To learn more about where fears stem from go to session 4 of your toolbox and there is a bullet called learning fear. Here you will find an explanation of fears and where different ones originate.
Check it out, and check back in with anything interesting you'd like to point out.
Thanks for the response. Sorry I didn't make myself clear in my post. Those aren't my fears, those just seem to be common fears that seem to be posted alot lately, but everyone has their own dreaded fear of something deep down that seems to trigger anxiety and panic attacks. What I was really wondering about is where that dreaded fear originates. Exposure therapy treats the fear, but I wonder how to avoid the fear in the first place, or if it is even possible. Is it usually a traumatic event that initiates it or are you just born with a specific fear? Cheers, Don
It absolutely does make sense! Step one is too keep a journal to note your fears and find the triggers. This will help with the cause of the fear and help you put your feeling down on paper, a good exercise.
The program advises to keep the following points in mind when it comes to planning your exposure work:
1. Learning occurs at moderate levels of anxiety and arousal. In planning your exposure work don’t make it too easy or too hard. If you pick something that doesn’t cause you any anxiety (a fear rating of 1 or 2) you won’t experience a drop in your fear rating because there's really nowhere to go.
As a result, you won't unlearn anything. On the other hand, if you pick something that causes a fear rating of a 9 or 10, it may be too difficult. Try to stay in the 3-8 range.
2. Exposure should be predictable. Plan your exposure work in advance and stick to the plan. Unplanned exposure doesn’t work well. Planning your exposure makes it a bit more controllable and a little less frightening.
3. Set a goal for the exposure that you can reach. Set a goal for the exposure session. You may want to stay in the situation for at least a certain amount of time (say 30 minutes) or experience a certain decrease in you fear rating (say go from a 7 to a 5). Setting a reachable goal will give you something to aim for. Achieving your goals step-by-step will allow you to feel good about what you're accomplishing.
4. Stay in the situation until your fear goes down. This can happen in two ways. First, if you pick a situation for an exposure that causes you a fear rating of a 4 to 8, then after an hour you should be experiencing a drop in your fear rating. If not, maybe it was harder than you thought. However, there’s another way to experience a decrease in fear, which is to repeat the exposure again and again. So for example, if your anxiety doesn't come down from an 8 in the first hour, try it again the next day. Eventually, if you repeat the experiment every day, it will start to drop.
5. If something is too hard, pick something just a little bit easier. If you end up having a fear rating of 9 or 10 try to figure out what you could do that would be almost the same but would result in a fear rating of 7 or 8.
For tomorrow, keep in mind that you have already succeeded. Let the previous successes give you the strength to take on these future challenges.
Many here share your same driving concerns. You may want to use the site's search feature to view previous members’ experiences and discussions on this topic.
I was just wondering about something related to my (and I think others) panic & anxiety. It seems the common theme among a lot of us is fear. Fear of driving, fear of spiders, fear of culverts, fear of elevators, fear of airplanes, fear of leaving the house, (fear of "you fill in the blank"). Doing exposure therapy helps me to conquer my fears and confront them, and hopefully in time overcome them thereby reducing my anxiety with gradual exposure to the thing I dread the most. My question is why are we so fearful of something in the first place? Are we born with a fear of spiders or does a traumatic spider bite cause a huge fear to develop? I'm just wondering if there is a way to prevent fear from even taking hold in our lives? I know my mom panics around dogs because 60 years ago she was bitten by a nasty dog as a child, and the fear and panic she has around unchained dogs has never left her. My dad had 70 year old fears from childhood war memories that never left him until he passed away. So I think a traumatic event generally initiates a huge fear which in turn triggers the panic/anxiety response when you remember the initial event. Just wondering if this makes sense to anyone, and if so, any thoughts on how to deal with a tramatic event at the time, so it doesn't turn into a huge irrational fear? Just wondering.....Don
