The What Keeps Fears And Phobias Going? handout presents key factors that maintain phobias and extreme fears.
Offers theory, guidance, and prompts for mental health professionals. Downloads are in Fillable PDF format where appropriate.
Includes client-friendly guidance. Downloads are in Fillable PDF format where appropriate.
An editable Microsoft PowerPoint version of the resource.
The “What Keeps It Going?” series is a set of one-page diagrams explaining how common mental health conditions are maintained. Friendly and concise, they provide an easy way for clients to understand at a glance why their disorders persist, and how they might be interrupted.
What Keeps Fears And Phobias Going? is designed to help clients with fears and phobias understand more about their condition.
Understanding what keeps phobias and extreme fears going is crucial for effective intervention. By identifying these factors, therapists can develop idiosyncratic models of clients' experiences and focus their interventions.
Designed to help clients affected by phobias and extreme fear.
Explain to the client that certain difficulties persist due to cycles that maintain them.
Use the handout to discuss what might be keeping the client's difficulties going.
Pinpoint and personalize maintaining factors that are relevant to the client.
Explore how these maintaining cycles can be interrupted.
Everyone experiences fear at times. Although it can be uncomfortable, fear is an unavoidable aspect of life. However, for some individuals, fear can become overwhelming and frequent that it leads to significant problems. When specific objects, animals, or situations trigger intense feelings of fear that are disproportionate to the actual threat, psychologists refer to this as a 'phobia.' Common symptoms of a phobia include feeling extremely frightened by a specific thing, experiencing immediate and intense fear, and attempting to avoid the feared object or situation, or facing it with great dread.
Research studies have shown that cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) is one of the most effective treatments for overcoming phobias and extreme fears (Hofmann & Smits, 2008). CBT therapists work a bit like firefighters: while a fire is burning, they’re not so interested in what started it, but in what is keeping it going and what they can do to put it out. If they can work out what is maintaining a problem, they can address it by interrupting the cycles that fuel it.
CBT models of extreme fears and phobias suggest that several things keep them going once they start. The What Keeps Fears and Phobias Going? information handout describes some of these maintaining factors, and illustrates them in a vicious cycle or 'flower' format, in which each ‘petal’ represents a separate maintenance cycle. Helping clients to formulate a model of their experiences is an essential part of cognitive behavioral therapy for extreme fears and phobias. Therapists can use this handout as a focus for discussion, or as a template from which to formulate an idiosyncratic model of a client’s experiences.
