Exposure Therapy : Exposure Techniques For A Controlled And Systematic Method

In the text “Relaxing Your Fears away,” the author presents how Joseph Wolpe, a behavior therapist, used a behavioral technique called systematic desensitization to treat anxiety disorders. Systematic desensitization is a technique that is supposed to lower a person’s level of anxiety steadily. The reason he used this technique was to see if this technique actually worked using his prior ideas that two feelings or responses cannot occur at the same time. Wolpe focused on the phobias his patients had and proposed that when his patients were in a relaxed state, then they would not respond with fear when presented with something that gave them anxiety.

Meditative breathing is specific form of meditative that has been found effective in treating symptoms of anxiety (Vukovic, 2003). Meditative breathing is essentially taking a few minutes to stop and focus on the rising and falling on your breath. A person will do the activity for a specified time limit or number of breaths. The goal is for the person to clear his or her mind of all thoughts unrelated to their breathing. Through this process the person is said to be 'centering' themselves and disengaging from stressful distractions such as racing and/or obsessive thoughts (Murphy, 2006).

Sensory calm can be achieved through mindfulness practices (Altman, 2014). Like yoga, mindful art therapy with sensory materials can lead to a state of emotional regulation. Sensory experiences with art materials, like other mindfulness practices, encourage focus on the present moment and pure sensation while allowing thoughts and emotions to come and go without judgement. Mindfulness meditation practices such as diaphragmatic breathing or deep belly breathing can also bring awareness back to the present and distract people from obsessive, nonproductive thoughts and feelings of anxiety or depression (Cohen, Barnes, & Rankin,

For example, when I get really worried about an upcoming exam or test, it often upsets me. Therefore, I would approach a friend or an adult that I don’t mind talking to and make them listen to my concerns. A strategy that I use when I talk to a friend or an adult is that I would try to pinpoint the most important concerns that I have and I would look at their reactions so that I know when to stop when they begin to lose focus on listening to my problem. Another way that I use to handle my uncomfortable emotions is to do exercise, especially yoga because the soothing music allows my mind to relax. In addition, the yoga routines allows me to focus on them instead of my emotions because if I lose focus, then I wouldn’t be able to hold a position for the anticipated time as it wouldn’t be as effective. The strategy I use during yoga is to choose soothing music that I like, for example it could be violin or piano covers of pop songs that I like. Another technique that I use is to find a place where I can fully relax without having people interrupt me during my session, for example, this could be at a park, or in my own

“While biological factors certainly increase the vulnerability to developing fear and phobia, findings have not yet confirmed that these behaviors are controlled by biological mechanisms” (Rofé). Treating and understanding, psychoanalysis, phobias are believed to be a defense mechanism against trauma that might have been brought up as child. It still debated wether phobias are biological or created through life experiences. Due to varied experiments and evaluation, stating phobias derive from young childhood traumas would be untruthful and not factual. In the theory of psychoanalytic fear and phobias are created if the child remembers the experience which have brought

It is a beautiful, sunny day in Miami, Florida. The birds are chirping, and the fresh ocean breeze is rustling the leaves. Steve Weston is trying to make the most out of this hot, summer day. He spots a moving truck outside his window. A young girl with dark hair and bright yellow glasses and what appears to be her father get out of the truck and go into the house next door. Steve was not expecting new neighbors so soon. All of the sudden, Steve hears loud banging noises, one after the other after the other. To others that is the sound of a nail gun going off, but to him that is the sound of the bullets firing from an M240 machine gun. He is transported to the battlefield where he lost his best friend and wife, Caroline Jones. After Steve came

Fear, an intensive form of anxiety, can be crippling in nature to some people. It is important that we overcome our fears to be able to grow and mature. There are three main ways in which we can manage or resolve fear: behavioral therapy, systematic desensitization, and exposure desensitization. Behavioral therapy was introduced by John B. Watson, a behavioral psychologist, and involved an individual alternating engagements in coping and relaxation techniques to help desensitize that person to the stressors (Seaward, 2015). Systematic desensitization involves the anxious person learning to de-stress from the fear in small, piecemeal increments through which they always feel in control. Exposure desensitization, on the other hand, occurs when the individual is introduced to the real stressor is brief and save encounters with the stressor. Through combinations of the three different ways to

Dissimilar to imaginal exposure, in vivo exposure allows individuals to directly confront their fears (Ruzek et al., 2014; Schnurr et al., 2007). However, similarly, in vivo exposure reduces fear and distress. For example, a person who is afraid of planes might be instructed to fly, or someone who has social anxiety might be asked to speak in front of a large audience.

There are many psychological disorders that exist around the world, as well as countless procedures used to treat these illnesses. In several treatments, doctors employ behavioral techniques in an effort to reduce the effects of the disorder. For example, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is now being treated through the application of exposure therapy. Exposure therapy is a behavioral technique where individuals are exposed to their without the possibility of a bad outcome. By doing so, a therapist can manage the retraumatization brought on by the disorder and the patient can begin to feel relieved and/or validated.

Existing controlled examinations of intervention efficacy specific to only sexual assault and rape are presently minimal in comparison to intervention examinations of combination or other types of trauma (Regehr, Alaggia, Dennis, Pitts, & Saini, 2013). Psychotherapeutic interventions that fail to differentiate sexual assault and rape victims from other types of trauma victims may decrease the treatment effectiveness or inadvertently harm participants in this subgroup. Trauma associated from rape or sexual assault differs from other forms of trauma and treatment efficacy should be examined in this manner. Trauma from rape or sexual assault entail symptoms of PTSD, depression, suicidal ideations and sexual dysfunction. Individuals may also indicate feelings of vulnerability, loss of control, fear, shame, self-blame, societal blame and stigma (Russell & Davis, 2007; Regehr et al., 2013; Ullman &Peter-Hagene, 2014). This research proposal intends to explore the long term effectiveness of Prolonged Exposure Therapy (PE) at reducing distress and trauma explicitly for adult victims of sexual assault and rape.

Existing controlled examinations of intervention efficacy specific to only sexual assault and rape are presently minimal in comparison to intervention examinations of combination or other types of trauma (Regehr, Alaggia, Dennis, Pitts, & Saini, 2013). Psychotherapeutic interventions that fail to differentiate sexual assault and rape victims from other types of trauma victims may decrease the treatment effectiveness or inadvertently harm participants in this subgroup. Trauma associated from rape or sexual assault differ from other forms of trauma; treatment efficacy should be examined once this matter has been taken into consideration. Specifically, trauma associated from rape or sexual assault entail symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, suicidal ideations and sexual dysfunction. Individuals may also indicate feelings of vulnerability, loss of control, fear, shame, self-blame, societal blame and stigma (Russell & Davis, 2007; Regehr et al., 2013; Ullman & Peter-Hagene, 2014). This research proposal intends to explore the long term effectiveness of Prolonged Exposure Therapy (PE) at reducing distress and trauma explicitly for adult victims of sexual assault and rape.

Steinglass and colleagues have found little evidence for the effectiveness of exposure therapy for treating eating disorders. Even with the previous research described above, results of those studies were not promising because of small sample sizes, and result indicating only small statistically significant differences between exposure treatment groups and control groups. In an effort to continue to strengthen the utility and safety of exposure therapy, Steinglass et al. (2007) examined the effectiveness of D-cycloserine in an exposure therapy intervention.

“Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), specifically exposure therapy, has garnered a great deal of empirical support in the literature for the treatment of anxiety disorders” (Gerardi et al., 2010). Exposure therapy is an established PTSD treatment (Chambless & Ollendick, 2001) and so is a benchmark for comparing other therapies (Taylor et al, 2003). “Exposure therapy typically involves the patient repeatedly confronting the feared stimulus in a graded manner, either in imagination or in vivo. Emotional processing is an essential component of exposure therapy” (Gerardi et al., 2010). “Exposure therapy in the virtual environment allows the participant to experience a sense of presence in an immersive, computer-generated, three-dimensional,

Some of this stress and anxiety can wear away at one’s emotional mindset and can drastically hinder one’s ability to perform basic day-to-day functions. When faced with such challenges, an individual could utilize one of the following techniques to adequately cope with their stress/anxiety.

Anxiety treatment could most accurately be described as having a tool belt with lots of different options to take given the situation. Breathing exercises are a great way to increase the amount of chemicals in your brain that tells itself to calm down. By taking a few deep breaths before doing something that you are nerves about, you will find that a lot of the pressure to take action will have lifted off of your shoulders. It’s much easier at that point to take action because you feel less constrained by your fear.