When you go to your therapist in an attempt to overcome your fear of heights, she asks you to lie on a couch and relax while you imagine slowly climbing up the steps of a ladder. by having you progressively relax while imagining a stressful stimulus, she is using?

The therapist is using systematic desensitization where this technique is being used to people in order to overcome their phobias that they exhibit extreme fear because of this particular thing. They make used of exposure of the certain object that they fear the most and is being taught in the same time to try themselves to relax as they are being exposed to it, in order to conquer their fears or phobias.