Systemic desensitization is a behavioral technique, often used to control anxiety-provoking behavior, phobias, and sudden reflexes. Jospeh wolpe was a South-African psychaitrist developed the desensitization technique in 1950.
Scenarios
Just imagine the scenarios that caused serious fear responses. Whether the scenario is heights, crowds, or public speaking, the worst situation is that we can’t control our sudden anxiety-provoking reflexes. But we try to control our strong fear responses.
Systematic desensitization can help us to minimize such anxiety-provoking situations. It’s a step-by-step journey toward reclaiming our inner peace. Rooted in the belief that we all deserve to live freely from anxiety. This gradually changes our overwhelming emotions into manageable tasks, fostering self-trust and resilience one breath at a time.
Stimuli that caused stress
Numerous stimuli cause anxiety and phobias. For example, fear of Heights, fear of animals (especially snakes and spiders), Fear of people, speaking anxiety, social anxiety, and so on. Systematic desensitization used reciprocal inhibition, teaching our body to replace fear responses with relaxation techniques. We try to make connections with stimuli as easy as possible.
The process of systematic desensitization.
More often, the systematic desensitization technique is used to modify anxiety-provoking behavior. Anxiety arises from different stimuli, such as an animal, fear of speaking in public, or fear of heights. So systematic desensitization is an exposure technique, where the therapist makes real or imaginary exposure to the anxiety-provoking stimulus.
In systematic desensitization, there are three techniques to follow: the relaxation technique, monitoring the fear hierarchy, and exposure to the stimulus.
- Relaxation technique. Jacobson introduced the relaxation technique between 1920 and 1930. The technique becomes the main practice to relax a person with high anxiety. In the relaxation process, the person is asked to feel relaxed, guided to take deep breaths, offered a glass of water, and relax the muscle tension freely in in for achieving calmer state and a pleasant environment.
- Fear hierarchy. Fear hierarchy shows the intensity of anxiety and fear towards stimuli. The hierarchy is measured through SUDS (Subjective units of distress). SUDS are the ratings between 0 and 10 that indicate the level of anxiety. Typically, a score between 0-3 is considering as normal state of stress. Whenever the score rises 4 or higher, the stress reaches an extreme level. So, it’s necessary to monitor the anxiety ratings while implementing the systematic desensitization.
- Desensitization or gradual exposure. In the last stage, the patient is given a gradual exposure to anxiety-provoking stimuli. For example, if a person has a spider phobia, he is gradually exposed to a spider.
There are two ways of gradual exposure invitro and in vivo exposure.
In-vivo vs in-vitro technique in systematic desensitization
In vitro is an imaginal exposure to the anxiety-provoking stimuli. For example, if an individual has a spider phobia, he has gone through an imaginary exposure to a spider. The patient is taken closer to the spider in thought, and even slow attempts are made to induce imagining.
In vivo is a real exposure to anxiety-provoking stimuli, e.g., a person who has a spider phobia is gradually exposed to real spiders instead of an imaginary situation.
When to stop the systematic desensitization process?
There is a defined rule for when to stop the process if the client exceeds the SUDS. When the gradual exposure becomes out of control, the patient raises the index finger, indicating to stop the exposure process.
Again, the systematic desensitization restarts from relaxation techniques.
Disorders treated with systematic desensitization?
Systematic desensitization is a behavioral technique that focuses more on behavioral modification. Basically, systematic desensitization techniques are used to treat phobias, social anxiety disorders, panic disorders, and so on. Here we are going to discuss the techniques.
Phobias
A phobia is a fear response to a specific stimulus; it could be a fear of heights, animal phobias, or closed spaces. Phobias are best treated with systematic desensitization techniques. For example, if a person has an animal phobia, he is gradually exposed to that specific animal. The goal is to reduce the unnecessary fear responses.
Social anxiety disorders.
Some people avoid interaction with others. Interactions make them uneasy and sometimes provoke anxious situations. In these conditions, the systematic desensitization tactics are best suited to treat social anxieties. By making gradual interaction with people, the person becomes more interactive with others.
Traumas
Apart from phobias and social anxiety disorders, systematic desensitization tactics are also used in post-traumatic stress disorders to show the actual intensities of traumas. These therapists try to decrease the effects. Gradually, the patient is pairing with the overwhelming trauma triggers to make the trauma incidents calmer.
Systematic desensitization in daily lives.
The techniques of systematic desensitization are also used in our daily activities. For example, when a child got admission in schools. The first thing is to make the child relax and calm in the school environment. After that, his performances and mental capabilities are measured via examinations. Gradually, when the child is given more complex tasks to solve, academic problems arise. So, the relaxation techniques, SUD’s monitoring, and gradual exposure are commonly used in educational institutions as well.
Apart from school, desensitization tactics are used in every learning process. Especially for learning a musical instrument. The new individual is first introduced to the musical instrument in a calmer and more relaxed environment. After some practices, monitoring the performance and inner motivation. With the passage of time, the tasks are made difficult has been given difficult to master.
Conclusion
The techniques of systematic desensitization are widely use psychotherapy. It’s quite different from dream analysis and free association because it only focuses on present learned behavior instead of unconscious thoughts.
There are three major parts in systematic desensitization: relaxation, fear hierarchy, and gradual exposure. These techniques are essential for reducing fear responses by providing gradual exposure to the stress-causing stimuli. It’s an easy-to-difficult task. In the initial stages, patients are given easy tasks. For example, if a person has a snake phobia, he is shown a snake from far away. With the passage of time, the therapist tries to make direct encounters with the overwhelming and anxiety-provoking stimuli. We also use these techniques in our daily activities.
