Systematic Desensitization And Systematic Desensitisation

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.

Systematic desensitisation includes three steps. The first step is to help the person construct an anxiety hierarchy. An anxiety hierarchy is a list of stimuli related to the specific source of anxiety, in this case being in a busy public place. The stimuli are ranked from the least to the most feared or avoided. An example of an anxiety hierarchy for someone with agoraphobia might include:

A couple of researchers at the Anxiety Disorders Research Center in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) examined weaknesses of CBT (Craske et al., 2014). Although CBT has been known for the most effective treatment for social phobia, not all patients show improvements after the treatment. Patients easily drop out during, or at the early stage of the treatment. Even patients who successfully finished the entire session tend to have a hard time continuing to use methods they learned and to maintain low level of anxiety, so the likelihood of reoccurrence exists. Therefore, alternative ways to solve these weaknesses are needed in order to develop the treatment itself and to provide the most matchable treatment method for each patient, according to the article by Craske et al. (2014).

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

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.

The Nature of the Problem: In both Exposure and Behavioral Therapy the main focus is on anxiety. These anxieties area conditioned response (Prochaska & Norcross, 2005, p.238 & 264). In Exposure Therapy and Behavioral Therapy the client avoids situation where there will be confrontation or fear where it could be

Desensitization is a predominant treatment that exceeds expectations to diminish the fear in a patient of a circumstance, by presenting them to it either in actuality or in one's imagination. In the first place, the patient should consider storms deliberately until the point when the contemplation isn't dreaded. Second, take a look at photographs of the storm until unfeared. Next, watch recordings of the storm until the point that the video is unfeared. Finally, the patient should play sounds from storms noisily for a considerable length of time until the point that the sounds are unfeared. Ensure you never proceed onward to the following stage unless you've effectively finished the past one. By finishing these means one ought to have the capacity

Like anything else Behavior Therapy does have its strengths and weakness. One of it strength is the ownership the client is given, at the onset of therapy goals are established and clients are encourage to be active in the therapeutic process, by developing a plan of action. This allows the clients to have a vested interest in deciding with the goals of their therapy will be. (Corey, 2013, p. 278). Behavioral therapy is also one of the few therapies that place an emphasis on research, this has made the behavior therapy method one of the most effective in the treatment of a number of behavioral illness. Because research is consider to be a basic aspect of this approach and therapeutic techniques are continually refined (Corey, 2013, p. 277) cognitive behavioral procedures are currently the best treatment strategies available for depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, social phobia and eating disorders (Corey, 2013, pp. 278-279).

An important feature of behavioural therapy is its focus on current problems and behaviour, and on attempts to remove behaviour the patient finds troublesome. This contrasts greatly with psychodynamic therapy, where the focus is much more on trying to uncover unresolved conflicts from childhood (i.e. the cause of abnormal behaviour). Examples of behaviour therapy are aversion therapy and flooding. Aversion therapy is used when there are stimulus situations and associated behaviour patterns that are attractive to the client, but which the therapist and the client both regard as undesirable. This therapy involves associating such stimuli and behaviour with a very unpleasant unconditioned stimulus, such as an electric shock.

treating anxiety and phobias without involving sudden direct exposure like in the case of exposure therapy. I know because in an article it said " systematic desensitization is a method of therapy that is helpful in treating anxiety and phobias without involving sudden direct exposure like in the case of exposure therapy.

It is believed that as all behaviour is learned then it can also be un-learned. This can be done through behaviour therapies. Flooding is generally used for those with phobias. It involves exposing individuals to situations they are afraid of in an intense manner. There is ethical issues around this therapy as clients are subject to intense fear and anxiety. Systematic desensitisation are more effective on phobias (phobialist 1997). Some of the therapies are not effective on more severe mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and can also oversimplify illnesses by focusing on the symptoms not the cause. Most behaviourists believe that most phobias are from previous traumatic experiences.

comparable results for depression as antidepressant medications, making it a successful treatment alternative to medication. (Thoma, Pilecki, et al., 2015, p. 433) Since this is predicted to become such a major issue, the treatment for depression has become extremely important. According to Rachman, Cognitive behavioral therapy is also successful for the uses of treating obsessive compulsive disorder and anxiety. For example, Salkovski 's analysis of OCD became an important part of the cognitive behavioral therapy model, which helped therapists focus on the client 's thoughts and feelings regarding their compulsive behaviors and urges. (Rachman, 2014, p.5) In the field of anxiety, studies also found that cognitive behavioral therapy showed favorable results in lowering symptoms for those diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. One of the majority methods of therapy for anxiety disorders is exposure therapy, which is the process when a client is directly confronted with the object that they fear throughout sessions. The process starts out slowly, until the last session where the client comes into direct contact with the object they fear. (Thoma, Pilecki, et al., 2015, p. 438)

Systematic desensitization is a brief/graduated method of exposure therapy that gets patients to become increasingly more exposed to an anxiety-evoking stimulus or situation, while engaging in a competing behavior. This therapy had three primary steps. First, the patient is taught a competing response, then events that cause the anxiety are listed in a hierarchy, then the patient is instructed to imagine each anxiety-evoking event while simultaneously engaging in the competing behavior. With that being said, making a list of anxiety-evoking situations or stimuli is called anxiety hierarchy construction. Each hierarchy is to have a general theme and each situation is to be listed from least to most anxiety-evoking.

It can leave a person not wanting to go back to a certain place, situation, or even be around certain people – causing them to avoid feared stimuli. Exposure based therapy is used to expose people to what they fear the most in hopes of eventually being able to conquer their feared situation. In the current study avoidance has been chosen as a mechanism for people who have been sexually abused, because avoiding aversive situations has been associated with the maintenance of panic disorder symptoms (Comer et al., 2011). CBT is the control treatment but also a collection of ancillary factors between the two treatment conditions. The active ingredient of the experimental condition is exposure therapy. The use of CBT premises in both treatment conditions makes for a strong control group and therefore improves internal

The immune system functions in preventing foreign and potentially dangerous molecules that enter the body from harming the person. Sometimes, these allergens that enter the body are completely harmless and the body’s overreaction to the allergen can be extremely dangerous. For decades, scientists have been searching for effective ways to properly diagnose an allergy, how to save patients in life-dependent situations, and discover a long-term cure. Although modern medicine has proven to be very helpful and has saved many lives, the drastic increase of children developing allergies is an issue of concern and is something that needs to be put on notice.