Facing Fear and Avoidance: Davis 171-187

Question 2

Avoidance

Answer 2

escaping danger and reducing fear/anxiety quickly, but restricting a person’s life when the threat isn’t really there

Question 3

Phobia (and how classical conditioning plays a role)

Answer 3

Develop by linking fearful thoughts/feelings/sensations to some stimulus as a result of some frightening experience; Can also be learned by observing others

Classical conditioning: pairing a previously neutral stimulus with danger, responding with fear whenever the stimulus is encountered (for example, a spider: a child sees how an adult reacts to a spider and learns a fear response)

Question 4

What was gold standard for treating fearful avoidance? What is habituation

Answer 4

Exposure therapy based on a habituation model

Habituation: repeated exposure to a fear-provoking situation where there is an absence of an adverse outcome until they are no longer afraid

Question 5

Systematic desensitization

Answer 5

helped clients rid themselves of teaching relaxation techniques and talking through a hierarchical list of exposure exercises involving least to most feared situations in the absence of negative outcomes

Question 6

Limitations of the habituation model

Answer 6

Can be time-consuming and does not necessarily work for everyone; Additionally, some have relapsed after the initial successful completion of exposure programs

Studies have shown that treatment doesn’t guarantee that fear won’t reemerge at some point after → has led cog. behavioral therapists to look for more efficient treatments for fearful avoidance

Question 7

Inhibitory learning model (Differences from the habituation model? How does it work?)

Answer 7

shifts away from a goal of reducing fear and physical arousal; facilitates new learning that contradicts and overrides (inhibits) the unhelpful fear-based old learning

How it works: The client asks themselves two questions:
1) what is the worst possible outcome?
2) what is the likelihood that this expectation will occur?

Exposure exercises are designed based on answers to these questions and catastrophic expectations and what actually occurs → leading to an opportunity to learn

Studies have shown that compared to other forms of CBT, exposure therapy based on inhibitory learning works faster to correct distorted beliefs related to the fear situation, overcome avoidant behavior, and reduce anxiety/physiological arousal

The greater the discrepancy between your catastrophic expectation of what could happen when you expose yourself to your feared situation and what actually happens, the greater your new adaptive learning