Anxiety: Distortion of Two Appraisals Cognitively, anxiety is often the result of two distorted appraisals. How we perceive the potential threat of an event, and how competent we feel in tackling it, will determine how anxiety provoking it is for us. How we cognitively appraise our experiences drastically effects how anxiety provoking they are for us. Anxiety is often caused by two faulty cognitive distortions: (1) appraising the situation as being a greater threat then it truly is, and (2) appraising yourself as being incapable of handling it. The further these two appraisals are apart, the greater the anxiety. If we over exaggerate the actual threat of the situation, plus underestimate our ability to tackle it, our anxiety will increase. When we have poor ability to read situations to accurately appraise the event, we tend to over exaggerate the potential threat. In addition, as a result of not understanding everything that is expected, if we tend to experience a lot of failure, we tend to feel inadequate in tackling the challenge. Thus, many children on the spectrum experience strong anxiety entering into task performance and new situations. Cognitive role of anxiety in ASD 1. Poor ability to appraise expectations often results in overly exaggerating the potential threat of events. 2. Because the misreading of situations often results in repeated failure, the person feels inadequate in dealing with new challenges. 3. Over-exaggerating the potential threat, plus underestimating ability to deal with it, equals high anxiety. If I over-exaggerate the potential threat of a situation, plus feel inadequate in tackling the threat, I am likely to feel increased anxiety. Example: Young child is scared to pet the neighbor’s small dog for fear of being bit. Even though the dog is pretty harmless and unlikely to bit, the child over-exaggerates the chances of the dog biting, and feels pretty helpless in protecting himself if the dog does bite. Cognitive Treatment Strategies To lessen anxiety, cognitive strategies often work on teaching people to more realistically appraise (1) the actual threat of the event, and (2) their abilities to handle the situation. Let’s look at both appraisals separately. 1. Appraising the threat of a situation: a. You can learn to change your appraisal to the feared event by having repeated, nonpunishing, exposure to the situation, so that you learn that it is not as threatening as you thought, or b. Learn to question and test out your faulty belief systems that over-exaggerate the threat. There are two questions to explore; (1) what is the probability of the threat occurring in the first place (how likely is the threat going to happen) and (2) how bad would it be if the threat actually occurred (realistically looking at what it would be like if the worse result actually happened). This strategy can only be used effectively for those with strong cognitive abilities. For those with more severe impairments, the primary strategy is to use the repeated, nonpunishing exposure in step (a). For example, for a child who is scared of the neighbor’s small dog, if he has strong cognitive abilities, he could watch the dog with others and learn that (1) the dog is not likely to bite, and (2) if the dog does attempt to bite, it will not be that bad (step b). This paired with providing the child repeated exposure of successfully petting the dog (step a), will show the child he can do it without being anxious. If the child is more cognitively impaired, we could only use step “a” to lessen the anxiety; providing frequent attempts at petting the dog without being bitten. 2. Appraising ability to handle the situation At this step, we want to teach the child that he can effectively master the situation. We would teach the child “what to do”, so he can successfully tackle the event. We would provide repeated practice so he feels more competent in tackling the challenge. With the example of the dog, we could teach the child how to approach the dog slowly, and pet the dog gently, so the dog does not get scared and bite. This way the child learns to feel more competent tackling the potential threat of the challenge. By pairing the two steps together, the person learns to more realistically evaluate the situation as less threatening, plus learns that he is more competent in dealing with the challenge than he first thought. You can lessen anxiety by effectively dealing with step 1 or 2, or both together. Since anxiety will always be present for many people on the spectrum, part of lessening anxiety is to learn to feel competent in the face of anxiety. Many children on the spectrum panic as soon as they begin to feel a little anxious. They can learn to not “panic” when a little anxious by experiencing repeated exposure of successfully mastering the situations causing the anxiety. To do this the child needs to learn how to “cope” with anxiety, and then feel themselves successfully mastering their anxiety with these coping skills. In these situations, the child has to feel the anxiety, so that he can feel himself master the anxiety with the coping skill. So, tackling of anxiety consists of two parts, (1) providing gradual exposure to the stressful event, while (2) using coping skills to master the anxiety being felt. That way the person learns that these situations are not as threatening as first thought, and that they are more competent in dealing with them. The more practice they get in tackling stressful situations, the more accurate them become in appraising the actual threat of situations, as well as their ability to handle the stress. They then become confident in tackling future situations.
Posted on: Fri, 11 Jul 2014 16:04:45 +0000
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