Related to Anxiety: Arbitrarily Applicable Relational Responding and Experimental Psychopathology Research on Fear and Avoidance

Dymond et al. (2018) wrote a narrative review. They pulled together lab work on how humans learn fear without direct bad events.

The paper links anxiety to arbitrarily applicable relational responding. That is our ability to treat any two things as the same, opposite, or part of a pattern.

The review found no new data. Instead it shows that anxiety can bloom from words and relations alone.

A person can fear a situation even if that situation was never paired with pain—only related to something scary through language.

Dymond et al. (2007) first proved the point in lab. They taught adults Same/Opposite relations, then saw brand-new stimuli trigger avoidance even though those stimuli were never followed by shock.

Tassé et al. (2013) applied the idea. They used avoidance extinction to cut ritual behavior in adults with autism. The review supplies the theory; the case study shows one way to break the avoidance.

Stevens et al. (2018) looked at experiential avoidance in trauma survivors. Both papers agree: avoidance itself fuels symptoms, not just the original trauma.

You can assess anxiety that has no clear history. Ask about verbal rules, not just past trauma. Target the derived relations with defusion, opposite-relation training, or IRAP probes. Check if rituals or PTSD flashcards are maintained by escape from words, not things.