Behavior Therapy for Agoraphobia: Facing Your Fears

Behavior therapy for agoraphobia focuses entirely on behavior, offering techniques to lessen anxiety or avoidance feelings when they start to arise. Behavior therapy does not attempt to discover or treat causes of fear. It only focuses on methods to reduce feelings of anxiety and to keep it from coming back.

In behavior therapy, a person with agoraphobia learns to face feared situations instead of avoid them through one of two types of exposure therapy. The person can practice exposure to feared settings in small steps (as in systematic desensitization) or all at once (as in flooding).

In addition to practicing a form of exposure, a person with agoraphobia is led to develop a relaxation response. The relaxation response is used to induce relaxation while practicing desensitization or flooding.

To summarize, here are the common behavioral approaches to therapy:

1) Developing a relaxation response: Learning to achieve a state of complete relaxation any time, anywhere, and on cue. This technique is especially powerful in stopping panic attacks.

2) Systematic desensitization: Gradually re-conditioning oneself to experience relaxation in place of anxiety in feared situations and places.

3) Flooding: Overcoming fear by forcing oneself to stay in the feared situation or place long enough for the fear to go away.

Success Rate of Behavior Therapy:

The success of behavior therapy depends mostly on how often you practice it and how long you expose yourself to feared situations. It also depends on how long you have been suffering from agoraphobia and how deeply ingrained your fear is. Ultimately, consistency is the key to success with behavior therapy.

Although studies vary, about half of the people who practice behavior therapy see a significant reduction in panic and agoraphobia symptoms. A few people become completely free from agoraphobic fear for the rest of their lives.

Behavior therapy is most likely to be effective when practiced in tandem with cognitive therapy. About 90% of people who practice behavioral and cognitive therapy together see significant reduction in agoraphobia symptoms.

Expected Length of Behavior Therapy:

Behavioral therapy is not an overnight or miraculous cure, but people have been known to see significant improvement within 12-18 therapy sessions. For more severe cases, improvement is generally seen within five to six months.

Article Source: http://www.agoraphobia.net

Stephen Price is a recovered agoraphobic with a master’s degree in psychology. He has an informational website on agoraphobia with a free newsletter. You may sign up for the newsletter at: www.agoraphobia.ws/newsletter.htm

Please Rate this Article

5 out of 54 out of 53 out of 52 out of 51 out of 5 

Not yet Rated