic struggles with their subjective distress. From this perspective, the onset, development, exacerbation and maintenance of anxiety symptoms are hypothesized to stem from two layers of psychological processes. The first layer comprises conscious awareness of symptoms resulting from cognitive distortions, while the second layer involves unconscious interpretations of what the symptoms mean to the patient. As this model embodies both explicit and implicit psychological processes in the etiology of anxiety disorders, it provides a theoretical rationale for integrating both conscious and unconscious strategies in the treatment of clinical anxiety. Moreover, the model adopts a psychobiological theory of clinical anxiety and hence both psychological and pharmacological strategies can be utilized as necessary. As conscious therapies such as CBT, mindfulness and pharmacotherapy are readily available from various sources, this Workshop will focus on unconscious strategies.