How CBT can help with different mental health problems
Specific Phobia
What is Specific Phobia.
A specific phobia is an intense, uncontrollable and persistent fear of a specific object, situation, or activity. This fear is excessive and out of proportion to the actual risk posed by the object or situation.
Exposure to the source of this fear triggers an immediate anxiety response and can cause a person to experience physical symptoms such as sweating, trembling, a rapid heartbeat, shortness of breath, or nausea.
It may also lead to the person experiencing a panic attack when they are exposed to, or even simply think about, the source of their phobia.
This fear can be so overwhelming that a person may go to great lengths to avoid the source of this fear leading to a number of avoidance behaviours.
Severe phobias can cause significant distress and interfere with daily life by impacting on a person's work, home life, or relationships.
Phobias are a type of anxiety disorder, and common examples include the fear of spiders (arachnophobia), heights (acrophobia), or enclosed spaces (claustrophobia).
​
​NICE guidelines recommend 8-12 sessions.
​
​​How CBT helps
CBT helps with phobias by using exposure therapy to gradually confront and desensitise a person to their fear. This is done in a step-by-step way helping people face their fears in a gradual, controlled and safe way. During exposure therapy people will start with situations which are less frightening and gradually move up to the more difficult ones.
Repeated exposure helps to teach the brain that the feared situation is not as dangerous as it believes it is, leading to a reduction in anxiety levels over time. This helps people to learn that anxiety lessens on its own over time.
CBT for phobias also helps people identify and challenge irrational or unhelpful thoughts and beliefs about the feared object or situation. By examining the evidence for and against these thoughts, people can learn to replace them with more realistic and balanced perspectives.
CBT helps people learn that they can cope with anxiety without avoiding it or engaging in safety behaviours and helps people develop more effective ways of dealing with the fear.