Fear and Anxiety Reduction Flashcards
Fear and Anxiety Reduction
-Please note:
- learning about anxiety disorders and treatment is not a license to diagnose or treat anxiety disorders
- However, relaxation techniques are useful for everyday stress and anxiety relief
Defining Fear and Anxiety
-when a stimulus situation elicits automatic nervous system arousal, and the individual engages in behaviour to escape or avoid the stimulus situation
-respondent behaviour (anxiety
involved the bodily responses involved in automatic arousal
respondent behavior can function as an EO for operant behaviour
-operant behaviour (anxiety)
nvolves escape and avoidance responses in the feared situation
-No meaningful behavioural distinction between
fear and anxiety
- some distinguish based on whether threat is known
- some consider anxiety to only reflect the respondent behaviours, whereas fear is a combination of respondent and operant behaviours
Example: Cynophobia
- Respondent behaviours: rapid heart rate, increased muscle tension and other bodily responses elicited by the sights or sounds of a dog
- Operant Behaviours: running away from dog or avoiding places where dogs are located
Disorders Involving Fear and Anxiety
- Separation Anxiety Disorder
- Specific Phobia
- Agoraphobia
- Social Anxiety Disorder
- GAD
- Panic Disorder
- Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
- PTSD and Acute stress disorder
Procedures to reduce Fear and Anxiety
-Relaxation Training
- involves training behaviours that produce bodily responses incompatible with automatic arousal
- requires practice
- tense/anxious responding comes to function as a S^D for engaging in relaxation techniques which are negatively reinforced by the reduction in the tension
- Three main components
- Muscle tension reduction
- relaxed breathing
- attention focusing
The Physiological Component
- The automatic responses associated with emotion are may and complex
- regulated by the Automatic Nervous System
Relaxation Training: Muscle Tension
-Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR)
- person practices systematically tensing and relaxing each of the major muscles in their body
- trains discrimination of specific bodily tensions
- i.e., you discover which tensions you are prone to
- Functions as a S^D for relaxation
- Trains a response that can relieve that tension
- relaxation is a physical skill like weightlifting
- tension reduction is often negatively reinforcing
- Cue words can be incorporated to act as a CS for the removal of tension
Relaxation Training: Relaxed Breathing
-Diaphragmatic Breathing (i.e., deep breathing)
- focus on deep. Slow, rhythmic breathing to produce relaxation
- Belly (diaphragm) muscles rather than chest (intercostal)
- Shallow breathing is associated with automatic arousal
Relaxation Training: Attention Focusing
-Attention Focusing Exercises
- focus on neutral words, images, or tasks to remove attention from anxiety producing stimuli -Built into PMR and diaphragmatic breathing
- other common examples:
- guided imagery, hypnosis, meditation
Relaxation Training: BRT
-Behavioural Relaxation Training
- Person assumes a relaxed posture in all the major muscle groups of the body to achieve relaxation
- i.e., client is trained to behave as a relaxed person would
- Prompts and reinforcements are used
- Focus is on 10 different overt behaviours involving:
- head
- eyes
- mouth
- throat
- shoulders body
- hands
- feet
- vocalization
- breathing
Desensitization
- logic of desensitization is based on the idea that fear and anxiety are learned respondent behaviours
- desensitization = extinction
-repeatedly present CS in the absence of US -> the CS will lose its ability to elicit a CR
Systematic Desensitization
- replace anxiety using relaxation techniques as the person imagines the fearful situation
- Gradually move through a hierarchy of fear producing stimuli
- Hopefully relaxation generalizes to the actual fear situation
- Best used as a precursor to In Vivo Desensitization
- Create a hierarchy of fear producing situations
- items in the hierarchy are ordered from least to most fear producing
- items are each given a Subjective Units of Discomfort Scale (SUDS) rating
