Analysis Of The Exposure Therapies

Exposure Therapies

On September 11, 2001 two planes hit the World Trade Center buildings. I vividly remember the phone call from my husband telling me about the first building being hit. I turned on the television, and while watching live, I watched the second tower get hit by the airplane. I watched in disbelief, feeling emotions of pain, suffering, and loss as the towers crashed to the ground. It was at that moment I knew the devastation of this event and the lives that would be affected.

The war on Iraq began after the September 11th attacks, and as the years went on, I began to learn about the devastation of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). PTSD is an anxiety disorder (from the DSM-IV-TR) that may develop after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which severe physical harm occurred or was threatened (Norcross & Prochaska, p. 196, 2014).

In class I was fascinated to learn about the Exposure Therapies from Chapter 8 presented by Jeanette Kennedy-Cecil. The exposure therapies are designed to confront fears and activate intense emotions; exposing the patient to the emotional pain of confronting their fears. This description is poster-child for symptoms of PTSD.

The therapies Jeanette presented are Implosive, Prolonged Exposure, and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). In Implosive Therapy, Thomas Stampfl, the founder of implosive therapy, became convinced that avoidance is the key to psychopathology (p. 195, 2014). It was during his studies that avoidance conditioning and extinction that were deeply researched. It was through this that learned avoidance came to be; reducing anxiety in the short term.

According to Stampfl, people learn to avoid particular stimuli in order to avo...

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...o install and increase the strength of the positive cognition by linking the original memory with the positive cognition.

All Exposure Therapies are fascinating to me because the main goal is to give relief to the patient who is suffering from his or her anxieties and fears. I cannot imagine the amount of stress and anxiety that September 11th and its future war has caused. However, I can imagine myself being a small part of the relief by becoming a Therapist and one day being able to apply some of these techniques to those who need it.

References

Hutchinson, D. (2012). The Essential Counselor: Process, Skills, and Techniques (2nd ed.).

Thousand oaks, California: Sage Publications, Inc.

Prochaska, J. and Norcross C. J. (2014). Systems of Psychotherapy: A Transtheoretical Analysis (8th ed.). First Stanford Place, 4th floor, Stamford, CT: Center Learning