Areas › Worry and anxiety
Worry and anxiety
Anxiety is not a character flaw and it is not weak faith. It is a body doing what it was built to do, at a moment when it is not needed. The practices here work on the loop itself: what worry promises and never delivers, what avoiding costs you, and how to let the body come down.
Narrowed down
2 practicesTheme · Facing it a step at a time
When · Coming and going
Facing a fear in steps works, and it works best with someone guiding the ladder. Read this as an explanation of how it works, and take the steps themselves to a therapist.
Let the person facing it choose the first step, and let them choose an easy one. A rung somebody picked gets climbed. A rung assigned to them gets argued about.
Ask which one they would be willing to have a go at this week, not which one they ought to be able to manage. The answer usually sits somewhere in…
No step happens without the person agreeing to it. Not ordered, not dragged, not talked round in a bright voice. Agreement is a condition of the thing working, not a courtesy.
Coerced exposure teaches two lessons at once: that the situation is dangerous, and that you are not safe with the people who arranged it. After that…