Counterconditioning

[ysabetwordsmith]

Here is a very useful article that I often reference when I can find it, but it's tricky to find.  If you have brain weasels, and especially if you've had bad experiences trying to level-grind your way through exposure therapy, consider this:

Anchoring or counterconditioning is kind of the opposite of exposure therapy. Instead of grinding down a fear reaction, you pause at the threshold of just noticing something -- before it's close enough to be really upsetting -- and then apply wonderful things. Eventually, the dog (or your lizard-brain) will begin to associate the formerly scary thing with the new treat.

Comments

[gingicat]

Noting for later.

[technoshaman]

Ooooers!

[johnpalmer]

A friend also just mentioned a fascinating technique. Repeat a (verbal) fear, over and over - 100 times, 200 times. It's often the talking-brain that has these anxieties; but semantic satiation robs those words of meaning, and soon, it's nonsense. An example: "No matter what I do, I could still get cancer" for a person with that fear - it's a true statement, and a potential cause for anxiety, but how much anxiety can be produced by words that now mean nothing more than "nyah na na na na!" in the moment?