Fear is a common and universally understood human experience. It can be mild to severe, annoying to extremely disruptive to everyday life.
Common fears can include spiders, public speaking, and heights. More complex fears can include fears about loss, fears related to trauma, or uncertainty about life.
Fear and anxiety are commonly tied together in response to perceived threats, dangers, or uncertainties. One way to overcome fear or anxiety and break the cycle you’re on is through exposure therapy.
What Is Exposure Therapy?
Exposure therapy is a type of cognitive behavioral therapy used to break patterns of fear and avoidance. The goal of exposure therapy is to help clients face their fears and overcome anxieties within a safe and controlled environment.
Gradually, you’ll be exposed to situations that trigger your anxiety so you can learn how to manage and challenge it. Above all, you’ll learn coping strategies to use to reduce your anxiety response in the future.
The Benefits
Exposure therapy can help with emotional processing, extinction, habituation, and self-efficacy.
Emotional processing: As you become more exposed to your trigger, you start to understand why you have this fear. It helps to replace fear responses with something more realistic and productive.
Extinction: Additionally, you’ll learn that your fears aren’t necessarily posing a threat and it can reduce the associated negative outcome you’ve come to expect.
Habituation: As you become more exposed, you’ll begin to lessen your reaction over time.
Self-efficacy: Exposure can help teach you that you’re capable of handling your fears head-on and coming out successful.
Types of Exposure Therapy
Within exposure therapy, there are different types that can be used. These include:
Imaginal exposure involves imagining a feared situation or revisiting a traumatic experience. Say you’re afraid of spiders, for example. Your therapist will walk you through visualizing a room full of spiders.
In vivo exposure involves facing a fear in a real-life setting. For example, if you’re afraid of heights, you’ll begin exposing yourself to heights-related activities in a gradual manner.
Virtual reality exposure uses technology to simulate frightening environments to reduce your response. This method reduces restrictions for incorporating real-life scenarios. If you’re afraid of flying, it’s difficult and costly to complete this in real life, but virtual reality provides a flight simulator option that can be effective.
Interoceptive exposure triggers a response to help you overcome your fear. As a result, it’s effective with panic attack intervention. Your therapist will guide you in increasing your heart rate or evoking a sense of lightheadedness to show you that neither are dangerous or alluding to a severe medical condition.
What Does It Help with?
Exposure therapy is common with treating conditions tied to anxiety. Anxiety causes you to not only overestimate the danger in a situation, but also underestimate your ability to handle it.
Exposure therapy’s goal is to teach you that you can effectively manage your anxiety and that what you’re fearing may not be as significant as it seems.
Exposure therapy can help address:
- Panic disorders
- PTSD
- Anxiety disorders
- Social anxiety
- Phobias
- OCD
The Effectiveness
Exposure therapy is evidenced-based and science supports its use. Many research studies have been completed evaluating the use of exposure therapy for treating anxiety disorders.
Studies show that there is a high percentage, up to 90% in certain instances, of positive responses to treatment where phobias are concerned. Exposure therapy also has successful use with children suffering from anxiety disorders and has shown a reduction in symptoms among older adults.
Research supports the use of exposure therapy as a first option for treating OCD, exposing a person to their obsessive thoughts and helping them learn how to resist them. It’s also a well-researched intervention for treating PTSD.
In short, exposure therapy is a good option to consider if you’re looking to treat your anxiety-related concerns. Are you interested in learning more about how exposure therapy could help you? Reach out today to learn more about anxiety therapy or exposure therapy.
