You’re going about your day when suddenly – and for no apparent reason – a sense of overwhelming fear kicks in. Your heart rate spikes, breathing becomes difficult, you feel like you might faint, you’re sort of detached from yourself, and there’s a sense that you’ve lost control. “What’s wrong with me?”, you might be thinking. “Am I having a heart attack? Am I going to die?” Your fears about what’s happening only make things …
We can all identify certain things we are afraid of. Public speaking, snakes, heights, spiders, social situations, enclosed spaces, flying, clowns, and injections (think flu shot) are among some of the most commonly reported fears. When it comes to these fears, there’s a spectrum of fright intensity that ranges from intense dislike to total avoidance of anything that has to do with the thing or the situation that causes the fearful emotional response. In the …
In this post, I’ll talk a little bit about what Exposure Therapy is – and how it’s used to treat different kinds of anxiety. In short, “exposure” refers to exposing oneself to triggering situations gradually in order to desensitize oneself to the stimulus, or the situation that causes the anxious response.