Session 9

Session 9 Notes

Consider this …

After college, a young woman enters medical school to learn to become a surgeon. She studies hard, gets excellent grades on all her tests, and does everything except conduct a practice surgery. Is she ready to start operating on people?

A young man dreams of being a race car driver. He wants so badly to be in the Daytona 500 that he watches hours and hours of racing on television and reads all the car magazines he can get. But he doesn’t ever take driving lessons. Is he ready to get in a car and race?

What are these people missing? PRACTICE! As with any skill, it takes practice to overcome your social anxiety. You’ve been putting all the pieces in place to get ready for the practice phase: you’ve learned to recognize the triggers to your anxiety, you can identify and challenge your anxious thoughts, and you’ve learned the steps to problem solving, improving your social skills, and speaking up for yourself. Now, it’s time to take all you’ve learned and put it into practice by doing “exposures” to the items on your Fear and Avoidance Hierarchy. Starting with small steps, you’ll gain more and more practice in increasingly challenging situations. The key is to remember to focus on your efforts, not on the outcomes. Things may not go entirely the way you want, but with practice you’ll find your anxiety will go away more quickly and you’ll be able to handle things head on. The other key is to take charge, try the situation, and stop avoiding or escaping it. By taking charge, you’ll learn that things are not as bad as you imagine. In fact, things can work out pretty well if you let yourself try new things! Avoidance keeps your anxiety going, but TAKING CHARGE through exposing yourself to the situations you were afraid of will lower your anxiety and improve your mood.

Use the forms provided to conduct and process your at-home exposures. You will use these forms regularly from now on

Setting Up the Exposure

Taking Action! Part Two