Anyone have any luck trying imagery desensitization?

I mean doing relaxation and imagining yourself in anxiety provoking situation. The idea is that the relaxation and imagining yourself in an anxiety provoking situation will condition a response that will make you relaxed in real life(when you really are in the situation and not imagiing it).

I'm about to get started trying this on my own and hope it helps me.

I can't afford any therapist(they haven't reallly worked hard enough to help me in the past when I could afford them anyway - they mostly just acted as a counselor)

I recently got denied for SSI , even though I have had this condition for over a decade. Because I can go to college for 2 hours a day(doped up big time) they think I can work... I was mainly just wanting to have therapy paid for.

I think I understand what you are asking. For me it works wonders. For me, anxiety and unessesary panicking are a big problem for me. Whenever I have tried the relaxing method it has helped. For example, I was at someones house sleeping over and felt that I was doing a bad job of sociolzing and such, and so that morning I pictured I was a butterfly flying around, and that I was calm and free, and so I become so relaxed I fell asleep. It may have not had an imedeiate effect, but in time it set me up and all feeling more calm and relaxed and ready to go.

http://books.google.com/books?id=Co...X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result#PPA159,M1

this is what I mean be imagery desensitization

Oh, ok. It sounds very interesting. I might try it some time. It sounds like something that could work, and not too difficult to do. If I do try it I'll tell you how it goes. What I've done before it similar, only I never put my anxiety into the calm picture, I just placed myself into a calm picture to calm myself, then went on in life from there. I can't see any harm in trying it.