Posted by Dinah on December 21, 2005, at 9:56:30
In reply to Re: I suppose I should also clarify, posted by alexandra_k on December 21, 2005, at 2:52:21
It seems like it was always there, but it changed from something that bugged me to an obsession around the time we adopted my brother. My brother who vomited at the drop of a hat.
I had a recurrant dream for as long as I remember about being a baby/toddler in a playpen(?) with two or three other babies. One threw up, it got on me, and they came to take the baby who threw up away, leaving me dirty and crying and trapped. But I'm positive that's a dream, since I don't think kids of that age have the memory wherewhithal to make memories. (although I know others would differ).
I still think those emotion groups are rather limited. Especially if they take out disgust.
However, in the above example, wouldn't the predominant negative feelings be rage and disgust? With the fear only coming from feeling unable to escape my surroundings. Then well later on into the phobia then obsession, fear and the flight response came from fear of painful arousal, not from fear of the vomit per se.
So that as I have myself found, reassurances that vomit can't hurt me don't work, because they miss the point. And dog vomit avoids being vomit because it escapes the primary association with vomit, intense painful emotional arousal. While quickly making plans wherever I go for how to make an escape should someone vomit is helpful enough to keep me from being housebound.
And CBT'ers might well miss the point by giving the wrong correcting information if they try to overcome a phobia with reason. Even if it did work, even a bit.
And flooding and exposure therapy might just prove that yes indeed, intense negative arousal does accompany exposure to the object.
While maybe being held by someone you love or being given some other positive reinforcer, or exposure with large doses of sedative, might possibly raise doubt as to the inevitable conclusion. Which is why exposure therapy with a therapist that the client has a good rapport with is probably better than exposure therapy with a therapist that the client isn't too crazy about.
As for the dog, I didn't have long term followup. The dog had been removed from a (clearly) less than ideal arrangement, and we placed her in a loving home. But I'd say that it wouldn't be impossible that the dog had ambivilant responses to the towel. Because to my recollection, the dog never lost her awareness that this was a *towel*. And I wouldn't consider the poor thing cured unless she could consider the towel just another neutral object that humans are unaccountably fond of collecting when they could have instead chosen to collect smelly poorly identified objects from outside, or the yummy bones and scraps that the silly things just throw away.
poster:Dinah
thread:590579
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20051216/msgs/590953.html