 Welcome to the anxious morning every weekday morning. We'll take a few minutes to go over important lessons that you can use in your anxiety recovery journey The anxious morning brings you support, education, inspiration, encouragement, and empowerment Read or listen quietly on your own time free of the endless noisy scroll of social media Use the information to help you along the path to recovery from panic disorder, agoraphobia, and other anxiety problems For more visit us at the anxious morning dot com Have you ever wondered how to get 61 agoraphobic people to hate you? Just tell 100 agoraphobics that the solution to their problem lies in intentionally doing the things they fear the most If you do it right at least 61 of them will declare you incompetent and will on some level hate you mission accomplished While at this point there is virtually no valid argument against the effectiveness of exposure based therapies and treating anxiety disorders The idea of intentionally doing hard or scary things to get better remains a very hard sell In my experience with literally thousands of people suffering with various anxiety disorders It is clear that humans will generally try just about anything before intentionally facing fear and discomfort Even when presented with the many rewards that await on the other side of fear a person suffering with panic disorder For example will often strongly resist the idea of going toward fear as a potential path to recovery and the normal life They so desperately want To be sure the drive to seek safety and comfort is strong in us I can't find fault with anyone for wanting to try easier and more gentle ways to solve a serious anxiety problem Going toward the things we fear even when we know intellectually that our fear is baseless and irrational is not natural We are generally wired to avoid discomfort not invited to dinner or see it as a tool So when someone brings up the idea of facing anxiety triggering tasks and situations Rather than running from them or avoiding them it stands to reason that the reception would be less than warm Are exposure and exposure therapy scary? Yes, they are without spending too much time delving into the mechanics of intentionally Experiencing fear in order to reveal its baseless nature and being afraid doesn't always equal being unsafe I will freely admit that exposure-based therapies are hard work and involve being afraid as a matter of procedure That being said however Using exposure as a tool and anxiety disorder recovery is not a nightmare ride on an out-of-control roller coaster A good exposure plan isn't as scary as you might immediately think Tomorrow we'll talk about how a good exposure is based on small steps and maybe just a little easier to handle than you would expect Hey, if you're enjoying the podcast and you'd like to get a copy of it delivered every morning into your email inbox Including a full text transcription head on over to the anxious morning dot email and sign up for the newsletter And if you're listening on iTunes or Spotify or someplace where you can leave us a rating or a review Take a moment and rate the podcast and maybe write a small review. It really helps us out or just tell a friend about us Thanks a lot