Anxiety Over Time
In this lesson, we will review a visualization of discomfort, avoidance, and how exposure works to reduce and eliminate anxiety.
Discomfort
Here is a simple chart. When exposed to a trigger, discomfort increases over time. This could be a direct exposure, like being in a crowded restaurant, or anticipatory anxiety, like thinking about touching a contaminated surface.
Avoidance
Eventually, the discomfort becomes unbearable and we engage in avoidance behavior. This could be direct avoidance, like leaving the room, or rituals and superstitions. Avoidance brings temporary relief from the discomfort, but does nothing to help us the next time. If you are here, you know that avoidance doesn't work. It takes away from our lives and at the end of the day, we still have the discomfort.
Facing Fear
If we sit and face fear, we may experience new and higher discomfort. After all, that's what we believed would happen and is why we so often engaged in avoidance. But eventually relief comes and now we have proven to ourselves and our brain that we didn't need the discomfort in the first place. Our brain will say 'Hey wait a minute, I didn't need to trigger anxiety'. The next time we experience a trigger, our discomfort response might not be so high.
Repeated Exposure
The power of exposure comes from repetition. Overtime, facing fear unlearns the anxiety response in our brain and dirty discomfort stops completely. We don't control anxiety, build tolerance, or power through, because there is no longer anything to control, tolerate, or power through. Accepting and experiencing the discomfort causes it to disappear. We don't need to make major jumps, small steps work just fine.
Why doesn't discomfort go away completely?
Compare this to avoidance. Avoidance does nothing to reduce our discomfort. We cannot recover while avoiding.
The Choice
Exposure is about a choice. The choice to venture into acceptance, experience that new and higher discomfort knowing when we come out the other side we will be okay, and it will be a little easier the next time. Trusting and committing to the process of exposure and practicing discomfort is the path to eliminating anxiety.