Applied tension

Professor Öst (Stockholm University) is quite famous for his applied relaxation technique.  It is easy to learn and kids and adults can do it with ease.  I have a downloadable audio file for kids and for adults.  While this works great for people with anxiety it may not work as well for people with BII phobia.  Blood-injury-injection phobia patients differ from other phobic people in that they suffer from syncope and can faint.  Intensive relaxation can compound this risk.  So Öst modified his original technique to increase blood pressure and cerebral blood flow to provide an intervention that counteracts the cause of fainting.

Applied tension is a technique in two parts.  The first is to learn how to tense the larger body muscles and the second is to detect early signs of a drop in blood pressure.  The treatment program is divided into five sessions.  Here is a quick summary of the sessions.

Session 1:  The therapist gives a brief outline of the treatment and answers any fears the patient may have.  The technique is modeled by the therapist.  A hierarchy of exposure is typically created at this point.  This is just a list of fearful images/sounds ordered from least to most fearful.

The technique is to sit in an armchair and to tense the large muscles in the arms, legs and torso for 10-15 seconds.  The tension is released and the patient has a break for 30 seconds and then the tension is reapplied.  This is repeated five times.

Sessions 2 & 3:  The patient is shown images that are fear inducing for the patient that are phobia related.  The therapist assists the patient to identify the signs and to apply ‘applied tension’ and notice the change in the signs.

Sessions 4 and 5 are concerned with evaluating and managing high levels of exposure (blood donation and observing operations).

The study showed that the treatment was effective.

Reference:

Öst, L., & Sterner, U. (1987). A specific behavioral method for treatment of blood phobia. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 25(1), 25-29. doi:10.1016/0005-7967(87)90111-2