The progressive relaxation method and autogenic training method are two of the most widely used techniques of reciprocal inhibition mainly of anxiety responses. When these methods are actually used for clinical purposes, it has been a common practice by the counselor to take the reciprocal inhibition procedure for his/her client while making him/her face his/her anxiety-provoking stimulus inside the counseling room. Therefore, it is often difficult for the client to take this inhibition procedure himself/herself on the spot outside the counseling room whenever he/she has a fit of anxiety. The reciprocal inhibition technique adopted in the present study was to make the client touch the tips of his/her thumb and forefinger of his/her hand, which is more skillful than the other, and concentrate his/her attention to the touch. Since this procedure is easy, the client can freely take it by himself/herself, to his/her great advantage, whenever he/she finds himself/herself in a pang of anxiety. In order to strengthen the client's motivation and confidence in getting over his/her difficulty, a series of hypnotic instruction was also given. The technique was applied to twenty clients suffering from emotional disturbance of some kind or another, and the result clearly revealed that it was effective in alleviating the symptoms of their emotional disturbances to some extent or to a considerable degree after an average of five to six sessions of treatment.
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