Flooding.... can someone help me understand?

[Guest HeadAboveWater]

I've been reading a lot of posts lately talking about an occurrence called ''flooding'' - can some explain how flooding works or occurs?

[Guest nicolam381318]

I'm no expert but it's when you are exposed to your worst case situation and sit with it. It's quite often used on TV shows like 'This Morning' to 'rid' people of their phobias. It's not often used by trained therapists though. It can cause intense anxiety and doesn't have the same efficacy in the long term as slower, more graduated exposure.

[taurean]

Hello Head,

Yes its massive continual exposure to a feared trigger.It finds absolutely no favour with me, and I sacked one therapist who tried to get me to do it. A graded hiewrarchy of exposure is I think more generally accepted to be the most satisfactory exposure.

[Guest imalright]

I'm doing 'flooding' now with some things.......the anxiety definitely has reduced as the days and weeks have gone on. Fantastic results.

However, there are some things attached to my OCD that I definitely, definitely wouldn't do flooding on...! Definitely not! Xx

[Guest HeadAboveWater]

I am beginning to understand what it is now... but just to get a real clear picture of how it would work.... could someone just walk me through the steps of flooding... like the stages of it. If not, that's okay but just wanted to see a descriptive post on how it works.

Edited November 23, 2014 by HeadAboveWater

[gingerbreadgirl]

Ok so... Say someone was scared of spiders, a graded exposure would be like, look at a picture of a spider, look at a real spider, hold a spider etc, whereas flooding would be going straight to bring locked in a pit full of tarantulas . Really crude example sorry! Lol. But basically it means "flooding" your brain with the maximum amount of anxiety straight away.

[ocdlost]

But flooding might work if you expose yourself to all triggers, as phobias seem to be cured that way