Coping Strategies
Prior to exposure, the therapist teaches the patient cognitive strategies to cope with anxiety. This is necessary because it provides the patient with a means of controlling their fear, rather than letting it increase to intolerable levels. Relaxation training, such as meditation, is one type of coping strategy. Administration of an anti-anxiety medicine prior to exposure to the phobia-inducing stimuli can also be used as a coping strategy. Patients who have breakthrough levels of anxiety that lead to hyperventilation and other somatic manifestations are sometimes trained to focus on their breathing, or on positive thoughts. Another means of relaxation is cognitive reappraisal of imagined outcomes. The therapist might encourage subjects to examine what they imagine happening when exposed to the phobic stimulus, thus allowing a reappraisal of supposed catastrophic situations with actual outcomes. For example, while a patient with snake phobia might fear that all snakes encountered would be aggressive and deadly, reappraisals would stress that such outcomes are not common, nor the rule. Such techniques, specifically used for animal phobias, have proved efficacious.
Read more about this topic: Systematic Desensitization
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