Spider I Love you - The Thrill of Anxiety

Spider I love you was a quick research project with Alice Schwab and her fear of spiders. This Project shows my research methods. I am currently looking for further participants like Alice.

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/the-thrill-of-anxiety/files?upload=1

Introduction to thesis proposal

The previous British Prime Minister Tony Blair said that he wants public services to be ‘redesigned around the needs of the user; the patients, the passenger, the victim of crime.’

Current therapies are predominantly successful, but can be highly traumatic for the person with the phobia, and in some cases not successful at all. Health care tends to have a very text book approach to therapy and treatment. Rarely does it take into account the individuals personality, beliefs, hobbies or passions. A person with a phobia commonly has to go to the point of terror several times to overcome their fear, and even then they are often not completely cured.

Through a tangible form, the effects of a therapy can remain and maintain the positive state of mind. This research searches for a more specific approach, to design for and from the individual. What if therapy became fun, or even exciting? What if by surrounding them selves with ‘objects’ or through daily interactions they are more at ease?

Complex problems are messier and more ambiguous in nature; they are more connected to other problems; more likely to react in unpredictable non-linear ways; and more likely to produce unintended consequences.

A person with a phobia suffers from what is commonly referred to as an ‘irrational fear’, often stimulated by an object or place linked to a traumatic experience in their past. What makes the fear real and threatening in their daily lives is often nothing more than their imagination triggered by an object or place in which they have real, but irrational negative associations with.

So, how can this ‘imagination’ be used to create positive triggers to counteract the negative triggers which cause anxiety? How can objects and interactions help re-associate emotions towards places and ‘things’ in a complex scenario?

Follow the link for a full version of the research proposal.

http://phobia-thesis-research-proposal.googlegroups.com/web/research+proposal.pdf