Exposure therapy is a psychological treatment designed to help you confront and diminish fear and anxiety. From a neurobiological perspective, exposure therapy facilitates changes in the brain that help reduce the symptoms of anxiety and fear.
Repeated exposure to a feared object or context without any negative consequences can lead to habituation, where your body’s physical and emotional responses to fear decrease over time.
Exposure therapy facilitates the creation of new memories that compete with the old fear memories. These new memories help tell your brain that fear-provoking situations are no longer dangerous. This process is known as extinction.
The cerebral cortex (i.e., your reasoning brain) helps to reduce your body’s fear response (i.e., your emotional brain). Over time, your reasoning brain gets better at inhibiting your emotional brain even when fear-provoking situations are encountered.
You learn to re-evaluate and change the meaning associated with the fear-provoking situation.
With repeated exposure and new learning, your brain's neural pathways are altered – a process known as neuroplasticity. Connections between your cerebral cortex and your amygdala are strengthened, enhancing your brain's ability to control fear responses.
Over time, exposure therapy can reduce the hyper-reactivity of your amygdala, leading to decreased anxiety and fear responses.
Your amygdala becomes less sensitive to the triggers that once caused significant fear or anxiety.
There's an increase in the regulatory influence of your cerebral cortex over your amygdala, leading to better control over emotions and responses to fear.
Each time a memory is recalled, it's susceptible to change. Exposure therapy can help you modify traumatic or fear-inducing memories every time they're retrieved, making them less distressing.
Brain imaging studies show reduced activity in the amygdala after successful exposure therapy.
In summary, exposure therapy helps you by harnessing the brain's capacity for learning and adaptation. It reduces the irrational fear response by altering the neural pathways associated with fear and anxiety, leading to lasting changes in how the brain processes and responds to fear. These changes not only decrease anxiety but also enhance your ability to manage fear in a more adaptive and healthy manner.
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This post was reviewed by a licensed medical professional.