You’ll want to continue practicing exposure exercises at a certain level until your distress level lowers to around 20 and you feel ready to move onto the next challenge in the exposure hierarchy. Remember that your hierarchy isn’t a checklist which you grit your teeth through one level, check it off and move on to the next. Keep at one level until you’re comfortable progressing. Sometimes, you may find that you are able to work on two situation exposure hierarchies at the same time (e.g. giving a big presentation and attending a large family gathering, from the example hierarchy of fears), if the distress level of the exposure exercises are manageable together, e.g. both are at 30-40, or one is 40-50 and the other is 10-20.
Another thing to keep in mind is that you will likely find some levels of your hierarchy of feared situations, easier than others. For example, you might find that, one week, you can easily do your exposure exercises and wonder what you were worried about in the first place, while with other exercises, it might take a full week or even two until you’re ready to tackle something else.
Research shows the more you regularly practice exposure exercises, the faster you’ll progress. Ideally, you’ll do these as often as you can, but minimally, aim for 3 to 5 days a week.
An important point to remember when doing exposures is to try to learn something new from the exercises and ideally, learn new ways to experience your emotions and respond to them. So again, try to take the stance of the impartial, nonjudgmental observer of your experience, using as few avoidance strategies as you can.