Systematic Desensitization

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.

According to “Relaxing Your Fears Away” by Wolpe, J. (1961), which describes the systematic desensitization treatment of neuroses, people cannot experience relaxation and fear at the same time. The author stated the theoretical proposition that the reason people get phobias is that they learned a certain behavior sometime in their life and this thing became the fear in their brain.

Phobias are an everyday annoyance found all over the world. Almost every human has some form of a phobia. Phobias can be as small as being afraid of spiders, or as big as being afraid of dying. Research has proved that one in 10 people suffer from a mildly traumatic phobia, and one in five hundred people suffer from an extremely harmful phobia. Phobias are classified as an anxiety disorder. Due to the distress of attempting avoidance of these fears, they become a huge part of people’s everyday lives and can even become disabling. B. F. Skinner made numerous discoveries about the principles of instrumental conditioning in the 1940’s and 1950’s. He created models of animals and their phobias. Joseph Wolpe contributed to the study as well in the

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:

- From a cognitive behavioral approach, we will be focusing on your patterns of avoidance that are causing you distress. By uncovering what you are avoiding and why, and then voluntarily facing what you are avoiding in a stepwise progression, you will experience less anxiety and fear when faced with the stimuli or situations that you currently avoid. Do you have any questions about that?

The fear of heights can sometimes leave people frozen in terror. There is large amount of evidence suggesting that virtual reality therapy has successfully helped alleviate conditions similar to PTSD. This is accomplished by slowly increasing the amount of stressors, as to not overload the patient with irrational fear. For example, with fear of heights, researchers can gradually increase the difficulty of the simulation, so that the height of the platform increases after every session. In a similar case study, 49 patients had volunteered to participate in a virtual reality treatment for their fear of flying. Results showed, “By the 6-month follow-up, 90% of treated participants had flown since completing treatment” (Anderson 2001). Effectiveness also hugely depends on plausibility and affordability. We need to consider if this treatment is convenient for

It has been proven to have a better response rate.The Institute of Medicine recognized exposure therapies as the only treatment approach with sufficient empirical data to be deemed effective for PTSD (Institute of Medicine, 2007).While pharmacotherapy with SSRI can reduce symptoms, the most effective treatments involve understanding and overcoming avoidance behaviors (Foa & Rothbaum, 1998) Exposure therapy is a behavioral treatment for PTSD that aims to reduce your fear, anxiety and avoidance behavior by having you fully face, or be exposed to, thoughts, feelings or situations that are feared. During exposure therapy, the patient will face varying stimuli that stimulate the PTSD. This will go on until the intensity of the stimuli is

An example of systematic desensitisation could be in a hospital, where an elderly patient may want to talk to a therapist due to their phobia of snakes. The therapists may begin by asking the elderly patient to identify a fear hierarchy. This fear hierarchy would list the relative unpleasantness of various levels of exposes to a snake; this could include showing an image of a snake. This might produce a low fear rating, compared to live snakes crawling on the individual – becoming the highest on the fear hierarchy. Then, the therapist would work with the elderly patient to learn appropriate coping and relaxation techniques, such as meditation and deep muscle relaxation responses.  Finally, the elderly patient would be presented with increasingly

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.

Behavioral therapy helps eliminate undesirable actions and helps a person cope with certain situations. When curing phobias, exposure therapy (a type of behavioral therapy) exposes the patient to his/her fear in a gradual process. This helps the patient overcome their anxiety without experiencing danger. In Geraldo’s case,

The therapist can then help the patient challenge and reconfigure their fear attachment to the event. CBT and Exposure use similar strategies to recall memories. Imaginal Exposure is the most common way for patients to evoke avoidance of trauma related emotions, thoughts, and memories (Wortmann, et al., 2014). As well as “In vivo exposures target behavioral avoidance of people, places, and situations that serve as reminders of the trauma.” (Wortmann, et al., 2014). Patients can then in a safe setting review and interpret these events without the connection of fear and anxiety. Eventually this habituates the connection of fear and anxiety to these events. With a new learned emotional connection to these past events patients see large drop in depression and anxiety.

What works in favor of Panic Away is that it covers an entire range of methods that can address different types of anxieties. This book was written Joe Barry, a native of Ireland who may not be a psychology or psychiatrist but was once a panic sufferer. He noticed how the methods to solve this issue back then did not really deal with the root cause of the problem. He was able to refine the system use then and use it to solve his panic disorder. He has written this book to help others who are searching for an effective way to solve their anxiety and fear issues.

Foa, E. B. (2011). Prolonged exposure therapy: past, present, and future. Depression & Anxiety (1091-4269), 28(12), 1043-1047.

I am pleased to hear that Olwen. Yes Olwen, focusing on the WHY can be disempowering in the long term. The HOW and WHAT can in fact lead to greater insight in the long term. HOW am I responding? WHAT can I do about it?

Some clinicians have reported that patients undergoing aversive treatment utilizing electric shocks have experienced increased anxiety and anxiety-related symptoms that may interfere with the conditioning process as well as lead to decreased acceptance of the treatment. Few clinicians have reported a worrisome increase in hostility among patients receiving aversion therapy, especially those undergoing treatment using chemical aversants. Although aversion therapy has some