Ted goes to a therapist to help overcome his fear of snakes….

Ted gоes tо а therаpist tо help overcome his feаr of snakes. The therapist first teaches Ted to become deeply relaxed through the use of progressive relaxation. After learning the skill of relaxation, Ted is then asked to imagine progressively/increasingly more anxiety-arousing scenes involving snakes while maintaining a relaxed state at each step/scene. This procedure of learning to relax while imagining increasingly anxiety-evoking stimuli is called ______.