ACA Regional & Rural Chapter - October 2026
Location
Online event access details will be provided by the event organiser
About
The regional and rural chapter meets on the 4th Saturday of the month.
This chapter is intended for members living in regional and rural areas and members who do not have access to any other chapter locations.
Agenda:
Thriving Minds in the Digital Age: Neuroplasticity, Anxiety and the Power of Human Connection
Presented by Professor Selena Bartlett
We are living through one of the most rapid changes in human history. Digital technologies, social media and artificial intelligence are reshaping how we pay attention, regulate emotion, form relationships and make sense of ourselves. For counsellors, this creates new challenges, but also new opportunities to understand what sits beneath anxiety, distress, compulsive digital behaviours and difficulty disengaging from screens.
In this practical presentation, neuroscientist Professor Selena Bartlett will explore how experience continually shapes the brain through neuroplasticity, and why digital environments can amplify existing patterns of anxiety, such as intolerance of uncertainty, social comparison, and emotional dysregulation. Rather than treating technology itself as the problem, Selena will encourage counsellors to look beneath the behaviour and ask what function it is serving. Recognising these functions can help counsellors feel more confident and capable in their approach to digital behaviours.
Drawing on more than three decades of neuroscience research, clinical translation, and public education, Selena will explain how stress, early life experiences, relationships, and repeated behavioural patterns shape the brain, while also emphasising its lifelong capacity for change. This aims to inspire optimism and empowerment in counsellors about their clients' potential for growth. The presentation will explore the importance of human connection in the therapeutic relationship and how being genuinely seen, heard and understood can create the conditions for learning, regulation and change. Participants will leave with a practical framework for recognising patterns, opening conversations about digital behaviour without judgement, and helping clients strengthen agency, attention and healthier ways of responding to stress.
Key Themes
• How neuroplasticity allows experience and repeated behaviour to shape the brain throughout life.
• Why anxiety and problematic digital behaviour are often better understood by examining their underlying function rather than simply measuring screen time.
• How repeated checking, reassurance seeking, avoidance, social comparison and difficulty disengaging can become reinforcing behavioural loops.
• The interaction between stress, early life experiences, digital environments and emotional regulation.
• Why reducing shame and increasing curiosity can help counsellors understand what a behaviour is doing for the person.
• The neuroscience of attention, habit formation and behaviour change.
• What therapeutic relationships, human connection and feeling seen can support neuroplastic change.
• Practical strategies counsellors can use to help clients pause, notice patterns, increase agency and build healthier responses to stress and digital environments will be highlighted, ensuring immediate applicability in therapy sessions.
• How counsellors can help clients navigate a world increasingly shaped by social media and artificial intelligence while preserving human connection, critical thinking and wellbeing.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the presentation, participants will be able to:
1. Explain in simple terms how neuroplasticity allows experiences, relationships and repeated behaviours to shape the brain.
2. Recognise common behavioural patterns through which digital environments may interact with anxiety and emotional distress.
3. Explore the function of digital behaviours using curiosity rather than judgement or assumptions about screen time alone.
4. Identify practical ways to help clients interrupt unhelpful behavioural loops and strengthen attention, emotional regulation and agency.
5. Understand how the therapeutic relationship itself can provide conditions that support learning, connection and neuroplastic change.
Five Participant Reflection Questions
• What does neuroplasticity tell us about a person's capacity to change throughout life?
• What might repeated checking, scrolling or reassurance seeking be doing for a person emotionally?
• Why is it important to understand the function of digital behaviour rather than focusing only on-screen time?
• How can counsellors help clients move from automatic digital habits toward greater awareness and choice?
• What aspects of the counselling relationship can help create the conditions for neuroplastic change?
Professor Selena Bartlett is a translational neuroscientist at Queensland University of Technology and an Honorary Professor with Mater Research at The University of Queensland. She previously held senior research roles at the University of California, San Francisco, and has more than three decades of neuroscience experience. She has authored more than 110 peer-reviewed scientific papers, with research spanning neuroplasticity, stress, early life experiences, mental health, and digital environments. Selena is also the author of six public-facing books, being SEEN, Master Parenting in the Digital Age; and hosts the Thriving Minds and Big Feelings Growing Brains podcast and has contributed to documentary projects that translate neuroscience and lived experience for wider audiences, including the award-winning documentary 'seen'. Her work focuses on making neuroscience practical and accessible for educators, parents/carers, health professionals, and communities.
Time in AEDT:
VIC/ NSW/ ACT/ TAS - 9.30am
QLD - 8.30am
SA - 9.00am
WA - 6.30am
NT - 8.00am
This chapter is intended for members living in regional and rural areas and members who do not have access to any other chapter locations.
Agenda:
Thriving Minds in the Digital Age: Neuroplasticity, Anxiety and the Power of Human Connection
Presented by Professor Selena Bartlett
We are living through one of the most rapid changes in human history. Digital technologies, social media and artificial intelligence are reshaping how we pay attention, regulate emotion, form relationships and make sense of ourselves. For counsellors, this creates new challenges, but also new opportunities to understand what sits beneath anxiety, distress, compulsive digital behaviours and difficulty disengaging from screens.
In this practical presentation, neuroscientist Professor Selena Bartlett will explore how experience continually shapes the brain through neuroplasticity, and why digital environments can amplify existing patterns of anxiety, such as intolerance of uncertainty, social comparison, and emotional dysregulation. Rather than treating technology itself as the problem, Selena will encourage counsellors to look beneath the behaviour and ask what function it is serving. Recognising these functions can help counsellors feel more confident and capable in their approach to digital behaviours.
Drawing on more than three decades of neuroscience research, clinical translation, and public education, Selena will explain how stress, early life experiences, relationships, and repeated behavioural patterns shape the brain, while also emphasising its lifelong capacity for change. This aims to inspire optimism and empowerment in counsellors about their clients' potential for growth. The presentation will explore the importance of human connection in the therapeutic relationship and how being genuinely seen, heard and understood can create the conditions for learning, regulation and change. Participants will leave with a practical framework for recognising patterns, opening conversations about digital behaviour without judgement, and helping clients strengthen agency, attention and healthier ways of responding to stress.
Key Themes
• How neuroplasticity allows experience and repeated behaviour to shape the brain throughout life.
• Why anxiety and problematic digital behaviour are often better understood by examining their underlying function rather than simply measuring screen time.
• How repeated checking, reassurance seeking, avoidance, social comparison and difficulty disengaging can become reinforcing behavioural loops.
• The interaction between stress, early life experiences, digital environments and emotional regulation.
• Why reducing shame and increasing curiosity can help counsellors understand what a behaviour is doing for the person.
• The neuroscience of attention, habit formation and behaviour change.
• What therapeutic relationships, human connection and feeling seen can support neuroplastic change.
• Practical strategies counsellors can use to help clients pause, notice patterns, increase agency and build healthier responses to stress and digital environments will be highlighted, ensuring immediate applicability in therapy sessions.
• How counsellors can help clients navigate a world increasingly shaped by social media and artificial intelligence while preserving human connection, critical thinking and wellbeing.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the presentation, participants will be able to:
1. Explain in simple terms how neuroplasticity allows experiences, relationships and repeated behaviours to shape the brain.
2. Recognise common behavioural patterns through which digital environments may interact with anxiety and emotional distress.
3. Explore the function of digital behaviours using curiosity rather than judgement or assumptions about screen time alone.
4. Identify practical ways to help clients interrupt unhelpful behavioural loops and strengthen attention, emotional regulation and agency.
5. Understand how the therapeutic relationship itself can provide conditions that support learning, connection and neuroplastic change.
Five Participant Reflection Questions
• What does neuroplasticity tell us about a person's capacity to change throughout life?
• What might repeated checking, scrolling or reassurance seeking be doing for a person emotionally?
• Why is it important to understand the function of digital behaviour rather than focusing only on-screen time?
• How can counsellors help clients move from automatic digital habits toward greater awareness and choice?
• What aspects of the counselling relationship can help create the conditions for neuroplastic change?
Professor Selena Bartlett is a translational neuroscientist at Queensland University of Technology and an Honorary Professor with Mater Research at The University of Queensland. She previously held senior research roles at the University of California, San Francisco, and has more than three decades of neuroscience experience. She has authored more than 110 peer-reviewed scientific papers, with research spanning neuroplasticity, stress, early life experiences, mental health, and digital environments. Selena is also the author of six public-facing books, being SEEN, Master Parenting in the Digital Age; and hosts the Thriving Minds and Big Feelings Growing Brains podcast and has contributed to documentary projects that translate neuroscience and lived experience for wider audiences, including the award-winning documentary 'seen'. Her work focuses on making neuroscience practical and accessible for educators, parents/carers, health professionals, and communities.
Time in AEDT:
VIC/ NSW/ ACT/ TAS - 9.30am
QLD - 8.30am
SA - 9.00am
WA - 6.30am
NT - 8.00am