Behavioral Therapy[1]

When the brain triggers anxiety alarms, your first inclination may be to find the off switch. Behavioral scientists take the opposite approach. They want you to get so accustomed to the alarm that you don’t hear it anymore. The standard treatment for such anxiety conditions as phobias obsessive-compulsive disorder, and panic disorder is to expose patients to small bits of the very thing that causes them anxiety and increasing the exposure over time until the brain is used to the fear.

Someone suffering from a blood phobia, for instance, may first be shown pictures of a scalpel or syringe, then shown a real syringe, then a vial of blood and so on, until the anxiety is diminished or gone.

There is a risk, if treatment ends prematurely (before the client is immune to the anxiety triggers), that the feelings of anxiety could actually be worsened. But if done properly, behavioral therapy can also bring relief from specific phobias in as short as two or three sessions. Social anxiety takes good deal longer to address.

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1(866)-443-3277.