How to beat anxiety with Exposure Therapy

Exposure therapy is often essential if you are to overcome your anxiety disorder. The cognitive behavioural treatment of conditions such as: panic with agoraphobia, simple phobias, social anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder and post traumatic stress usually entails an exposure component. That is, you must subject yourself to the situations you are worried about in order to beat anxiety.

Although this sounds frightening, there are some tools to help you cope with confronting your fears (e.g. rational thinking, slow breathing and isometric relaxation).

The guidelines for exposure therapy are that the sessions must be

graded

repeated and regular

prolonged

Graded:
Step 1 should be difficult enough to provoke some fear but easy enough for you to be fairly confident you can do it. Once you can cope with Step 1 confidently, then you can move onto a more difficult situation and gradually work up your most feared scenarios.

If someone was frightened of dogs they might consider that smaller dogs were less threatening than large ones and particular breeds were less aggressive than others. Someone with a dog phobia might therefore start off exposure therapy by interacting with a Cavalier King Charles puppy and gradually work up to patting an adult rottweiler.

It is important not to confront a feared situation in an exposure therapy session that is far too difficult for you, as if you tackle something too stressful, without sufficient preparation, you may become extremely anxious or even have a panic attack. Such a negative experience would only strengthen the association between fear and the setting.

Repeated:
Part of this form of anxiety treatment is that need to confront your feared situations frequently and regularly. If your exposures are too far apart your fear will have risen again by the next time you do it.

Prolonged:
Generally, it is advised that you stay in the feared situation until your symptoms starts to decrease. Anxious people often approach or attempt a feared situation but then choose to escape from the social or performance situation. When you avoid or leave feared situations your fear of them increases because the decrease in anxiety which follows escape gives you the idea that avoidance was a helpful strategy. However, if you stayed in the feared situation your symptoms would eventually decrease and the next time you confronted the situation you would be less anxious.

Therefore, it is important to your recovery that you stay in the situation you are attempting. Try not to panic or flee if the anxiety becomes severe. If your discomfort is high, you may feel you temporarily need time out from your feared activity, e.g. if you were attending a house party you might go to the bathroom or sit outside in the garden, do some slow breathing, develop some rational thoughts and wait for the fear to decrease for going back into the party.

Remember exposure is an important part of how to beat anxiety. It is the most powerful method that can help you take control of your anxiety.

Andrews, G., Creamer, M., Crino,R., Hunt,C., Lampe, L., & Page, A. (2003). The Treatment of Anxiety Disorders. 2nd Edition. Cambridge, England. Cambridge University Press