treating phobias

• Both therapies solely attempt to treat the symptoms of the phobia (anxiety) and not the underlying cause. An underlying cause behind the phobia (like trauma in the patient's past) may still be present after therapy and can cause difficulties which means that the therapies only temporarily ease the phobia.
• Furthermore, some psychologists suggest that social phobias are caused by irrational thinking and not by unpleasant experiences (conditioning).

  Therefore, more complex phobias may be more responsive to other forms of therapy such as CBT which helps an individual to understand their own irrational thoughts and behaviours at such a level that exposure therapy does not allow.