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Areas › Worry and anxiety › Facing it a step at a time
Anxiety changes costume. This month it is contamination, next month it is being late, next year it is your health. If every version needs its own method you are permanently starting again, and remembering which method applies becomes another job. A short portable routine you can run in a queue, in a corridor, in bed at two in the morning, is worth more than a clever technique you only half recall.
Facing a fear in steps works, and it works best with someone guiding the ladder. Read this as an explanation of how it works, and take the steps themselves to a therapist.
Seek help with steadfastness and prayer (Quran 2:45). What is named is two things a person can return to, whatever the particular trouble turns out to be.
البقرة
وَٱسۡتَعِينُواْ بِٱلصَّبۡرِ وَٱلصَّلَوٰةِۚ وَإِنَّهَا لَكَبِيرَةٌ إِلَّا عَلَى ٱلۡخَٰشِعِينَ
Seek help with steadfastness and prayer- though this is hard indeed for anyone but the humble
Qur’an 2:45read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A systematic review and meta-analysis comparing exposure with cognitive therapy across the anxiety disorders found that exposure based procedures carry much of the therapeutic weight, whichever diagnosis is in front of you, which supports having one approach that travels. It also sets a limit on what a calming routine can claim. A meta-analysis of attention bias modification, a trainable technique for social anxiety, found the benefits inconsistent, so a portable skill is a way to stay in the situation rather than a treatment in its own right.
Ougrin D. (2011). Efficacy of exposure versus cognitive therapy in anxiety disorders: systematic review and meta-analysis.. BMC psychiatry doi
Heeren A, Mogoașe C, Philippot P, McNally RJ. (2015). Attention bias modification for social anxiety: A systematic review and meta-analysis.. Clinical psychology review doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Something you can reach for without thinking is the only thing available to you when you are frightened.
Coming back after a bad patch is quicker than getting there was the first time. Most people expect the opposite, which is why a setback feels so final.
When something frightens you the mind offers one option: do not go. Force out two or three more before judging any of them, daft ones included. Choosing needs something to choose between.
The early rungs do not have to be the real thing. A photograph, a video, or picturing it carefully with your eyes shut is a proper step and not a cheat.