Can Cognitive Therapy Help Alleviate Your Phobias?

Treatment for phobias is not necessary unless they are interfering with your ability to work, carry out essential daily chores, or maintain good interpersonal relationships, or they are causing clinically significant suffering. A phobic person thinks the dreaded circumstance is innately harmful. When the feared circumstance is met, this belief triggers automatic negative thoughts, which in turn cause a phobic behavioral response. They can frequently be successfully treated with talking therapies like counseling. Phobias have been reported to respond quite well to cognitive-behavioral treatment (CBT), in particular. By altering your thoughts and behaviors, CBT is a sort of counseling that can assist you in managing your issues. It can be utilized to create doable phobia management strategies.

Simple phobias are frequently treated with CBT, which includes gradual exposure to your fear in order to reduce your anxiety. Desensitization or exposure therapy is the term used for this.

For instance, your therapist might ask you to read about snakes if you have an ophidiophobia (fear of snakes) disorder. They might later display a picture of a snake to you. They might then make arrangements for you to see some real snakes at the local zoo's reptile house. You would then hold a snake as the last stage.

By gradually increasing the level of exposure to your fear, exposure therapy helps you conquer your phobia. You should start to feel less anxious about your fear as the therapy continues. Typically, a phobia can be overcome with weekly CBT sessions lasting about an hour over a period of several weeks. It could take a little longer to get the result you want if other problems, like generalized anxiety disorder or depression, are also influencing your psychological health.

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The treatment of phobias can benefit greatly from behavioral therapy. As first-line therapy for various phobias, exposure therapies with a behavioral foundation are widely employed. They are not the only alternative, though, so you should consult your doctor to find out which strategy would be the most suitable for your requirements.