Once you’ve assembled your hierarchy of feared situations, select a situation where your distress level is in the 40 to 60 range. Then, think of how you can break down your approach to the situation into small steps (we’ll call these exposure exercises) that gradually increase in difficulty, while also improving your coping skills, until you can deal with the goal situation successfully. Use the Exposure Hierarchy Form to create an exposure hierarchy based on this. Also think about the types of avoidance strategies you typically use in these situations. If you use a lot of them, you may want to incorporate not using them into your exposure hierarchy.
For example, if your goal is to give a big presentation in a month, and you usually start planning and worrying about it two months in advance, overprepare, avoid looking at the audience during the presentation and instead focus on your notes, have your lucky rabbit foot in your pocket, wear extra heavy duty antiperspirant, and you can’t possibly imagine letting go of any of these coping strategies, your exposure hierarchy might be broken down into something like this:
Exposure Hierarchy Form |
|
| Goal: Give a big presentation next month | |
| Exposure Situation | Distress Level (0-100) |
| Give big presentation with no safety behaviours, looking at audience, appropriate level of prep | 100 |
| Volunteer to give a larger 15 minute presentation to department with no safety behaviours | 90 |
| Volunteer to give a larger 15 minute presentation to department with only 1 type of safety behaviour | 80 |
| Attending weekly team meeting where you present for 5 minutes minus lucky rabbit foot and use regular antiperspirant and only prepare day before meeting instead of all weekend | 70 |
| Attending weekly team meeting where you present for 5 minutes minus lucky rabbit foot and use regular antiperspirant and only prepare day before meeting instead of all weekend | 60 |
| Attending weekly team meeting where you present for 5 minutes minus lucky rabbit foot and use regular antiperspirant | 50 |
| Attending weekly team meeting where you present for 5 minutes minus lucky rabbit foot | 40 |
Now, try building an exposure hierarchy based on your selected situation. You’ll work through this exposure hierarchy by approaching the situation with the lowest distress score first, and move upward from there.
Sample
Exposure Hierarchy Form |
|
| Goal: | |
| Exposure Situation | Distress Level (0-100) |
Online Form