Summer,

 

Glad I could help.  The puzzle book is a great idea and it is so easy to carry along.

 

 

 

Davit,

 

I have images of you happily riding your Johnny Popper around your property...Some day I may have a place to ride a tractor around too.. Who knows..

 

 

Your friend,

Red

It is really good to just sit and look around and see the world is not as scary as it seems.

Red.

I have a Johnny Popper just like that one but without the loader. Mine might be the newer model though. I love to just drive it around my trails. I use it to mow my back yard.

Here for you, 

Davit.

Hi Summer,

 

When I am out of the house I have some things I do that help me...I try not to do to many things in one trip out and if I have a lot of stops to make I take breather in between, like I get a cool drink and rest in the car for a while before I get out again and go into another store to run another errand..Sometime I come home and rest for a while before going out again to finish my errands or I break it up and do the others on another day.. Also if I just sit down somewhere while I am out and take a few relaxing breaths I am ok and can finish what I need to do that day.  Another thing I do is if I have to sit and wait somewhere I pick up something to read as a distraction and it really helps me to relax...Hope these ideas help...

 

Red

Hi Summer,

 

Doing the exposure work allows you to develop your coping skills in controlled situations. Therefore, when you are confronted with an unexpected situation (no control, so to speak), then you can take out what you need from your bag of tricks of previously successfully used skills. Make sense?

 

Keep working on it. Sounds like you have been doing great so far!! Keep those successes in the front of your mind.

 

Coping skills. I believe you need coping skills no matter what kind of exposure you do or when.

Here for you,

Davit.

Hi Summer:  Happy to read your post this morning.  Doing great.

 

Your friend, Sunny

Hi Summer,

I'm glad you are doing so well and feeling more confident! Just as a reminder, the program advises to keep the following points in mind when it comes to planning your exposure work:

1. Learning occurs at moderate levels of anxiety and arousal. In planning your exposure work don’t make it too easy or too hard. If you pick something that doesn’t cause you any anxiety (a fear rating of 1 or 2) you won’t experience a drop in your fear rating because there's really nowhere to go. As a result, you won't unlearn anything. On the other hand, if you pick something that causes a fear rating of a 9 or 10, it may be too difficult. Try to stay in the 3-8 range.

2. Exposure should be predictable. Plan your exposure work in advance and stick to the plan. Unplanned exposure doesn’t work well. Planning your exposure makes it a bit more controllable and a little less frightening.

3. Set a goal for the exposure that you can reach. Set a goal for the exposure session. You may want to stay in the situation for at least a certain amount of time (say 30 minutes) or experience a certain decrease in you fear rating (say go from a 7 to a 5). Setting a reachable goal will give you something to aim for. Achieving your goals step-by-step will allow you to feel good about what you're accomplishing.

4. Stay in the situation until your fear goes down. This can happen in two ways. First, if you pick a situation for an exposure that causes you a fear rating of a 4 to 8, then after an hour you should be experiencing a drop in your fear rating. If not, maybe it was harder than you thought. However, there’s another way to experience a decrease in fear, which is to repeat the exposure again and again. So for example, if your anxiety doesn't come down from an 8 in the first hour, try it again the next day. Eventually, if you repeat the experiment every day, it will start to drop.

5. If something is too hard, pick something just a little bit easier. If you end up having a fear rating of 9 or 10 try to figure out what you could do that would be almost the same but would result in a fear rating of 7 or 8.

For tomorrow, keep in mind that you have already succeeded!!  Let the previous successes give you the strength to take on these future challenges.