• June 24, 2020
  • 7:00 pm
  • Online
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Add to Calendar 06/24/2020 7:00 pm 06/24/2020 America/Los_Angeles On Embracing Anxiety Join us for an in-depth online conversation with Karla McLaren on anxiety as an essential source of foresight, intuition, and energy. Online
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This live online conversation was recorded on our CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

When facing anxiety, we usually try to make it go away. But what if this emotion was actually trying to help? According to empathy pioneer and author Karla McLaren, when we ignore or repress our anxiety, it can overwhelm us, but when we learn to welcome anxiety, we can access its remarkable gifts.

Join Elizabeth Markle, licensed psychologist and assistant professor of CIIS' Community Mental Health Program, for an in-depth online conversation with Karla on anxiety as an essential source of foresight, intuition, and energy. Drawing from her latest book, Embracing Anxiety, Karla shares practices for befriending your anxiety at any level and illuminates how this vital emotion—when engaged wisely—can help you focus, plan, take action, and fulfill your goals.

Learn how to get this powerful emotion on your side!

Please note that this conversation will be hosted live online. Instructions on how to join this conversation will be included in your event confirmation email. If you need additional assistance finding or joining the event, please email publicprograms@ciis.edu.

Karla McLaren

Karla McLaren, M.Ed. is an award-winning author, social science researcher, and empathy pioneer. Her lifelong work focuses on her grand unified theory of emotions, which revalues even the most “negative” emotions and opens startling new pathways into self-awareness, effective communication, and healthy empathy. She is the founder and CEO of Emotion Dynamics LLC and the developer of the Empathy Academy online learning site. Her applied work, Dynamic Emotional Integration® (also known as DEI) is a trailblazing approach to emotions and empathy that reveals the genius and the healing power within the emotional realm.

Karla has also developed the groundbreaking Six Essential Aspects of Empathy model that highlights all the processes in healthy empathy and makes them easily understandable, accessible, and attainable. This fully realized model teaches people how to access, develop, and manage their empathy intentionally. It also explicitly welcomes people who have been exiled from earlier models of empathy (such as men, boys, autistic people, and people with personality conditions such as narcissism and sociopathy).

Karla is the author of Embracing Anxiety: How to Access the Genius Inside This Vital Emotion (Sounds True, 2020), The Dynamic Emotional Integration® Workbook (Laughing Tree, 2018), Emotional Genius for Teens: Discovering the Brilliance inside Your Feelings with Amanda Ball, MS (Laughing Tree, 2018), The Art of Empathy: A Complete Guide to Life’s Most Essential Skill (Sounds True, 2013), The Language of Emotions: What Your Feelings are Trying to Tell You (Sounds True, 2010), and the multi-media online course Emotional Flow: Becoming Fluent in the Language of Emotions (Sounds True, 2012).

Karla is also in production on an illustrated children’s book: Emotions! The Smart Kid’s Field Guide to the Wonderful World of Feelings (Laughing Tree, 2020).


Elizabeth Markle, Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist, professor, and assistant professor of Community Mental Health at California Institute of Integral Studies. Elizabeth is also Founder and Executive Director of Open Source Wellness, a clinical-community integration initiative offering experiential behavioral health and wellness via a "Behavioral Pharmacy" approach for individuals and families. Elizabeth recently served as a project director with Well Being Trust, a new foundation focused on the mental, social, and spiritual health of the nation, and lead the Youth Peer Initiative, focused on uplifting and spreading the Youth Peer Hotlines model across the nation. Formerly, Elizabeth served as a postdoctoral fellow at the San Francisco VA. Dedicated to multitheoretical and multi-level approaches to individual and community health and healing, Elizabeth’s research and entrepreneurship are focused on systems design to generate social support, social capital, and social sustainability in health and healthcare.

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