2 mins

What are the techniques you use to help people deal with phobias?

Video Description

Elena Touroni, a Chelsea-based private psychologist, discusses the most effective technique for dealing with phobias – where people are gradually exposed to the thing that bothers them until their anxiety decreases. https://www.thechelseapsychologyclinic.com Chelsea Psychology Clinic are a group of London psychologists and psychiatrists offering private psychological therapy and psychiatry treatment from their premises across central London and Chelsea. The private therapy sessions cover the following areas: – Acceptance & Commitment Therapy – Cognitive Analytic Therapy – Cognitive-behavioural Therapy – Couples Therapy – Dialectical-behaviour Therapy – Mentalisation Based Treatment – Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy – Schema Therapy

Video Transcription

We call exposure response prevention, which is extremely anxiety-provoking to begin with. So we do something very, very gradual. So over time we will, for instance, take a phobia such a spider phobia. The way you would deal with a phobia like that would be that, in the beginning you might expose someone to the photograph of a spider. So it would be in a very controlled way and you would get them to rate their anxiety. And you would get them to sort of be able to tolerate gradually to look at a spider in a photograph, to the point of their anxiety really decreases to very manageable levels. And then we would up it by them perhaps seeing a spider that is inside a glass, that you don’t actually have to be with on your own. And we would build essentially a graded hierarchy off the person that being exposed to something that is as least anxiety-provoking, but a little bit anxiety-provoking as possible such as a photograph, to actually the person being able to tolerate being in the same room with a spider on their own, for instance. And that is called systematic desensitisation, it’s extremely effective.

Dr Elena Touroni

Dr Elena Touroni

19 June 2022

"Dr. Elena Touroni is a skilled and experienced Consultant Psychologist with a track record of delivering high-quality services for individuals with all common emotional difficulties and those with a diagnosis of personality disorder. She is experienced in service design and delivery, the management of multi-disciplinary teams, organisational consultancy, and development and delivery of both national and bespoke training to providers in the statutory and non-statutory sector."

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Athena Lazaridou

Athena is a Pilates instructor with 8 years’ experience in the field. After completing a Power Pilates Mat Certification in Athens, she went on to complete the Full Comprehensive Classical Pilates Certification with Equinox in Kensington.  She has been teaching Pilates at Equinox for the past 6 years in addition to her own private clients who she trains both face to face and virtually.

Athena has a passion for helping people get stronger and fitter as well as helping those recovering from injury regain their strength and mobility.  Over the years, she has worked with athletes to incorporate Pilates into their training and improve performance. Athena has also worked with prenatal and postnatal women who may be experiencing depression or other mental health difficulties and used Pilates to facilitate a positive impact on their mental health.

Athena is very passionate about improving physical and mental well-being and has recently incorporated Sound Healing into her work, as she believes it to be one of the best ways of ‘letting go’ and releasing stale energy whilst increasing greater self-awareness.