Exposure Treatment for Anxiety | City Colleges of Chicago

University:
City Colleges of Chicago
Course:
PSYCH 201 | General Psychology
Academic year:

2025
Views:

294

Pages:

2
Author:

customer-8616241

Exposure treatment for Anxiety What is exposure? ● Exposure to a feared stimulus, to experience the feared disaster ○ Does not occur and/or ○ If it occurs you are able to deal with it ● → corrective realistic experience When do you use exposure? ● Guideline treatment for anxiety disorders ● Don’t withhold clients effective treatment ● When in the process: ● As soon as possible after psychoeducation and individual part of behavioural experiments ● Often part of behavioural experiments Treatment effects ● More effective than ○ Exposure and cognitive techniques ○ Cognitive techniques only 4 types of exposure ● ● Interoceptive ○ In panic disorder ○ Having panic attacks is not a disorder, panic attacks are harmless and part of life Imaginary ○ PTSD ○ Fear of avoidance of traumatic memories ○ Consequence: Trauma keeps feeling like it happened yesterday ○ Memories also in OCS/hypochondria ○ ● ● Fear of intrusive thoughts → neutralize In vivo ○ All anxieties ○ Mix and match In virtuo ○ Virtual reality ○ All anxiety disorders ○ First step and practice High risk of therapeutic drift ● ● ● Don’t hold back effective treatment Exposure yourself to exposure Refer to a colleague New insights ● ● ● ● ● No breathing and relaxation exercises in panic disorders Minimize distraction Add affect labeling Combine multiple CS’s for deepened extinction Occasional reinforced extinction: practice the expected disaster