Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a severe and often chronic anxiety disorder that can develop following exposure to an event involving actual or perceived threat to the life or physical integrity of oneself or another person. Exposure therapy is a set of treatment procedures designed to help individuals confront feared but safe thoughts, situations, objects, people, places, or activities that elicit anxiety or are otherwise avoided because they are perceived as dangerous by patients with PTSD. Exposure to feared but safe situations is a major component of treatment for other anxiety disorders such as phobias, social anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and panic disorder/ agoraphobia. For PTSD, exposure therapy typically involves imaginal exposure to the trauma memory in which patients are instructed to close their eyes and recall the traumatic event by imagining that it is happening right now while simultaneously describing out loud what is being remembered. read more

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