Hello selena,
Thank you for sharing. I love your final comments:
- "we are never as alone as we feel"
- "we have all survived this long and we will keep surviving"
and, perhaps most importantly when we feel trapped in a situation/emotion/moment - "this too shall pass"
Many here share your experiences and concerns, feel free to use the search function to find more affirmation of your above statements! Keep reminding yourself of your own wise words, and as justducky said - the important thing is to not stop doing things, even if it's small steps!
I've listed some things to consider below, that may help when planning exposure:
1. Learning occurs at moderate levels of anxiety and arousal. In planning your exposure work don’t make it too easy or too hard. If you pick something that doesn’t cause you any anxiety (a fear rating of 1 or 2) you won’t experience a drop in your fear rating because there's really nowhere to go. As a result, you won't unlearn anything. On the other hand, if you pick something that causes a fear rating of a 9 or 10, it may be too difficult. Try to stay in the 3-8 range.
2. Exposure should be predictable. Plan your exposure work in advance and stick to the plan. Unplanned exposure doesn’t work well. Planning your exposure makes it a bit more controllable and a little less frightening.
3. Set a goal for the exposure that you can reach. Set a goal for the exposure session. You may want to stay in the situation for at least a certain amount of time (say 30 minutes) or experience a certain decrease in you fear rating (say go from a 7 to a 5). Setting a reachable goal will give you something to aim for. Achieving your goals step-by-step will allow you to feel good about what you're accomplishing.
4. Stay in the situation until your fear goes down. This can happen in two ways. First, if you pick a situation for an exposure that causes you a fear rating of a 4 to 8, then after an hour you should be experiencing a drop in your fear rating. If not, maybe it was harder than you thought. However, there’s another way to experience a decrease in fear, which is to repeat the exposure again and again. So for example, if your anxiety doesn't come down from an 8 in the first hour, try it again the next day. Eventually, if you repeat the experiment every day, it will start to drop.
5. If something is too hard, pick something just a little bit easier. If you end up having a fear rating of 9 or 10 try to figure out what you could do that would be almost the same but would result in a fear rating of 7 or 8.
For tomorrow, keep in mind that you have already succeeded. Let the previous successes give you the strength to take on these future challenges.
