꩜ Are You Doing Exposure Therapy for Anxiety the Wrong Way? 

You may be thinking that you’ve put yourself in that horrible-feeling situation countless times and don’t feel any calmer, so exposure therapy doesn’t work, right? Thankfully, that’s not correct. You’re probably white knuckling your way through it, which doesn’t change the association.

Exposing yourself to something that starts off dreadful and remains dreadful will reinforce the association of that thing with dread. Do this 100 times, and you make it 100 times worse

How would your life improve if you broke that pattern?

We don’t want people to suffer and hope they get used to suffering. That’s just cruel and counterproductive.

What we need to do is break the pattern by making that situation neutral or positive. This involves intentional intervention with skills learned in therapy that can be utilized in the outside world to change the association.

When done properly, exposure therapy will skyrocket your progress in changing the uncomfortable into the comfortable.

Sometimes, exposure therapy doesn’t work at first because there are underlying issues that need to be addressed. Oftentimes, our subconscious associates the current situation with something from the past that was overwhelming. In such cases, we need to resolve the trauma before returning to exposure therapy.

If you’ve tried overcoming some form of anxiety or phobia in the past and haven’t had success, let’s connect and come up with a good plan that is time-tested and proven to work.

If you’d like to learn more, click the button below to schedule your free consultation.