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PSYC 110 Section:

Anxiety Hierarchy Exercise (10 Points)

Exposure therapy, or systematic desensitization, is a behavioral therapy developed by Joseph Wolpe designed on classical conditioning techniques of “unlearning” a behavior. Exposure therapy is used mainly to treat individuals suffering from phobic disorders, which causes anxiety when an individual is exposed to anything related to the feared object or situation.

The procedure is simple: First, a therapist teaches the client a relaxation technique, such as tensing and relaxing muscles, or meditation. This is done so that when the client feels anxious, they initiate the relaxation technique to control their anxiety. Second, the client creates an anxiety hierarchy that lists all the scenarios associated with the phobia/anxiety-provoking situation. The client assigns each scenario a value 0 to 100, which is a subjective rating of how anxiety-provoking each scenario is. Once the relaxation technique is mastered and the hierarchy created the therapist exposes the client with the least anxiety-provoking scenario. At any time, if the client becomes anxious, s/he engages in the relaxation technique. Once a client can be exposed to an anxiety-provoking scenario without requiring relaxation, the next-most anxiety-provoking situation is presented.

Your task is to create a hierarchy of feared scenarios to some feared or anxiety-provoking situation. That is, what is something that causes you anxiety and what are at least fifteen scenarios involving that thing that causes anxiety. List these scenarios in no particular order below. Once you have done this provide a subjective rating of each scenario on a scale of 0 (not bad) to 100 (extremely anxiety-provoking).

General Anxiety-Provoking Situation:

Specific Scenario	Rating (0-100)

What aspect of classical conditioning is this most related to?

What, if anything, might interfere with this form of psychotherapy?