Once you begin exposure therapy for your anxiety or phobia issues, your therapist may introduce you to systematic desensitization and flooding, two strategies which are both complementary and yet opposite at the same time.
They both expose you to situations that are uncomfortable to help you overcome your fear. The critical difference is that systematic desensitization is done in increments over time while flooding is done massively all at once.
In systematic desensitization, you develop a plan with your therapist to slowly face your fears over the course of several weeks or months. You create a gradient chart of your fears from low to high and then implement the one that causes you the least fear (the “low” one.)
Then, you let it sink in that you faced a tiny degree of your fear and you discuss it with your therapist. Then, you’re ready to try the next small increment. And so on…
Flooding is when you and your therapist create a plan to expose you to an anxiety-provoking situation at the highest level of fear all at once. Like a Roman gladiator had to figure out fast how to defeat man-eating lions when thrown into the Coliseum, in flooding you figure out how to defeat your fears by throwing yourself at them and remaining exposed long enough for your panic to subside.
Flooding sounds pretty scary, doesn’t it? Well, that’s only because it IS. I once went on a weekend therapy workshop to help me overcome my social anxiety. I was thrown into social situations, which I thought would once and for all get rid of my social anxiety in one fell swoop.
I failed miserably.
Which doesn’t mean that flooding doesn’t work. The truth is that there are certain types of anxiety that respond better to systematic desensitization and others that respond better to flooding.
Image via Wikipedia - Empire State Building
Much of it depends on your individual responses that are hard-wired into you. If you have a fear of elevators, you may be hell-bent and determined to get over your fear. You could ride to the top of the Empire State Building on your first ride. Maybe you’ll have a panic attack while doing so. Maybe you’ll scream. Or maybe you’ll get over it quickly and be okay, having conquered your fear.
But if you’re like most people, you may want to take a slower approach. Maybe standing in the lobby of the building and watching others get on elevators would be a first step. Or perhaps riding an elevator in a 2-story building, then a 4-story building, then a 10-story, and so on until you can make it up to the Empire State Building’s 102nd floor.
So why would anyone want to use flooding at all? In certain cases, it just can’t be avoided. If you have a fear of flying, for example, you either have to get on the plane or not. You can’t ask the pilot to take off just a couple of feet and land again until your next session. Once a plane is up, it’s up.
The good thing about flooding is that once the panic and anxiety set in, in most cases it subsides after a period of time. The human body can’t maintain that level of fear for very long. Basically, it gets tired and allows you to relax. By that time, your plane is safely at cruising altitude or you’ve been on the skyscraper roof deck for an hour.
But for most anxieties, systematic desensitization is a better choice because it gives you a stronger sense of control for each step. By celebrating each victory on the ladder to fearlessness, you “re-program” your mind to be able to handle a variety of situations.
The key to all this is working with a therapist who you trust. He or she should understand systematic desensitization and flooding and be able to help you determine which one is most appropriate for your situation. Building trust is the reason why sometimes there are several weeks of sessions before the actual exposures begin.
Either way, exposure therapy is a proven way to overcome your panic and anxiety. Now that you understand two of its main types of exposures you’ll be better informed when the time comes for you to use them to purge your panic.
Click here to watch a short video about the ROOT CAUSE of all anxiety.
Related posts: