Behavioural approach to treating phobias

• Systematic desensitisation uses counter conditioning to replace fear with relaxation
• patients learn a relaxation technique, such as slow breathing or progressive muscle relaxation and the patient and therapist work out a hierarchy of phobic situation, from least to most feared
• The patient imagines the least feared scene whilst simultaneously relaxing. When no anxiety is experienced, fear has been desensitised
• The therapist and patient work through the hierarchy in a systematic way until the patient experiences no anxiety when imaging the most feared scene
• Flooding involves a single exposure to the most feared situation
• The patient is exposed to the actual phobic stimulus or to a virtual reality version of it in one long session, unit their anxiety has disappeared
• Although intensive fear is initially experienced, the fear response is eventually extinguished as adrenaline levels naturally decrease
• A new stimulus response link can be learned, and the feared stimulus is now associated with a non-anxious response