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Deconstructing Anxiety: A New Approach to Understanding and Treating Anxiety Disorders

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Deconstructing Anxiety: A New Approach to Understanding and Treating Anxiety Disorders

Deconstructing Anxiety Training

Sep. 26, 2026

10:00 AM - 1:15 PM (EST)

Virtual Event
3 CE Credits
Anxiety treatments work—yet not for everyone. The Deconstructing Anxiety model goes deeper, uncovering the single “core fear” that fuels anxiety across disorders. Integrating CBT, psychodynamic, mindfulness, and positive psychology techniques, this approach helps clients dismantle defenses, transform resistance, and move from fear to freedom. Learn practical, evidence-based methods to identify root causes, reduce anxiety, and foster purpose and fulfillment in your clients.

Deconstructing Anxiety Training for Therapists

Many psychotherapeutic approaches for anxiety disorders are effective (Bandelow et al., 2015), with Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) generally better than other approaches (van Dis et al., 2020). The Deconstructing Anxiety model is a new synthesis of evidence-based techniques, highlighting empirically demonstrated common themes as most helpful.This model teaches clinicians how to identify the root causes of anxiety, rather than addressing more superficial layers of the problem.

Employing CBT, psychodynamic, mindfulness and positive psychology approaches, this model aims to address the resistances that keep anxiety alive, and transform them into a sense of purpose, meaning and fulfillment.The program presents a method for discovering the single “core fear” (i.e., “schema” in CBT) at the root of all anxiety, helping clients find this core fear when they appropriately deconstruct a problem. Core fears have been proposed for social phobia (Moscovitch, 2009) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (Gillihan et al., 2012) and are viewed as necessary to address for treatment to be effective. The psychodynamic theory postulates that we develop our primary defenses to protect ourselves from these fears, but always at a high cost.

This leaves us constantly holding vigil, on the lookout for the resurfacing of the threat. When this process spins out of control, an anxiety disorder develops. Various approaches are offered to address the anxiety disorders based on the clinician’s assessment, and include an emphasis on exposure therapy (CBT), as well as mindfulness, and a process for taking actions toward a positive future (learned optimism) to enhance “flourishing” and establish “flow.”Seminar participants will learn to use different evidence-based approaches to treat anxiety under this framework.

Session Highlights
  • Discover the single “core fear” at the root of all suffering
  • Learn how our best strategies for resolving the fear backfire
  • Discover the ”Master Key to Healing: Doing the Opposite”
  • Unravel the “Resistance to Resistance”
  • Embark on a Vision Quest to transform fear into Fulfillment
Key Takeaways For Clinicians

“Deconstructing Anxiety Training provides clinicians with a new framework for understanding the underlying causes of anxiety and emotional suffering. This Deconstructing Anxiety Training explores how core fears and defensive patterns influence thoughts, emotions, and behaviors across a range of anxiety disorders. Through Deconstructing Anxiety Training, therapists will learn practical strategies to identify fear-based responses and help clients develop healthier ways of coping.

The course highlights how Deconstructing Anxiety Training can improve case conceptualization, treatment planning, and long-term therapeutic outcomes. By participating in Deconstructing Anxiety Training, clinicians gain tools to address the deeper drivers of anxiety rather than focusing solely on symptom reduction. This Deconstructing Anxiety Training integrates evidence-based concepts and practical interventions that can be applied across diverse clinical settings to support meaningful and lasting change. Research and educational programs built around this model emphasize understanding core fears as a pathway to more effective anxiety treatment. Learn more about anxiety disorders and evidence-based treatment approaches from the American Psychological Association.

This live interactive webinar is designed for behavioral health professionals, including:

  • Counselors
  • Social Workers
  • Psychotherapists
  • Marriage & Family Therapists
  • Psychologists
  • Substance Use Disorders Counselors
  • Case Managers
  • Physicians
  • Other Mental Health Professionals
Todd Pressman, PhDTodd Pressman, PhD

Deconstructing Anxiety Psychologist and Educator

Todd Pressman, PhD, is a New Jersey clinical psychologist, author, seminar leader, consultant, and professional educator best known for developing the Deconstructing Anxiety framework. His work focuses on anxiety, fear, defensive patterns, meaning, purpose, mindfulness, humanistic psychology, and transpersonal approaches. He is the founder and director of Logos Wellness Center and Pressman and Associates in Voorhees, New Jersey, where his current professional materials describe coaching, group programs, clinician education, and anxiety-focused training.

Todd Pressman, PhD, presents anxiety as more than a collection of surface symptoms. His model invites clinicians to examine the deeper meaning a feared outcome holds for the client and the protective strategy the person repeatedly uses to prevent that outcome. This perspective may offer useful case-conceptualization questions, but it should be applied collaboratively and should not replace diagnosis-specific assessment or established treatments.

Todd Pressman, PhD, is the author of Deconstructing Anxiety: The Journey from Fear to Fulfillment, published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2019. He has also written Radical Joy: Awakening Your Potential for True Fulfillment and coauthored The Bicycle Repair Shop: A True Story of Recovery from Multiple Personality Disorder as Told by Patient and Therapist with Angela Fisher.

Professional Background

Todd Pressman, PhD, earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a doctorate in psychology from Saybrook Institute, now Saybrook University. His official biography also documents a Gestalt-therapy internship at Esalen Institute and training connected with Stanislav Grof’s Spiritual Emergency Network program.

Todd Pressman, PhD, founded Logos Wellness Center and Pressman and Associates. His professional website describes his work as including individual and group coaching, clinician education, seminars, and programs focused on anxiety, personal growth, meaning, and fulfillment. A current Psychology Today profile lists him as a New Jersey psychologist offering online services to individuals, couples, and groups.

His professional background also includes presentations for counseling, humanistic-psychology, holistic-health, contemplative, and interdisciplinary audiences. His official biography lists presentations connected with the American Counseling Association, the Society for Humanistic Psychology, the Association for Humanistic Psychology, Omega Institute, the New York Open Center, and other national and international organizations.

Todd Pressman, PhD, developed Deconstructing Anxiety as an integrative framework drawing from cognitive-behavioral, psychodynamic, mindfulness, humanistic, positive-psychology, and transpersonal traditions. The model centers on the relationship between a “core fear”—the deeper meaning attached to perceived danger or loss—and a “chief defense,” the recurring strategy used to prevent the feared outcome.

His work also reflects longstanding interest in contemplative and cross-cultural traditions. His official biography describes international study involving Zen, Jain, Zoroastrian, and other spiritual traditions. These experiences should be presented as influences on his humanistic and transpersonal perspective, not as substitutes for formal clinical education or empirical treatment research.

Areas of Expertise

Todd Pressman, PhD, teaches clinicians to look beneath recurring worry, avoidance, perfectionism, reassurance seeking, overcontrol, withdrawal, and other protective patterns. His work is most appropriately presented as one possible conceptual lens to be integrated with accurate diagnosis, medical considerations, client culture and preferences, risk assessment, and evidence-supported care. Clinical Events’ guide to Deconstructing Anxiety and the five core fears provides additional background on the model.

Core Fear and Chief Defense. Todd Pressman, PhD, describes core fear as the deeper interpretation of what a feared event would mean, while chief defense refers to the person’s preferred strategy for preventing that outcome. A client who fears rejection may seek repeated reassurance; another who fears failure may rely on perfectionism or overpreparation. These responses can make psychological sense in context, even when they eventually reinforce anxiety.

The Five Core Fears. Within his model, Dr. Pressman groups core fears into five broad themes: abandonment or loss of love, loss of identity, loss of meaning, loss of purpose, and death. These categories belong to his clinical framework and should not be described as a universally accepted scientific classification of every anxiety disorder. Clients’ symptoms may also be influenced by trauma, health conditions, temperament, culture, relationships, substance use, and environmental stress.

Behavioral Change and “Doing the Opposite.” One of the model’s central practices involves identifying the chief defense and developing a measured action that challenges it. This may resemble a behavioral experiment or carefully paced exposure. The goal is not reckless behavior or forced confrontation, but new learning about uncertainty, vulnerability, and the consequences the client predicts. Clinical Events’ guide to exposure therapy for anxiety disorders offers related guidance on collaborative planning, safety behaviors, and clinical pacing.

Anxiety Across Clinical Presentations. Dr. Pressman applies the framework to generalized worry, panic, social anxiety, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, trauma-related fear, and other anxiety presentations. Broader core-fear exploration should complement—not displace—specialized care. For example, exposure and response prevention remains a first-line psychological treatment for OCD, while panic-like symptoms may sometimes warrant medical evaluation.

CBT, Psychodynamic Therapy, and Mindfulness. His teaching combines attention to anxious predictions and avoidance with exploration of earlier relationships, emotional conflicts, and protective patterns. Mindfulness may help clients observe thoughts and sensations without immediately acting on them. Each intervention should be chosen according to clinical need instead of assuming that one integrated formula fits every client. NIMH identifies CBT and exposure-based methods among well-established psychotherapies for anxiety disorders.

Resistance and Protective Patterns. Dr. Pressman frames resistance as information about what a person’s protective system fears may happen if change occurs. This can help clinicians respond with curiosity rather than blame. Therapists should nevertheless avoid interpreting all hesitation through one model; concerns involving safety, culture, readiness, therapeutic alliance, financial pressure, or poor treatment fit may also explain reluctance.

Meaning, Purpose, and Fulfillment. Todd Pressman, PhD, extends his work beyond symptom reduction by exploring how fear-driven choices may restrict relationships, creativity, identity, purpose, and participation in life. His “Vision Questing” process encourages participants to clarify meaning and move toward a preferred future. Clinically, this can be understood as helping clients make choices guided not only by threat avoidance but also by their values.

Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology. Dr. Pressman’s work includes humanistic and transpersonal ideas about identity, consciousness, wholeness, and fulfillment. These themes may be personally meaningful to some clients, but clinicians should obtain consent before incorporating spiritual concepts and should avoid presenting metaphysical beliefs as established psychological facts.

Professional Education and Consultation. Dr. Pressman provides seminars, intensives, coaching, and professional training. His teaching is particularly relevant to clinicians seeking another framework for understanding clients who remain caught in recurring cycles of fear and defense despite insight or previous coping-skills work. Current Clinical Events education describes the approach as a synthesis of established techniques rather than an independently validated replacement for standard anxiety treatments.

Authored Publications
  • Deconstructing Anxiety: The Journey from Fear to Fulfillment
  • Radical Joy: Awakening Your Potential for True Fulfillment
  • The Bicycle Repair Shop: A True Story of Recovery from Multiple Personality Disorder as Told by Patient and Therapist

Other Events

Deconstructing Anxiety Intensive

Oct. 20 | 15 CE Credits

Deconstructing Anxiety

Jan. 9 | 3 CE Credits

After this training, participants will be able to:

  • Demonstrate how to identify a client’s unique core fear and chief defense.
  • Describe the core fear/chief defense model of anxiety.
  • Analyze the five core fears and the primary and secondary defenses we develop in response to them.

10:00 -10:05 am – Introduction

10:05-10:30 am – Introduction, Overview of various approaches for anxiety disorders

10:30-11:00 am – Evidence-based techniques, identifying causes of anxiety

11:00-11:30 am – Addressing resistances with CBT, mindfulness and positive psychology

11:30-11:45 am – Break

11:45-12:15 pm – Transforming fear and anxiety into a sense of purpose, meaning and fulfillment

12:15-12:45 pm – Effectively identify and treat the underlying causes of anxiety disorders, leading to better outcomes for patients.

12:45-1:05 – Lack of knowledge and skills among mental health professionals to effectively identify and treat the underlying causes of anxiety disorders, leading to suboptimal outcomes for patients.

1:05-1:15 – Q&A

All levels.

Registration Cost

Registration $67 | Sep. 26 | Virtual Event | 3 CE Credits | 10:00 am – 1:15 pm ET

Registration Deadline:  Sep. 26, 2026

Cancellation Policy

All registrations are non-refundable. However, you may request a full credit toward a future training if:

  • You notify us at least 72 hours before the event start time.
  • Credit is valid for up to 6 months from the original event date.
  • No credit will be issued for no-shows or cancellations made on the same day.
  • When you register for an event, you agree to these terms

Please email [email protected] to request a credit or reschedule

A total of 3 CE credits are available.

Additional Approvals Pending.


ASWB ACE

Clinical Events, LLC, (provider # 2201) 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: 11/01/2025 – 11/01/2028.

NBCC

Clinical Events, LLC has been approved by NBCC as an Approved   Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7643 Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Clinical Events, LLC is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.

NAADAC

This course has been approved by Clinical Events, as a NAADAC Approved Education Provider, for educational credits. NAADAC Provider #320899, Clinical Events is responsible for all aspects of the programming.

NY State Board of Psychologists

Clinical Events, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychologists #PSY-0292.

NY State Board of Psychoanalysts

Clinical Events, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychoanalysts #P-0073.

NY State Board of Social Workers

Clinical Events, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW-0828.

NY State Board of Mental Health Counselors

Clinical Events, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed mental health counselors. #MHC-0329.

NY State Board of Marriage & Family Therapists

Clinical Events, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed marriage and family therapists #MFT-0140.

NJ State Board of Social Workers & Professional Counselors

The New Jersey Social Work Examiners Board accepts ASWB ACE Provider credits. The New Jersey Professional Counselors Board accepts NBCC-approved CE provider credits.

All Other States Social Workers & Professional Counselors

All other states accept ASWB ACE Provider credits and NBCC-approved CE provider credits. Licensees are responsible for determining whether courses meet the CE requirements in their jurisdictions. States and provincial regulatory boards have the final authority to determine whether an individual course may be accepted for credit.

Florida Certification Board

Clinical Events is approved by the Florida Certification Board (FCB) to offer continuing education programs (Provider # 5527-A).

Canada Social Workers

BC, AB, SK, MB, ON, and QC accept ASWB ACE-approved provider programs to meet licensure renewal requirements.  Licensees are responsible for determining whether courses meet the CE requirements in their province. Provincial regulatory boards have the final authority to determine whether an individual course may be accepted for credit.

Canada Counsellors

Clinical Events is an NBCC-approved provider.  Licensees are responsible for determining whether courses meet the CE requirements in their province. Provincial regulatory boards have the final authority to determine whether an individual course may be accepted for credit.

Please contact us if you would like to inquire about applicable approvals for your continuing education (CE) needs.

Each professional is responsible for understanding and meeting the specific CE requirements set by their individual licensing board or regulatory agency. We encourage you to reach out to your licensing body directly to confirm how our programs apply toward your licensure renewal.

Questions:  [email protected]

In accordance with continuing education standards and requirements, the presenter discloses that they have no relevant financial relationships, affiliations, or conflicts of interest to report.

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