Jennifer Shannon is a licensed psychotherapist and a Certified Diplomat in Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy specializing in anxiety. She co-founded the Santa Rosa Center for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and has over forty years of experience treating children, teens, and adults. She is the author of numerous books, including Don’t Feed The Monkey Mind, The Anxiety Survival Guide for Teens, The Shyness and Social Anxiety Workbook for Teens, and A Teen’s Guide To Getting Stuff Done, all published by New Harbinger Press. Her books have been selected for the Reading Well Books on Prescription in the UK. She speaks regularly at national conferences and has been featured on radio programs and in magazines and newspapers.

Clients often present with symptoms of chronic anxiety and stress that do not fall into a clear-cut diagnosis with based upon a specific protocol. In these cases, the therapist must conceptualize what contributes to the client's problems and use this to formulate and guide the treatment plan. This can be confusing, and we often get lost in the content of what the client is bringing in week to week. In these cases, it is very helpful to focus on underlying assumptions. ThisDoing-soa helps clarify and better understand the common themes contributing to a wide variety of problems. There are three underlying assumptions that contribute to most, if not all, problems related to anxiety. The three assumptions are Intolerance of Uncertainty, "What I don't know might kill me," Over Responsibility, "If others are not okay, I am not okay," and Perfectionism, "I cannot make a mistake."       

In this CBT workshop, participants will be introduced to a simple worksheet that will help guide both conceptualization and treatment for a wide variety of problems. This worksheet will address underlying assumptions and the behaviors that reinforce them.