If you suffer from any type of anxiety or especially a phobia you may have heard of the method of systematic desensitization to treat it. A good description of this method can be found in our anxiety treatment section where several characteristics of systematic desensitization are defined including:
• Relaxation training
• A list composed by the patient that prioritizes anxiety-inducing situations by degree of fear
• The desensitization procedure itself, confronting each item on the list, starting with the least stressful
But what does this textbook description look like in real life? And how does one go about this if the subject is a child? I am going to give you my firsthand account of how I have helped my son cope with some of his phobias by sharing a specific real life example of systematic desensitization in action.
Just to give you some background, my son Max has autism. I have written about many of our experiences on our ADHD site. Anxiety is an extremely common co-morbid condition of autism and the development of phobias can result. Phobias are something I understand all too well as I have them too. Yet empathy only goes so far in helping a loved one deal with irrational fears. You have to also have a plan of action.
The object of fear for one of my son’s early phobias was also, strangely enough, a source of great fascination and attraction. When Max was about three he developed a phobia to trains. It started off as a fear of a specific train. We took him on a small train ride at an outdoor museum exhibit. The train ride, although, limited in duration, went through a tunnel where the children would scream loudly and you could hear the echoes. People with autism have some difficulty modulating incoming sensory stimuli. So sounds which might not bother you or me may be perceived as painful and frightening to my son. In addition to the screaming sounds there was also the issue of the loud train whistle which delighted all the other children except for my own.
After that first fateful train ride, Max would cringe in fear every time we went to this particular museum and saw that train. He would go so far as to begin running away into the crowds if he saw it. One danger with phobias is that the fear response can generalize to other objects and situations resembling the first trigger. At first my son’s panic was fixed upon one particular train but then it grew to include all trains. He became afraid when we had to stop the car to let a train pass by. Max cried and screamed when he saw a train at an amusement park. All of a sudden it seemed there were trains everywhere to avoid.
My son's train phobia hit a critical point when his fear response was increasing to an almost daily event. He had also generalized his phobia to include anything which remotely resembled a train. We have a playground near our home which has a variety of playground equipment including the usual swings and slides. But it also has this structure which looks like a train. Regardless of the fact that this train did not move or make any sounds Max was terrified of it. At this point I felt I had to do something because this train phobia was interfering with our daily routines and paralyzing my son from enjoying the neighborhood playground.
