Desensitization to your phobia is achieved in small, incremental steps. An effective relaxation method, exposure plan and patience are the keys to your success.   

Phobia sufferers can eliminate their anxious responses to certain situations through desensitization. Depending on the nature of your fear, desensitization can be accomplished through visualization or real life exposure. 

The type of desensitization that you do depends on the practicality and ease with which you can confront your phobia in real life. Moreover, many people who can do real life desensitization begin with visualization to help them better cope with the situation when encountered in real life. 

For example if you´re afraid of flying on planes, it might be prohibitively expensive to practice all the steps of incremental exposure to the plane. One plane flight after visual desensitization has occurred is probably within reach for most people. 

In order to achieve success with this technique there are four important things to remember:

1. Your ability to achieve a relaxed state. This is where relaxation techniques will come in handy. Pick a method, stick with it and utilize it during your desensitization process.

2. Creating a series of steps for incremental exposure to what you fear. Your steps should begin with actions that only produce mild anxiety and end with actions that are down right terrifying. 

3. The power of your imagination. Being able to clearly, accurately and powerfully visualize or imagine the scene that causes your fear.

4. Patience, patience, patience. 

Practicing desensitization begins with achieving a deep state of relaxation. You can do this through a variety of methods, abdominal breathing, meditation, progressive muscle relaxation or any other method you choose. 

What´s important is that the method you use helps you relax and that you are comfortable with it.  After achieving a state of relaxation, you then imagine yourself in the first situation from your list of incremental steps. 

Stay in your first scene for a minute and look around, imagine everything and create as much detail as you can. Don´t put yourself in the scene, just observe. If you have no anxiety, go to the next incremental step and do the same thing. If you do experience anxiety, return to your initial relaxed state and imagine a peaceful scene. 

It´s important to keep in mind that this process will take time. You will probably need to expose yourself to each step on your list several times before your anxiety diminishes or leaves entirely. 

You will need to practice breathing deeply and completing while encountering the more anxiety ridden later steps on your list. This process is difficult. You may be sitting or lying there comfortably but this process is hard work because your body is going in and out of an anxious state as you proceed with the steps. 

Your job is to deal with the adrenalin surges and keep yourself as relaxed as possible. You will do this in small baby steps and you will not do it all in one day or even 1 week. It could take a long time to deal with your phobia, depending on how powerful it is. That´s okay; the key to success is patience.

Download your free eBook “Stop Panic Attacks and Deal with Your Anxious Thoughts” here: http://www.PanicGoodbye.com/freereport.html

Follow me on Twitter for new article updates: http://twitter.com/bertilhjert and visit my website: http://PanicGoodbye.com

Tagged with: Agoraphobia • Anxiety Disorder • Anxiety Symptoms • Anxiey Attacks • Generalized Anxiety Disorder • Obsessive Compulsive Disorder • Panic Attacks • Social Phobia

Filed under: Social Phobia

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!