So long to SUDs – Exposure is not about fear reduction… it’s about new learning and flexibility

Exposure is one of the most powerful and effective methods therapists have to help clients whose lives are restricted by struggles with fear and anxiety. It is a classic method of behaviour therapy, with over 40 years of research to support its use. Whatever approach to working with cognitions and inner experiences a cognitive-behavioural therapist …

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Top 10 links for 2016 

Another year of tweeting the latest, and the most progressive, research in contextual behavioural science (CBS), along with “fellow traveller” approaches (CBT, mindfulness, metacognition, behaviour analysis etc).  Some trends over the past year:  The rate of CBS publications has increased, particularly for randomised controlled trials of Acceptance & Commitment Therapy. It is hard to keep …

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Creating courageous CBT therapists: how to work with therapist fears about using exposure therapy

Despite a wealth of evidence that it is one of the most effective ways to help people with anxiety disorders, exposure therapy remains underused by clinicians.  As discussed in previous posts, clinicians’ attitudes and practices about exposure are influenced both by their knowledge about the approach and their openness to witnessing client discomfort (and experiencing …

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Playing it safe: why therapists don’t do exposure

Therapy involves lots of decisions. Which interventions are introduced by the therapist – and when – can be influenced by a number of factors. Recent studies suggest some of this decision making is to do with how willing the therapist is to experience distress – either the client’s or their own (or, indeed, both!). In …

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Why don’t therapists use exposure? And how psychological flexibility can help.

Exposure* is one of the most important and effective components in cognitive behavioural therapies for anxiety disorders, supported by decades of research. And yet it is under-used in clinical practice. Why? Well, it isn’t just that many therapists use approaches that are not evidence-based. It seems that even those therapists who have been trained, end …

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