Facing Your Fears with CBT

We have fears instilled in our lives from the beginning. Everyone fears from something, whether it’s your long-time crush, your mom, the cute little boy down the road…everyone. Most of the time we tend to ignore our fears and wish them to just evaporate. Therefore the thought of facing them head-on never cross our minds. And that makes a difference…Actually a big one!

The people, who choose to ignore their fears, are letting them control their lives which lead to living with anger, frustration, and regret. Contrarily, those who choose to face them in order to find methods to overcome their fears, actually gain success in their lives. Now here comes the most important question, how to face your fears in order to overcome them? The Answer – CBT!
CBT- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a special treatment which involves changing your fear-related thoughts and behaviors by facing your fears via ‘Exposure’ treatment. The therapy involves gradually and repeatedly jumping into your specific fearful situations until your anxiety subsides to a great extent. Exposures involved in this treatment are not at all dangerous and doesn’t make your fears worse.

The therapy treatment starts with dealing with situations that are less fearful and slowly making your way up to the situations that you are actually afraid of facing and cause you a great deal of anxiety. Over time, you build up the necessary confidence for these situations and may even enjoy your feared encounters.

This is a completely natural process. It’s like if a person is afraid of spiders he would start with looking at pictures of spiders, then standing at a decent distance of spider terrarium. After then, touching the terrarium, and finally, the spiders maybe first with gloved hands and then with his naked hands. It has been established that Exposure is one of the most effective and powerful ways to overcome your fears. But it requires commitment, planning and lots of patience. Statistics show that CBT works up to 95 % of the time.

How to Overcome Your Fears with CBT – Step-by-Step Guide
If you want your CBT works for you, you need to execute each and every step of it properly. Here are the steps you need to follow…

Step 1: Build a List – Jot down your fears whether it is a situation, objects or places. Like if you are afraid of social interactions, your therapy sessions involve making small talk with your co-workers, saying hi to the receptionist or sales representatives of the mall you are shopping. If you have different fears, make sure to build separate lists of each fear you are seeking to overcome.

Step 2: Arrange things in a Fear Ladder – Once you’ve made your list, arrange the list into a ladder starting from least fearful things to the most fearful things. You can do this by rating each situation on a scale of 0 to 10 about how much you fear that thing. O – for the least scary and 10 for more scary. After completing the rating, you can arrange the list in your ‘fear ladder’ that starts from 0 rating things. Likewise, if you have different fears, make separate ladders for each one.
Keep in mind that it’s of uttermost important to start really small and then move gradually up from there.

Step 3: Exposure – Start your therapy with something least scary and repeatedly engage in that situation until you feel comfortable with it. If you stay in the situation long enough for your anxiety to lessen or encountering the situation repeatedly, then over time your anxiety will fade away.
It’s because anxiety uses lots of energy and at some point, you are going to be drained from that energy. So it’s simple, the longer you face that situation the quicker your anxiety will diminish. And then you won’t be scared to face the situation again.
Keep in mind to plan exposure in advance and make a log about your anxiety before and after facing the situation. Repeat the process until you notice a significant difference in your anxiety levels. Then only move to the next thing on your list.

Step 4: Practice – It is of extreme importance to practice on a regular basis. Some situations need daily practice or even 2-3 times a day while others need to be practiced once in a while. Remember the often you practice, the quicker your anxiety will fade.
Keep in consideration that making progress is important but maintaining that progress is equally vital. It’s important to keep facing the situation from time to time to make sure your fears don’t creep back in. Re-rate your fear ladder continuously throughout the progress you made and analyze what needs to be tackled next.
The success rate of CBT is up to 95%. If it can work for so many, it surely will work for you. Just do it properly!

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