*Accepting New Clients In-Person In Austin & Virtually Across Texas*
*Accepting New Clients In-Person In Austin & Virtually Across Texas*
Anxiety is a part of the human experience, but sometimes it can be difficult to manage. Oftentimes, we learn to avoid things that make us anxious in order to get through life. And it's effective in the moment! Unfortunately, that avoidance is also making the anxiety worse in the long term. Exposure therapy teaches you that you can handle the discomfort of anxiety.
When our brain takes in information about the world around us, it has a lot of systems in place to figure out if something is dangerous or not. However, for a lot of people with anxiety disorders, these systems can be glitchy and overactive. Everyday tasks and situations can send your body into fight or flight. When we avoid or get reassurance and it works, easing the anxiety very quickly, it sends signals to the brain that we were right to avoid it. It reaffirms that it was, in fact, a dangerous situation. These little acts of avoidance are called safety behaviors and can take many forms. What exposure therapy, or Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), does is interrupt that continuous cycle of anxiety/avoidance/safety behavior. Exposure therapy trains your brain to sit with the anxiety without doing any safety behaviors until your brain realizes, "Wow, nothing bad has happened so maybe this isn't a dangerous situation after all. Maybe I don't have to do that safety behavior to get through this." Exposure therapy teaches you that you are capable of tolerating the anxiety.
Common safety behaviors include:
Exposure therapy sessions will start by identifying the fear. What thought or feeling are you trying to avoid? Then, we will identify what safety behaviors you use to achieve this avoidance. We will then come up with all the different situations that might evoke that fear, and plan your exposures. These exposures can be looking at pictures, videos, or talking about the situations. They can also be real life exposures. There's a lot of room for creativity in this step. Finally, we will rate the exposures on a scale from 1 - 10 based on how distressing they sound or feel, making our exposure hierarchy ladder. Some of these exposures will be done in session and some will be yours to do between sessions as homework. You control the pace; you get to choose which ones you do.
If exposure therapy sounds like something you're ready to try, or if you have more questions, check out the resources below or reach out here and we can chat more.
Therapy in a Nutshell is a popular youtube channel by Emma McAdam, LMFT providing mental health resources to the public. This video of hers describes exposure therapy and the making of a fear ladder.
Kimberley Morrow, LCSW, cofounder of Anxiety Training, LLC wrote the book "Face It and Feel It: 10 Simple (But Not Easy) Ways to Live Well with Anxiety" which can be found here.
If you read the bullet point describing excessive googling as a safety behavior and were surprised, here is a handy chart showing the difference between reassurance seeking and information seeking.
The Mayo Clinic created this resource showing how to build a fear ladder or exposure hierarchy in more detail and gives examples of possible exposures.
Arbor Branch Counseling, PLLC
5750 Balcones Dr., Suite 117 Austin, TX 78731