Flooding

Flooding

Also involves exposing a person to their phobic stimulus but there is no gradual build up in an anxiety hierarchy

Instead flooding involves immediate exposure to a very frightening situation

Flooding sessions typically last two to three hours- sometimes only one long session is needed to ‘cure’ a phobia

How does flooding work?

Stops phobic responses very quickly

This may be because without the option of avoidance behaviour, the client quickly learns that the phobic stimulus is harmless- in classical conditioning terms this process is called extinction

A learned response is extinguished when the conditioned stimulus is encountered without the unconditioned stimulus - the result is that the conditioned stimulus no longer produces the conditioned response

The client may achieve relaxation in the presence of the phobic stimulus simply because they become exhausted by their own fear response

Ethical safeguards

Flooding is not unethical but it is an unpleasant experience so it is important that the clients give fully informed consent to this traumatic procedure and that they are fully prepared before the flooding session

A client would typically be given the choice of systematic desensitisation or flooding

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