Phobias & Desensitizing Therapy

Video Transcript

"In this clip we'll talk about desensitization or exposure therapy as one of the many therapies that can be used to treat a phobia. As we know, there's cognital behavioral therapy. There's also medication treatments for phobias. The way this one differs is in exposure therapy the idea is to get used to your phobia on slow gradual processes. Think of it as climbing a ladder or a very, very long staircase. You start at the bottom and you work your way up. You don't try and jump to the top. The way your counselor can help you do this is, let's say you're afraid of flying. The first thing they're going to do is have you close your eyes and think about flying. They're going to ask you what kind of feelings is that bringing up in you. You know, if you start to get really nervous they're going to help you calm down and restart the process. Once you've mastered the idea of thinking about it in your head, they might have you picture, you know, yourself flying in the air or flying in an airplane, and then they might progress to showing you a picture of airplanes or pictures of birds. Different things like that so you move from what's in your head to what's on paper. Then they're going to try and, once you've become a little bit more okay with that, then they're going to try and move you on to actually, you know, seeing it. So maybe it's something that they show you movie or they have you watch TV where, you know, there's a documentary about flying. So that you can actually feel that you're in that space. Sometimes they may, they ask you to go to an airport and look at the airplanes, look at the take off, look at the landing, see if there's any kind of more specific feeling that comes with it. Do you get more nervous when it takes off? When it's in the air? When it lands? Being able to answer these questions is part of the exposure therapy. If you can figure out where your anxiety is heightened you can figure out what to do about it. Basically the idea with any kind of exposure therapy is start gradually, move your way through it kind of like you would the alphabet, start at A and move your way up all through all the letters until you get to Z, and once you get to Z you're done. You know your alphabet. You're good to go. Same thing. Start at the beginning of your phobia at the simplest level, work your way through and by the time you're done you're going to be okay with it and who knows you might even be able to laugh and smile and enjoy whatever it is that was your initial fear."