Date: 11-22-2024
Source: This Article on Medium about The Comfort Zone Exposure Therapy is a Hallmark of Clinical Psychology
As you expose yourself gradually to the thing you’re afraid of, you grow braver, and you enlarge yourself to hold space for the fear rather than letting it overwhelm you.
When you have a fear or anxiety around an issue, you can overcome that by slowly exposing yourself to the thing you’re afraid of. There’s a delicate balance to this process. You want to make sure you’re putting yourself outside of your comfort zone so you can grow and show yourself that you’re brave, but you don’t want to push yourself so far outside of your comfort zone that you induce panic and scare yourself back into hiding.
Example:
Goal:
To overcome Fear and grow in bravery. Growth To have the life you’ve dreamed of.
Benefits:
- you become brave
- As you increase your capacity for negative experiences, you also increase your capacity for positive experiences
- you grow in confidence and realize that you are capable of far more than you thought you were
- you expand your comfort zone and increase your capacity for more worthwhile experiences
Process:
- slowly expose yourself to the thing you’re afraid of (start VERY small)
- reward yourself every time you take action
- increase the intensity of exposure until you finally arrive at the thing you fear most
- rewards increase as exposure increases in intensity
”… not everything that feels bad is wrong. And when you’re breaking an old pattern or doing something different, it’s very common to feel worse before you feel better. You were doing something the old way because the old way let you avoid things that scared you. And when you break free of this old pattern, every monster, demon, and terrifying thing is going to show up, and the thing that once protected you can’t do that anymore.” - Tarot for Change - Jessica Dore