Briefly describe the systematic desensitization technique

What will be an ideal response?


First, the client is taught how to relax thoroughly; this relaxation becomes the incompatible "emotion" intended to take over from the usual phobic response. The therapist and client then construct an anxiety hierarchy (a list of situations involving the feared stimulus, ranked in terms of how much anxiety they produce).

In the desensitization process, the client relaxes as completely as possible and visualizes a scene from the least-threatening end of the hierarchy. Any anxiety at this point is allowed to dissipate. Then, while the person continues relaxing, the scene is imagined again. The lowest-threat scene is imagined repeatedly while the person is relaxing until the scene provokes no anxiety at all. Then the client moves to the next level of the hierarchy. Gradually, the person is able to imagine more threatening scenes without anxiety. Eventually, the imagined scenes are replaced by the actual feared stimulus. As the anxiety is countered by the relaxation, the person is able to interact more and more effectively with what previously had created intense fear.

Psychology

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