In life, we often meet some people or things that we are particularly afraid of:
Xiao Wang has been scratched by a cat. After his recovery, he was particularly afraid of cats, even furry things.
The children in the neighborhood were hit by the failure of the final exam, and they became extremely anxious when they met the exam in the future.
Even your parents may be worried about your love and marriage because of a failed blind date.
"Where there is oppression, there is resistance!" You have to "resist" when you encounter psychological oppression, right? So, is there any way to help you strengthen this resistance? The answer is yes. Systematic desensitization in psychotherapy is recognized as an ideal method to improve the resistance to various psychological pressures.
System desensitization method, also known as interactive inhibition method, was founded and developed by American scholar Joseph Wolpe. It is one of the earliest methods systematically applied to the whole behavioral therapy. Volpa believes that if a stimulus can automatically trigger the anxiety reaction of human body, then the treatment needs to teach people to form an anxiety inhibition reaction to this stimulus, so that the latter reaction can replace the original anxiety reaction and inhibit people's anxiety, and relaxation is the anxiety inhibition reaction.
At first, Volpa applied this method to animal experiments. He put a cat in a cage and gave a strong electric shock as soon as food appeared, which caused the cat to eat. After repeated times, the cat had a strong fear reaction and refused to eat. Finally, it developed into a fear response to the cage and the entire environment of the laboratory. That is, the so-called "experimental phobia" has been formed. Then, Volpa treated the cat with systematic desensitization, and gradually made the cat eliminate the fear reaction. As long as it doesn't get an electric shock, it will eventually return to the cage to eat without fear. Since then, Volpa has widely applied systematic desensitization therapy to human clinical practice.
At present, systematic desensitization method is widely used in clinical medicine, and has achieved obvious curative effect compared with Black & Decker. For example, American psychiatrist Rex Lun cured some food allergy patients with allergic reactions through systematic desensitization therapy. For example, there is a boy who shows hyperactivity whenever he eats bananas; Another girl often has convulsions because she is allergic to animals like protein. Lishilong gradually increased their consumption to reduce the abnormal reaction of two children to food allergy and successfully cured their allergic reaction.
There were also cases of systematic desensitization therapy in ancient China. The book Confucianism, Family Affairs records such a story:
Wei Dexin's wife lived upstairs in the hotel during the trip. In the evening, the thief burned down the house and fell out of bed because of fear. Since then, every time I hear a sound, I will faint with fear. The family had to stand on tiptoe, not daring to make any noise, and they didn't heal for more than a year. After the diagnosis, the doctor Zhang Congzheng asked the second maid to hold her hand, press it on the high chair and put a small table in front of her. Zhang Congzheng said, "Honey, please look at this piece of wood!" He struck the table hard, and his wife was frightened. Zhang Congzheng said, "Why should I be surprised when I hit the table with wood?" After the woman was frightened, her mood stabilized a little. Zhang Congzheng struck the table again, and the shock has obviously eased. After a while, he knocked three or five times, knocked on the door with a wooden stick, and secretly let someone knock on the window behind him. The woman slowly calmed down from her panic. Knocking on the doors and windows of his bedroom for several days in a row, from dark to dawn, after a month or two, I was not afraid to hear thunder.
Presenting the events that cause people's anxiety in front of people, and gradually increasing the stimulation according to the degree of people's fear and anxiety about these events, so as to achieve the purpose of desensitization and overcome anxiety, which is the key of systematic desensitization. In the above example, the doctor just caught this key and the wife was cured.
Systematic desensitization treatment of anxiety disorder is mainly divided into the following three steps:
Relaxation training
Relaxation training is one of the key points of system desensitization and one of the most widely used techniques in behavioral therapy. It can be used alone or in combination with system desensitization to overcome anxiety symptoms. At present, the most commonly used method is to gradually relax and relax. The muscles in one part of the body are tense first, then relaxed, and the two are combined, and then applied to other parts of the body one by one in the same way, and finally the whole body is relaxed.
When you relax, you have certain requirements for the environment, sound and so on. Among them, the clean environment of the room, soft light, no noise and other interference, soft voice and so on are all helpful for patients to relax. When relaxing, patients can sit or lie on the sofa in the most comfortable posture, gently close their eyes, imagine a scene that makes them feel comfortable and calm down.
Establish a hierarchy of anxiety events
Find out all the events that make tourists feel scared or anxious. Arrange the horror or anxiety events from small to large, and the anxiety or horror caused by each level of stimulation is small enough to be offset by the whole body relaxation.
Implement desensitization
Starting from the lightest communication event, then desensitizing from weak to strong, step by step, until the desensitization of the most serious anxiety event is successful, this stage can be ended. It includes imagination system desensitization and reality system desensitization.
Desensitization of the imagination system means that the patient can imagine events or scenes that make him feel anxious. If the patient does not feel anxious when imagining these scenes, or the degree of anxiety is reduced, it means that the desensitization effect has been achieved. If the patient's anxiety level is unbearable after each imagination, it means that the treatment method needs to be adjusted.
The desensitization of real system is to let patients experience in real situations. After repeated training, patients can gradually adapt to this event or situation and no longer feel fear and anxiety. Then guide the patient into the next stage of desensitization training.
To sum up, the systematic desensitization method mainly allows patients to receive various stimuli that cause their anxiety in a relaxed state, and obtain adaptive behavior through repeated stimulation and training, thus helping patients get rid of anxiety. When patients feel nervous and anxious, but they can't practice the best network system, taking a deep breath and relaxing is the easiest way. For details, please consult Jia Orange Psychology.