Desensitizing

Desensitization therapy

Description

Desensitizing is the strategic process of gradually reducing sensitivity to a stimulus, situation, or issue by controlled, repeated exposure. Its practical intent is to diminish adverse reactions—such as fear, anxiety, or shock—thereby enabling individuals or groups to function more effectively. This approach remedies problems like phobias, trauma responses, or resistance to change, facilitating adaptation and resilience by systematically neutralizing negative emotional or behavioral responses to previously distressing triggers.

Implementation

Phobic people are often prescribed a course of desensitization therapy to reduce their fear to a manageable level or to eliminate it. Usually the phobic person will repeatedly be exposed in small but ever-increasing amounts to the feared object. This may include instruction about the feared object, how it operates and how to cope with it. The aim is to make the sufferer less sensitive to the feared object, and ultimately to reduce feeling a of loss of control, which is frequently a cause of the phobia.

Desensitizing therapy has been used as a way of "curing" homosexuality, alcoholism and stuttering.

Claim

Desensitization involves forcing the subject to view disturbing images over and over again until they no longer produce any anxiety, then moving on to more extreme images, and repeating the process over again until no anxiety is produced. Eventually, the subject becomes immune to even the most extreme images. This technique is typically used to treat people's phobias. Thus, the violence shown on T.V. could be said to have the unsystematic and unintended effect of desensitization.