In this video, I'm not going to teach you
an anxiety hack or a trick. I'm going to teach you the number one most powerful way to
decrease anxiety fears and phobias As backed by research. I'm going to teach you the six steps to
kicking fears butt by using an exposure hierarchy. If you want to learn to beat your anxiety, one
of the most powerful things you can do is develop the skill of facing your fears. And this is a
skill that you can learn, but if when you hear, just face your fears, that seems both too simple
and too difficult at the same time. And you're about ready to turn this off like stay with me for
just a second. Because I'm gonna break this skill down into bite-sized chunks, that you work through
little by little. Now it's normal to want to avoid things that make you anxious, but avoidance locks
your brain into a cycle of increasing anxiety. And avoidance prevents you from learning that the
things you fear aren't as dangerous as you think. So check out my video on the anxiety cycle to
learn more about that topic. But the gradual process of facing fears is called exposure. It's
a safe and effective process that has been shown to naturally decrease anxiety. Through exposure,
you basically rewire your brain to help it know when you're actually safe. Now you may have
tried exposure in the past and it didn't work, and that might be for a couple of reasons. You
may have tried to jump into something too scary too soon, which might have put you into the
panic zone, and actually been retruamatizing, only reinforcing that fear. Or perhaps you only
faced your fear once or twice but when it still bothered you, you didn't continue. When exposure
is done correctly, it can be very effective at overcoming fears and anxiety. Try again, work with
an experienced therapist who can help you stay in the sweet spot of the growth zone, and help you
stick with it long enough to get lasting results. Facing your fears is often most effective when
you start with things that are less scary, and you work your way up to facing things that come with a
lot of anxiety. As you work the process, you build up a belief in your ability to do hard things. And
you might even learn that you enjoy the things you once feared. This process happens naturally
when we let go of our addiction to avoidance. So for example someone who's afraid of water take
swimming lessons every week. But starts slowly, by putting his feet in the water, and then his legs,
and then his whole body. And finally is diving underwater. And after a few weeks he may learn
that he loves swimming with his children. So, how to do it. Step one, make a list of your fears.
Write down all of your fears, and pick the first one that you want to work on. So if you're afraid
of dogs, write down all the situations with dogs that you would feel anxious about. For example,
thinking about dogs, looking at pictures of dogs, being in a park with dogs, petting a dog, being
in a house with dogs, etc. Step 2. Make a personal goal. For example, visit my grandchildren who
own a dog in their home. Step 3. Build a fear ladder for one fear area. Psychologists like big
words to make them feel special so they call this an exposure hierarchy. So put your fears in order
of the things that are least scary to most scary, and you can start by rating the situation's from
a zero to ten and then organize those into a list. So write down as many tiny steps as you can think
of that will help you reach that goal. This is the part that most people get wrong. They just
try to jump into the deep end of their fears, and they get freaked out, and retruamatized, and
then they escape, and their brain reinforces that anxiety. Actually increasing the anxiety response.
If you want to successfully kick fears butt then you need to get really creative at imagining and
coming up with these tiny steps. Now let me give you some examples. If you're afraid of dogs,
you could start by watching movies about dogs, looking at pictures of dogs, or looking at
a dog through a window. If you're afraid of getting a vaccine, you could watch a video of
a needle, or watch an Apple being injected, or touch a needle. And you would practice this
over and over again until it was no longer as anxiety-provoking. If you have social anxiety, you
can record yourself talking through an imaginary social situation and listen to that recording, or
you could set the goal to say hi to a co-worker, and then eventually move up to things like asking
a co-worker how their weekend was. It's important to have a mix of tasks that are mildly anxiety
provoking, somewhat anxiety provoking, and some steps that seem out of reach right now. So break
down tasks into tiny steps whenever possible. I'm including a link in the description to a site
which has a bunch of examples of this. Anxiety it often seems as if it's all or nothing there's
no middle ground. Either something is comfortable, or it makes me panic. But like I said in the
introduction, with the right skills you really can do this. So there's some other ways to make some
of these practice exercises easier or harder. And this is called scaffolding. Providing yourself
some extra support while you're building your abilities. So here's a few ways to do that. You
can adapt the length of time that you're doing an activity. So for example, talking to someone
for 30 seconds is easier than for five minutes. You can add some support, doing some tasks alone
might be easier, but having a friend or spouse go with you could be a big help for others. Changing
the time of day. So if you're afraid of driving over bridges, you could choose to drive over
bridge during the middle of the afternoon while you practice, instead of during rush hour.
And changing the environment. For example, visiting a dog in home versus being at an
off-leash dog park. So get creative and find ways to break down these big scary tasks into
smaller doses, and to build up the support that you need. Now I do like the idea of physiological
self-regulation I mean I use grounding techniques, and I use these pair of sympathy techniques all
the time in my life, and they are really helpful as well at at limiting the amount of anxiety and
and sending that sense of security to your body that you need while you're doing an intense task.
But you can't ever use them as avoidance otherwise it's gonna backfire so that's the one caveat
with using self-regulation techniques. Okay, so once you've broken these tasks down, and you've
found ways to scaffold them, the next step is facing your fears. So starting with the bottom
rung on your ladder, begin to repeatedly engage in that activity. So for example, if you're afraid
of dogs, you start by just walking by the dog park every day. The repetition is important and as
soon as you're able, you want to try to lengthen out the time you're there, or loop the activity.
So you might walk by the dog park three times in a row, or you might stand and look at the dog park
for ten minutes, and it's really important for you to stay with that situation long enough for your
anxiety to lessen. Or at the very least that you set a goal based around the number, so how long
you'll be there, or how many times you'll do something. Never set a goal like I'll stay there
until or unless I get too anxious. Because that's just an invitation to your brain to increase your
anxiety levels through avoidance. If you stay in a situation long enough, or you do it enough times,
your anxiety will go down. This is a fundamental aspect of neuroplasticity. Our brain adapts to
situations and when you keep doing something that feels dangerous, but it is actually safe,
your brain has to adapt to that and relabel the situation as safe. Practice willingness during the
exposure. It's normal to feel anxious or afraid during exposure and this is where your unwritten
rules are going to try to take over. People have anxiety disorders almost always have the rule of
if it makes me anxious, it must be bad. It must be dangerous or I can't handle it. These are
rules that you made up, and you believe them, but they just aren't true. Anxiety is not
bad, it's uncomfortable, it's unpleasant, but it serves a function keeping us safe from
real dangers like cliffs and rattlesnakes. But with disordered anxiety, we feel like we're in
danger, but we're actually safe. So you have to challenge those thoughts that say that anxiety
is dangerous. It's not bad, or harmful, it's just hard. You can do hard things. Keep breathing. Just
breathe through it. One way you can do this is by tracking your anxiety in the situation. So keep a
record of the exposures that you do and write down your anxiety on a scale from zero to ten. Zero
being no fear and ten being extreme fear. And then stay with the situation until your anxiety goes
down by half. It can also be helpful to keep track of your progress by writing down your fear levels
and what you learn each time you face a fear. Step 5 repeat. Repeat repeat repeat. Keep practicing.
You are building neural pathways in your brain. These are like muscles. The more you use them,
the bigger and stronger they get. And with time, it gets easier and easier to do the things that
were once difficult. Practice as frequently as possible. The more you do it, the faster the fear
will fade. Step 6 reinforce courage. Give yourself some credit. You are doing something hard for
you. Don't compare yourself, with others or put yourself down. Each time you face a fear say out
loud or write down I did something hard today, I can do hard things, or I'm proud of myself. And
allow yourself to feel a sense of accomplishment. When you do, your brain basically releases
more dopamine. This is the reward chemical, but it's also the motivation chemical. This helps
you feel more motivated than next time to do it again. And if you want, you can set some specific
reward for yourself like plan a fun outing, or buy yourself a book, or a movie after you
reach one of your goals. Make sure to keep track of your progress so you can look back and
see how far you've come. When you intentionally allow yourself to feel the fear, and do it anyway,
you're gonna learn that anxiety doesn't have to control you. You're going to build up your
self-efficacy, which is your belief in your ability to do hard things. And you're going to be
able to live the life that you value. Like I love this stuff. So if you want more of this please
hit the subscribe button, and please share this video because you never know who could benefit
from it, thank you for watching, and take care.
