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Areas › Worry and anxiety › Facing it a step at a time
After a step that overwhelmed them, most people go straight back to avoiding, and they also start negotiating every later step defensively, which is a reasonable response to having been misled once. If you are the one guiding, an apology and a visibly smaller next step is the repair. If you are the one who got pushed, saying plainly that it was too much is not a loss of nerve.
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.
Draw near! Do not be afraid, for you are one of those who are safe (Quran 28:31). Moses had already fled, and what came next was a call back rather than a reproach.
القصص
وَأَنۡ أَلۡقِ عَصَاكَۚ فَلَمَّا رَءَاهَا تَهۡتَزُّ كَأَنَّهَا جَآنࣱّ وَلَّىٰ مُدۡبِرࣰ ا وَلَمۡ يُعَقِّبۡۚ يَٰمُوسَىٰٓ أَقۡبِلۡ وَلَا تَخَفۡۖ إِنَّكَ مِنَ ٱلۡأٓمِنِينَ
Throw down your staff.’ When he saw his staff moving like a snake, he fled in fear and would not return. Again [he was called]: ‘Moses! Draw near! Do not be afraid, for you are one of those who are safe
Qur’an 28:31read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
One caution against overstating this. A theoretical review notes that neither how much fear drops during a session nor how anxious a person is at the end predicts the outcome, so a distressing session is not automatically a wasted one. What makes a step go wrong is escaping before anything was learned, rather than the distress itself. The evidence that a badly judged step actively sets people back is thinner than clinical confidence about it suggests.
Craske MG, Kircanski K, Zelikowsky M, Mystkowski J, Chowdhury N, Baker A. (2008). Optimizing inhibitory learning during exposure therapy.. Behaviour research and therapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Trust in the plan is what carries someone into the next step, so it is worth more than any single rung.
Pick one picture and keep it. Shallow end, middle, deep end. Then the child, the parents and the school are all talking about the same thing without anybody needing the clinical words.
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.
If you are helping someone with their sleep and eating, ask rather than instruct. The moment you sound like their mother you have lost the part of you that was useful.