Treating anxiety can be difficult. Not only is anxiety something that's been created from years of experiences - anxiety also fuels itself, causing it to create a type of anxiety cycle that requires a great deal of intervention in order to treat successfully.
Cognitive behavioral psychologists depend on many tools to try to break that cycle and improve your ability to control anxiety. One such tool is known as exposure therapy, and studies have shown it is one of the most effective ways to combat short and long term anxiety.
Exposure Therapy and Anxiety Disorders
暴露疗法是治疗方法之一万博max手机for different anxiety disorders, and the therapy itself is used differently depending on the type and severity of the disorder.
But exposure therapy has been proven to be very effective at controlling anxiety. It's based on well research psychological principles, and studies have shown that completed effectively, it is one of the best possible ways to stop anxious reactions to various thoughts and stimuli.
What is Exposure Therapy and How Does it Work?
暴露治疗是基于恐惧“灭绝”的想法。它的起源是基于研究，表明人类脑习惯在他们未能产生预期反应时刺激刺激。当被迫面对足够长的时间恐惧时，思想基本上适应了导致这种恐惧的刺激，以至于它停止地发现它压力的程度。
The best way to explain this is with an example. Pretend you have a phobia of something silly, like pencils. You are deathly afraid of pencils, to the point where you avoid them altogether and run away when you see them.
没有w, imagine a psychologist locked you in a room with a pencil, and you couldn't come out. At first, you'd be terrified - you'd experience a severe fear response. But after a while, when nothing happens, your mind will start to adapt. You'll get used to the pencil's presence, and eventually it will stop causing fear. The brain adapts to the pencil, because the human brain hates being under stress, and when no danger occurs it will purposefully reduce that stress by reducing the amount of anxiety it experiences in the presence of the stimuli.
This is how exposure therapy works. It takes advantage of the principle of extinction (which is, in essence, when you're no longer afraid of a feared stimulus) by introducing you to the feared stimulus slowly until you're not afraid anymore.
重要问题：为什么灭绝不自然工作？
You may be wondering why extinction doesn't happen naturally with irrational fears. After all, if you have a fear of a pencil, and you come across a pencil, nothing happens - so why doesn't the fear go away?
答案是因为为了灭绝工作，人们必须等待并且在存在恐惧刺激之中，直到它不会引起焦虑，大多数人都不这样做。事实上，大多数人都试图避免或逃离导致他们恐惧的事情，这会产生负面的强化效果，实际上增加了您未来经历的恐惧量。
It's not just objects either. People also fight their own thoughts, trying as hard as they can to stop thinking about the things that bother them. This type of avoidance is has a negative effect on your ability to overcome your anxieties.
Exposure Therapy and Specific Disorders
This type of therapy differs depending on the type of disorder a person experiences. In order to better understand the issues surrounding each disorder and how exposure therapy can be valued, we'll break them down into categories below:
Specific Phobias
Exposure therapy started with phobias. Phobias are intense fear of something that doesn't deserve that type of fear response, like spiders, snakes, driving, or heights.
通常，心理学家将使用一种称为系统脱敏的疗法，这是一种暴露治疗。让我们说客户害怕蜘蛛。减少这种恐惧的步骤可以如下：
- The client will first imagine a spider until the thought no longer produces a fear response.
- Then they may look at images of spiders until they no longer invoke fear.
- Then they may be in the same room as a spider, except the spider will be in a cage.
- 然后他们可能在同一个房间里作为没有笼子的蜘蛛。
- 然后他们终于可以触摸蜘蛛。
任何害怕蜘蛛的人都可能意识到它是多么令人恐惧地跳到最后一步。但是使用曝光疗法，随着时间的推移，每一步都会更容易，直到你到达最后一步并充分克服你的恐惧反应。心理学家将尽可能喜欢上面的步骤，几乎每种类型的恐惧症。
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
PTSD被认为对暴露治疗非常好。它已经进化了很多，目前有虚拟现实工具可以帮助曝光，特别是为退伍军人提供帮助。
由于心理突破的风险，暴露治疗最好留在PTSD的人的手中。但有很强的证据证明，对于克服创伤的人来说，重复的曝光和放松工具是成功的，在克服任何一些问题中取得了克服的一些问题。
It will likely start with trying to relive your trauma on purpose, and come to terms with the experiences. From there, a psychologist may have you start working with the triggers that cause you to experience severe anxiety, whether it's noises, people, or situations. PTSD is a complex disorder that can differ in its treatment based on individual traumas, so your psychologist will come up with a specific plan for you.
Panic Disorder
Exposure therapy can also be used in panic disorder. Panic disorder is characterized by intense feelings of extreme anxiety and doom, almost always as a reaction to your own body. While people can occasionally experience panic attacks due to surprise, danger, or a fearful situation, most panic attacks are triggered by physical sensations, either because they trigger fear over something being wrong with your health (like a heart attack) or fear that you may experience a panic attack.
Psychologists use exposure therapy to reduce the effects of these triggers. The triggers still happen, but if you don't experience anxiety as a response to these triggers you can decrease the likelihood of a panic attack, and potentially decrease the severity of the attacks you do have. Examples of triggers include:
- 头晕
- Lightheadedness
- Chest pains
- Rapid heartbeat
- Trouble breathing
有几种不同的技术可用于故意导致这些感觉发生。例如，心理学家可能会让你在一个圆圈中旋转，以模拟头晕，然后与你一起努力让你从焦虑下来。
This type of desensitization can be very effective. It tends not to control all panic attacks, but it does seem to effectively reduce the severity and frequency since you will not be responding to those sensations with as much fear.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Obsessive compulsive disorder can actually benefit greatly from exposure therapy. But it's not just compulsions that can be exposed to the person. It's the obsessions as well.
OCD的最大问题之一是患有痛苦的人根本无法摆脱导致思想的焦虑。他们尝试，他们尝试，不幸的是，思想继续回来，每次他们都会得到极度焦虑。这就是为什么他们被称为“痴迷”，因为这些想法一遍又一遍地回来。
因此，暴露治疗用于帮助一个人摆脱这种恐惧的恐惧。他们基本上被告知继续思考痴迷，而不是忘记它，直到它不会引起很多焦虑。研究表明，通过继续关注消极的思想，最终你习惯了思想并经历了更少的焦虑，从而降低了痴迷控制你的生活的方式。
您当然可以接触到强迫症。例如，如果你害怕细菌，你可以被告知触摸泥浆或垃圾，坐下来等待你的焦虑。它可能需要一段时间，它经常在专家的存在下完成，但它可能是非常有益的。
How to Perform Exposure Therapy at Home
One of the reasons that exposure therapy is best left in the hands of experts is because psychologists are trained to talk you down if the anxiety gets too high, and are also there to make sure you can't quit. That accountability is important - if the anxiety gets too strong and you stop the exposure before you've calmed down, you can actually make it more likely to experience anxiety in the future and make exposure therapy more difficult.
But it is possible to perform it at home. If you're going to, consider the following:
- Learn as much about your anxiety as possible. We have an anxiety test on this website to help, and hundreds of pages related to your disorder and its symptoms. It's very important you understand why your disorder occurs, because you need to make sure that you're targeting the right things.
- 列出逐步减少一个问题的焦虑方式。随着痴迷和恐慌障碍，您可能无法自然地引导manbetx体育官网它。但是用恐惧症和PTSD，更好地开始缓慢，让你的时间努力工作。在恐惧症实例中，逐渐曝光正在考虑刺激，看着刺激的照片，保持在与刺激相同的房间，并触摸刺激。您还可以考虑视频（在照片之后）和其他工具。
- 考虑有人抱你责任。请记住，如果您在完全平静之前体验过多的焦虑并停止，您将来可以让您的焦虑更加严重。您需要确保您是负责任的，是否有人帮助您或只是向自己做出承诺。
- Learn relaxation strategies. When you feel anxiety, you need to continue to expose yourself to the stimulus until it no longer causes anxiety. There are no breaks, so instead of a break, you need to make sure that you know ways to relax so that the anxiety doesn't continue to affect you. Deep breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, and yoga are a few, but you can also use your own relaxation tips or try to relax cold turkey.
- Start the exposure therapy. Remember that you cannot stop a stimulus until you no longer feel anxiety in its presence. If you're looking at a photo of a spider and feeling anxious, don't go to the next photo until the photo itself has completely stopped causing anxiety. You may even want to test yourself later to make sure that the photo continues to not cause anxiety, then move on to the next photo. If you're making yourself dizzy to stop anxiety over panic attacks, you can wait until you're not dizzy, but don't quit until being dizzy causes less anxiety.
- 你不需要在一天内完成这一切。一旦你发现你不再担心刺激的某些部分，你就可以停止并在第二天试试。给自己一点休息。但在你回到它之前，请确保在继续前进之前，您仍然没有焦虑。如果看着蜘蛛的照片继续引起焦虑，那么你需要继续这样做，直到你准备好继续阅读视频。
- Keep going until you've successfully beaten your anxiety producing stimuli.
- 完成后，别忘了在不同的日子里进一步测试自己。克服焦虑一件事，但你仍然需要保持它。不要让自己“完成”只是因为你殴打它。即使在停止造成焦虑以确保它永远不会回来后，也必须继续曝光疗法。
With panic disorder, many of the symptoms are caused by hyperventilation. So some people find hyperventilating on purpose is as powerful way to keep that anxiety away.
If there's any reason to be concerned that you may have a severe reaction to these exposures, do it in the presence of a doctor. Those with a heart condition, for example, may want to make sure a trained medical professional is running the show just in case anything goes wrong.
But in general, it is possible to perform exposure therapy yourself. If you truly believe you can handle exposure therapy, it is one of the most powerful ways to reduce anxiety.
