Areas › Worry and anxiety › Being seen and judged
The right next step makes you uneasy to think about and still looks possible. If thinking about it turns your stomach it is too big, and if it bores you it is too small.
One way to find it: name the worst thing you can imagine first, the party where you know nobody, then work downwards until you reach something you could picture yourself doing this week. Everything in between shrinks once the top of the ladder has been said out loud. Aim to find out what really happens rather than to stay calm while it happens.
Qur’an and Sunnah
My Lord, I fear they will call me a liar (Quran 26:12). Moses named the exact outcome he dreaded, and a fear stated that plainly is one you can go and test.
قَالَ رَبِّ إِنِّيٓ أَخَافُ أَن يُكَذِّبُونِ
Moses said, ‘My Lord, I fear they will call me a liar
Qur’an 26:12read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A careful review of the experimental evidence argues that exposure works by building a new memory which competes with the old one, that the feared thing did not occur, rather than by wearing the fear away. The practical consequence is that a step should be chosen to violate what you expect, not to keep your anxiety low. This is a theoretical account drawn from laboratory work, so it is the best current explanation rather than settled fact.
Craske MG, Treanor M, Conway CC, Zbozinek T, Vervliet B. (2014). Maximizing exposure therapy: an inhibitory learning approach.. Behaviour research and therapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
You learn most from a step that puts your prediction to a real test.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
When you are ready, make it personal and small. Something you noticed about the person in front of you, said lightly, is the rung most people dread and most need.
Friends who know what this feels like are worth a great deal. Leaning on them as your therapy is a different thing, and it tends to go badly for everyone.
If most of your talking happens somewhere everything gets counted, likes, views, replies, then of course a room full of people feels like a scoreboard too. The habit was learned somewhere real.