Multiple anxiety disorders often co-occur. According to Iris Kodzaga, the study’s lead author, “Anxiety rarely comes alone.” Patients facing one fear frequently develop additional anxieties. Exposure therapy, involving supervised confrontation with fear-inducing situations, proves to be the most effective treatment method, enabling patients to overcome their fears.

The Impact of Single Exposure Therapy on Multiple Fears

“It was long assumed that if a person had multiple fears, they would require multiple exposure therapies tailored to their specific fear,” explains Kodzaga. The Bochum-based team is now challenging this assumption. The researchers measured fear of spiders and heights in 50 test subjects before and after exposure therapy targeting spider fear. Measures included subjective data from specific questionnaires for fear of spiders and heights. In addition, the researchers collected quantitative behavioral measures, such as how close the participants dared to approach the spiders or how far they could climb a high church tower.

A significant effect emerged in both the subjective and behavioral measures: Fear of heights decreased by an average of 15 percent as a result of exposure to spiders.

“The discovery that exposure to spiders also reduces fear of heights opens up new perspectives for the efficient treatment of phobias,” says Iris Kodzaga. “It could mean that we can rethink therapeutic approaches and possibly develop more universal methods.”

How exactly this effect is transferred from one fear to another is still unclear. “The effect can’t be fully explained by associative learning processes. The generalization effect might be due to an increase in self-efficacy as a result of exposure therapy,” says the researcher. “But perhaps there is also a common denominator between fear of spiders and fear of heights that’s not obvious. We’ll need to conduct follow-up studies to find out more.” Source-Eurekalert