Using Exposure Strategies to Face Your Fears
In your author’s first year of graduate school, she joked with her mentor that getting a Ph.D. in clinical psychology was just one long exposure exercise. Rites of passage such as giving a lecture to a class of over 100 students, seeing her first therapy patient, and presenting in a conference symposium were exciting and, admittedly, also terrifying. There seemed to be an infinite number of ways to make mistakes.
Looking back several years later, it was accurate to anticipate that some things would go wrong. Others went well, though, and opportunities to learn and grow came with the willingness to seek out challenges and (squirmingly) accept imperfect outcomes.
When we feel nervous or afraid about something, it’s easy to find ways to avoid it. Paradoxically, deliberately putting ourselves in uncomfortable situations can reduce anxiety and improve our ability to cope. Like diving into a cold pool, the overwhelming discomfort associated with facing our fears dissipates as we “get used to the water.”
This idea is the foundation of exposure-based therapies, which are used to treat anxiety in situations ranging from a fear of flying to unprompted panic attacks. Though anxiety is a completely normal human response to stress, individuals often seek exposure-based therapy when they find that fears about certain situations are interfering with important parts of their lives.
Public speaking is a common example. Though it brings up anxiety for many people, we find ourselves in situations where it’s necessary. Through repeated practice, some individuals find that they are able to focus on communicating ideas they find exciting, rather than worrying about everything that could possibly go wrong. One strategy is to approach each presentation as an experiment: Do your best, see what works and what doesn’t, and use that information for the next time. The same logic can apply to other anxiety-inducing scenarios.
Want to try out an exposure for yourself? Here are 4 easy steps:
Think about a situation you fear or have been avoiding. Is it related to something that matters to you? Is it “worth it” to accept anxiety or other unpleasant emotions that might come up?
While accepting that things will not go perfectly, think about or write down some of the positive consequences that might come about as a result of facing your fears.
Try it out: Approach the situation with curiosity, like a scientist collecting data. Things don’t need to go a certain way. All you have to do is show up and see what happens.
See if you can stay in the situation long enough to show yourself that you can handle it, even though feelings of anxiety might tempt you to end the exposure early.