The experience of trauma, intense anxiety, or substance addiction changes the way your brain works, influences every part of your life, and leads to limits. You may feel limited by your negative self-talk, health, and emotions. Finding a way through that pain can seem terrifying, especially if it means reliving what you’ve experienced in the past.
Exposure therapy isn’t about reliving the pain and fear. In a controlled, supported environment, you’ll learn to break the hold that the past pain has on your future. At The Ranch at Dove Tree, exposure therapy is one of the treatment strategies that we use that may help you.
What Is Exposure Therapy?
Exposure therapy is a type of psychotherapy or talk therapy that focuses specifically on reducing your stress response to a particular trigger. During this treatment, you’ll relax your body and manage the automatic negative thoughts that rise in your mind when you think about triggers.
Exposure therapy can help with:
- Substance use disorder treatment
- Trauma treatment
- Post-traumatic stress disorder
- Co-occurring disorders
- Anxiety disorders
- Phobias
Exposure therapy does not erase those memories. It doesn’t eliminate every feeling of anxiety again. Rather, it supports the mind’s natural healing process, enabling improved responses to stress over time. With exposure therapy, it is possible to:
- See a reduction in immediate anxiety responses in some situations
- Reduce cravings for substances
- Lessen the impact past feelings and memories have on your day-to-day life
Exposure therapy can be scary. Thinking about having those same experiences over again may put you at risk for relapse. You may be afraid to go through that pain again. That’s not what happens in a controlled scenario that we will help you navigate.
Trauma, Anxiety, and Addiction
An important starting point is understanding how trauma impacts your anxiety and substance use disorder. Many people turn to substances when they face intense anxiety, fear, or bad memories. You may turn to a drink to “forget” or use a substance to ease the pain. Over time, this leads to the onset of substance use disorders (SUDs). These substances don’t help you overcome those past trauma experiences or the physical, emotional, and mental impact they have.
Exposure therapy can help you in this way. It allows for a gentle process that removes the barrier that’s been holding you back from dealing with that fear and trauma. This barrier is what drives your ongoing need to use a substance and creates anxious feelings.
What to Expect During Exposure Therapy
Exposure therapy allows you to work through the past trauma and pain without actually reliving that experience again. Exposure therapy, studies show, is a gold-standard treatment for overcoming anxiety from previous trauma. You don’t have to fear what it is or how it works. Here is what you can expect.
- Your therapist will go over what exposure therapy is and why it may be beneficial to you.
- You will provide your therapist with information about your past.
- You’ll learn breathing techniques designed to calm your central nervous system. This will help alleviate the anxiety you feel.
- Over the course of several sessions, you’ll work through a list of people, things, and experiences that may be a component of your traumatic history.
- During each session, you’ll discuss why you avoid that experience or thought process, and you’ll talk about it as much as you feel comfortable with your therapist.
- Slowly, and when ready to do so, you’ll explore the topic with grace. Through the process, your anxiety will fade, and you won’t have the intense negative emotions and physical symptoms any longer.
This is not a simple process. It takes time and a licensed therapist to guide you through the process. You can expect our therapists to provide a very safe process for you.
What Type of Exposure Therapy Can Help You?
There are numerous types of exposure therapy, each with different degrees of effectiveness and support. In Vivo exposure, for example, is a real-world experience where you’ll take on that task that you are afraid of with support. Imaginal exposure allows you to think about the event without revisiting the traumatic experience in person.
We can also utilize virtual reality exposure to help you manage negative and dangerous situations without any risk to you. Each person’s needs are a bit different, but strategies exist to address them all.
Seek Treatment from Our Licensed Team to Overcome Your Trauma
If you are facing mental health disorders, SUDs, and crippling trauma, exposure therapy could be helpful to you. Set up a consultation and assessment with The Ranch at Dove Tree. Let us help you explore that barrier, why it is there, and what you can do to overcome it. Contact us now to learn more.
