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Areas › Worry and anxiety › Facing it a step at a time
Keep it short and specific enough to be followed while frightened. It also gives you something to go over afterwards: what you used, what you forgot, what you did instead. That review is usually where you catch the safety behaviour that crept in, the phone in the hand, the friend who did all the talking for you.
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.
and ease my task for me (Quran 20:26). What is asked for is that the task becomes manageable, and a plan made beforehand is one ordinary way that happens.
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A review of how to get the most from exposure argues for varying the setting, dropping safety props, and choosing steps that deliberately violate what you expect rather than aiming for comfort. A written plan is how those decisions get made in advance rather than in the middle of it. This is a theoretical account of the mechanism, so it shapes how you plan rather than showing that written plans beat unwritten ones.
Craske MG, Treanor M, Conway CC, Zbozinek T, Vervliet B. (2014). Maximizing exposure therapy: an inhibitory learning approach.. Behaviour research and therapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Deciding beforehand is what stops you defaulting to escape when the fear peaks.
No step happens without the person agreeing to it. Not ordered, not dragged, not talked round in a bright voice. Agreement is a condition of the thing working, not a courtesy.
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.
Rather than taking on someone else's routine, ask what actually makes you feel ready for a day, or better looked after. The answers tend to be specific and slightly odd, and they hold up better than anything prescribed.