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Anxiety Cure (Home) > Phobias > Apeirophobia Fear of Infinity
Apeirophobia: Information, Causes and Treatment |
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Apeirophobia refers to an unwarranted or abnormal fear of infinity, despite the understanding by the phobic individual and reassurance by others that there is no danger.
Apeirophobia have been quite effectively treated with behavior therapy. The behaviorists involved in classical conditioning techniques believe that the response of Apeirophobic fear is a reflex acquired to non-dangerous stimuli. The normal fear to a dangerous stimulus, such as a poisonous snake, has unfortunately been generalized over the non-poisonous ones as well. If the person were to be exposed to the non-dangerous stimulus time after time without any harm being experienced, the Apeirophobic response would slowly extinguish itself. Also, this assumes that the person does not experience the dangerous stimulus during that same extended period of time. In other words, one would need to come across only non-poisonous snakes for a prolonged period of time for such extinction to occur. This is not likely to occur naturally, so behavior therapy sets up Apeirophobic treatment involving exposure to the Apeirophobic stimulus in a safe and controlled setting. You can call this exposure treatment because in this treatment, the patient is exposed to the phobic stimulus as part of the therapeutic process. One simple form of exposure is that of flooding, where the person is immersed in the fear reflex until the fear itself fades away. Some phobic reactions are so strong that flooding must be done through one's imagining the apeirophobic stimulus, rather than engaging the apeirophobic stimulus itself.
Some patients cannot handle Apeirophobia in any form, so an alternative classical conditioning technique is used called counter-conditioning. In this form, one is trained to substitute a relaxation response for the fear response in the presence of the apeirophobic stimulus. Relaxation is ill-assorted with feeling fearful or having anxiety, so it is said that the relaxation response counters the fear response. This counter-conditioning is often used in a systematic way to very gradually introduce the feared stimulus in a step-by-step fashion known as systematic desensitization. This desensitization involves three steps: training the patient to physically relax, establishing an anxiety hierarchy of the stimuli involved and counter-conditioning relaxation as a response to each feared stimulus beginning first with the least anxiety-provoking stimulus and moving then to the next least anxiety-provoking stimulus until all of the items listed in the anxiety hierarchy have been dealt with successfully.
Biofeedback instrumentation has often been used to ensure that the patient is really well relaxed before going the next higher item in the anxiety hierarchy i.e. Apeirophobia. Several indexes have been used in this adjunctive approach, including respiration rate, pulse rate, and electrodermal responses.
Also, systematic desensitization can be paired with modeling, an application recommended by social learning theorists. In modeling, the patient observes others in the presence of the phobic stimulus that is responding with relaxation in spite of fear. In this way, the patient is expectant to imitate the model and thereby relieve their phobia. Combining live modeling with personal imitation is sometimes referred as participant modeling.
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