![]() ![]() Kindt’s clinic says that 80 per cent of patients that have tried the Memrec Method had their phobia cured after only one session. Merel Kindt accompanies Eva Holland in the fire truck basket to confront her fear of heights. The treatment appears to be effective at treating a range of specific phobias that can be directly confronted (more abstract fears, such as the fear of death, can’t be treated through this method).ĭr. If the treatment is successful, the memory is altered as the patient sleeps and a strong fear response will no longer be triggered. Propranolol was originally developed to treat angina, but it has since been used to treat many health conditions including tremors, cardiac arrhythmias and - since it lowers heart rate and blood pressure - anxiety. But Kindt has found that if the patient takes a single dose of a beta-blocker called propranolol after the memory is triggered, it disrupts the re-saving process. Usually, that fear memory would be re-saved in the brain overnight as the patient sleeps. “The memory trace is temporarily in a destabilized state.” “This is a signal to the brain to update the memory,” she says. Kindt then adds something new to the experience, such as challenging a patient afraid of heights not close his or her eyes. ![]() “First trigger the fear memory by exposing people to a situation or stimulus that they fear,” she says. In BE AFRAID: The Science of Fear, Kindt explains how her method works. This method is based on a premise from McGill University researcher Karim Nader: that our brains re-save memories and that these memories are malleable. Kindt is also a professor and researcher with the University of Amsterdam, and she’s developed what she calls the Memrec Method for phobia sufferers like John. “Once the relapse happened, I would be back where I started and would have to begin the therapy all over again.” “The exposure therapy would seem to work at times, but then suddenly I’d relapse,” says John, a past research participant of clinical psychologist Merel Kindt. For these phobias, treatment tends to involve drug treatment and psychotherapies like cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), where patients may be gradually exposed to the object of their phobia and taught ways to cope.īut these therapies aren’t effective for everyone. But while it might be easy to avoid snakes if you have ophidiophobia, other phobias can be much harder to sidestep, like a fear of leaving your home. For some, phobias can be paralyzing and debilitating.įor some, dealing with their phobia is as easy as avoiding its stimulus. ![]()
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