Biofeedback-Aided Hypnotherapy for Intractable Phobic Anxiety

Phobically avoidant people need treatments that enable them to cope effectively with their task threats. Field-mastery techniques that emphasize the importance of cognitively and behaviorally active roles to be taken by both therapist and patient have been shown to be superior to the clinic-based exposure and encouragement approaches. This paper describes a treatment model used with patients who were refractory to any performance-based treatment because of various reasons, primarily intense fear of even the initial guided exposure. Biofeedback-aided hypnotherapy (BAH) was the integrated new treatment employed. It offered the simultaneous safety of the clinic, enhanced vivification of the feared situation, combined with continuous convincing feedback about the growing mastery. BAH may ease the fear associated with the binary leap from in-vitro treatment to actual exposure. This treatment offers an alternative to phobic patients who are too fearful to engage in any other effective treatment modality.