Cognitive Behavioral Treatments For Phobias

How does relaxation training help phobias?

Relaxation training can be helpful for phobias because when you have anxiety, your body's all worked up—it's all tense, and relaxation teaches you how to relax your body on cue. Also, sometimes people use systematic desensitization, and basically that's a fancy term for meaning you get yourself relaxed, and then you confront the thing that you're afraid of. So if you get yourself relaxed, and then you look at a spider, or you go up on a tall building, and then you feel better.

How does behavorial activation help with phobia?

Exposure therapy is a really, really effective treatment for phobias and all the anxiety disorders. Basically what you do is you learn to gradually confront the thing that you're afraid of. So you start off with something that's not too difficult, something that's hard but not too hard, and you work your way up to your biggest fear in order, step by step.

How does thought restructuring help with phobias?

Thought restructuring means that you begin to think differently over time and as you're confronting your fears, as you get out there and you do the thing you're afraid of, over time you start to conclude that "Hey, that wasn't that dangerous." or "Hey I could handle that." or "Hey, that wasn't as bad as I expected." And then your thoughts are restructured and you stop having all of those horrible catastrophic thoughts.

What is the desensitization method?

The desensitization method for phobia is basically means that gradually you confront the thing that you're afraid of. You start off with a small way. For example, let's say that someone's afraid of spiders. They might start off by looking at a picture of a spider, just a picture of a spider. And then the next step might be that they look at a spider in a box across the room, and they get closer and closer. And the last step of desensitization would be that they're holding the spider in their hand and they're letting it crawl down their arm.

How does graded exposure help with phobias?

Graded exposure is extremely effective in treating phobias. Basically you start off and you do the thing that you're a little afraid of and you work your way up to the thing that you're most afraid of. And its great because at first people never think they would confront that biggest fear. But as you go step by step you learn, "Hey I can handle this step." And then you move to the next step and you say "I can handle that." And eventually you're working your way up and confronting your deepest, biggest fear.