What is Exposure Therapy?

Exposure therapy is psychological treatment that was developed to help people confront their fears, and has a long-standing history of moderate success when treating anxiety and OCD-related disorders, as well as some trauma and depressive disorders. While exposure therapy can be helpful to a degree for many people, it is usually ineffective when used alone for the long-run in treating the “root” of the issue. In fact, most exposure therapists will tell you that they do not believe there exists any underlying “root” of anxiety, for instance, and the treatment is simply to ‘face your fears’ over and over. As expected, we often hear of people struggling with continued anxiety, trauma or OCD despite engaging in exposure therapy. As such, we pursue exposure therapy to the degree it works in order to maximize treatment efficacy and provide immediate symptom relief, and practice it within the framework of IFS/ACT so that we are always working to heal the underlying root of the issue as well.

We Integrate Exposure Therapy & More Effective, Research-Backed Methods

When people are fearful of something, they tend to avoid the feared object or situation. Exposure to the feared object (without actual consequences of their fear) helps them eventually get over the fear and rid of their phobia, is the theory. Despite the basic concept, taking these actions is harder than it sounds for most people struggling with anxiety or OCD, and when they do, their symptoms may eventually go down but reappear in some other form or fashion. For instance, someone might go from having a fear of flying on an airplane to a fear of traveling in cars to a fear of vomiting or maybe leaving the home. Our experience is that exposure therapy has a significant role in treatment but is not the entire treatment like many ‘expert psychologist’ will make it seem.

At Denver Emotional Health, we will recommend a program of exposure therapy in order to help break the pattern of avoidance and fear one is engaged in, but also provide other integrative methods to treat your disorder at its root. In this form of effective, integrative therapy, we create a safe environment in which to “expose” an individuals’ parts to the things they fear and avoid, and this helps them teach their anxious/fearful parts that they can survive/things are not as threatening as it makes them seem any longer. We treat anxiety by integrating exposure therapy with parts-work and mindfulness-based strategies, as well as self-compassion focused therapy.

At Denver Emotional Health, we don’t just put band-aids on our clients’ disorders like most exposure therapists; we treat disorders integrating the best aspects of exposure therapy with Internal Family Systems Therapy and Acceptance & Commitment Therapy, as well as Motivational Interviewing. We have success in utilizing these scientifically validated treatments to help a range of problems, including:

• Phobias
• Panic Disorder
• Social Anxiety Disorder
• Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
• Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
• Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Types of Exposure Therapies

There are several variations of exposure therapy, and our counselors and therapists at Denver Emotional Health are trained to help you understand how we can integrate and create an individualized, structured treatment plan based on your specific needs. These include:

• In vivo exposure: This is when we engage in directly facing a feared object, situation or activity in real life. For example, a client with a fear of snakes might be instructed to handle a snake, or someone with social anxiety might be instructed to give a speech in front of an audience. We will help you engage in exposure therapy on a gradual basis to help you effectively extinguish your anxiety as best we can with real life exposures.

• Imaginal exposure: This type of exposure therapy is commonly done by vividly imagining the feared object, situation or activity. For example, a client with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder might be asked to recall and describe his or her traumatic experience in order to reduce feelings of fear, when their natural instincts may be to avoid the trauma memories.

• Interoceptive exposure: This type of exposure therapy will help you deliberately bring on physical sensations that are harmless, yet feared. For example, a client with Panic Disorder might be instructed to run in place in order to make his or her heart speed up, and therefore learn that this sensation is not dangerous when experienced in other situations.

Exposure Therapy for Affect Phobia, or Fear of Emotional States

Although many of our patients and clients’ fears are visibly external, such as having specific phobias, most people often also struggle with fear of certain internal affects or emotional states, where fears and phobias are more deeply linked to their fears of the surrounding feelings that come with each seemingly dangerous situations.

For example, for some clients, they might think “If I start crying, I’m afraid I’ll never stop!” Or, for others, it might be “I can’t possibly feel anger because I’d feel too guilty, afraid, or undeserving.” Many individuals who suffer from depression, anxiety, anger problems, social isolation or loneliness describe experiences of how they “shut their heart many years ago, and said they would never let themselves be hurt like that again.”

At Denver Emotional Health, our expert therapists treat these “affect phobias,” or conflicted feeling-states, with short-term dynamic therapy and exposure and response prevention therapy for individuals and their parts. Clients are encouraged to gradually experience increasing levels of previously avoided affects (a process of exposure) while reducing anxiety or other inhibitory affects (such as guilt, shame, or pain) to a manageable level (thus preventing the avoidant parts response). Our goal is to help patients and clients face, tolerate and put into perspective the previously unbearable and warded-off affects, burdens or issues which dictate their lives in unhelpful ways.

Main Treatment Objectives in the Treatment of Affect Phobias

We integrate this affect-focused form of exposure therapy and short-term dynamic therapy within an Internal Family Systems framework, emphasizing four main areas of interventions with clients:

• Gaining Insight into your Self versus your Parts
• Exposure to and Expression of Feelings of Wounded (Exiled) Parts Instead of Avoidant Parts Taking Over
• Regulation of Inhibitory Affects of Protector/Firefighter Parts
• Restructuring the sense of Self in comparison to Exiled, Protector & Firefighter Parts, as well as Other People and their parts

Here at Denver Emotional Health, our methods have been developed, modeled, revised and guided by research and clinical findings. We believe we offer a unique experience that is unmatched by most practitioners. While there are various methods to achieve change, we know that each person presents with unique needs and circumstances which require slightly different approaches in order to maximize growth and healing, as there is no one-size-fits all approach to treatment.

Legal Psychedelic Therapy: If you are tired of traditional therapy, have not had success, or are interested in expediting treatment of your issues, learn more about legal psychedelic-assisted therapies we offer in conjunction with traditional therapy and how it may be able to help you.