Confronting Your Fears Through Exposure
163Problem:  My fear is too high to beneﬁt from exposure.
Solutions:   Ideally, you should choose practices that arouse a fear level of 70 to 
80 out of 100, although it is also okay if your fear reaches even higher 
levels. One method for keeping your fear in check is to use the cog -
nitive strategies from chapter 6 to challenge your anxious thoughts 
before entering the situation. At times, however, even using the cogni -
tive techniques beforehand won’t prevent your fear from becoming very 
intense. 
If you ﬁnd that your fear is completely overwhelming, you have three 
options. First, you can try to wait a while longer to see if your fear 
decreases. Alternatively, you may consider taking a short break and 
then trying the same exercise again. Finally, you can try switching to a 
less difﬁcult practice. Any of these approaches is usually ﬁne. The main 
point is not to give up completely.
Problem:   The situations that I fear are very brief in duration, so there isn’t enough 
time for my fear to decrease.
Solution:   This issue was discussed earlier in the chapter, but it’s worth highlight -
ing again here. Ideally, if an exposure practice is brief, you should try 
to ﬁnd creative ways to lengthen the duration of the practice, if pos -
sible. For example, if you are fearful of chatting with the cashier at the 
front of a supermarket line, try lining up repeatedly over the course of 
an hour or two and buying only a few items at a time. This approach 
will give you more opportunities to talk to the cashiers, compared with 
paying for all your groceries at once.