Comment by munificent
3 days ago
> after a few trips without disaster
100%.
Exposure therapy is the cure for anxiety. I have a personal hunch that part of the massive rise in anxiety in the world is explained by many of us no longer being regularly forced outside of our comfort zones. Before the Internet and smartphones, we were obligated to go into the unknown much more often. It was a constant mandatory exposure therapy.
Today, I can't remember the last time I walked into a restaurant without already having seen the inside on Google Maps, read several reviews on Yelp, and perused the menu online.
> Exposure therapy is the cure for anxiety.
Except when it is not. Exposure can make an autistic person's anxiety worse.
Pretty sure the exposure makes _everyone's_ anxiety worse at the start, that is part of the point.
Nah, it’s actually a studied thing. Exposure therapy can work for some subjects but it’s quite controversial due to it quickly becoming “trauma therapy”. It can easily reinforce someone’s existing beliefs and make someone actually weaker and traumatized. Happens a lot. Imagine an ugly kid asking every girl out at school, you think maybe he just needs to get a single success but it’s possible he gets completely rejected and/or the rejections are so immense that it overpowers any single acceptance. He won’t be resilient from this - it will haunt him for the rest of his life. Plus, there can be social consequences (and consequences with other exposure therapies) that will be lasting from making such a brute force strategy.
Exposure therapy can make sense if it always resorts in good outcomes but that’s the issue - bad things do happen. And sometimes bad things happen more often to those who are “needing” exposure therapy.
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I didn't say "exposure", I said "exposure therapy". A good therapy is designed with the patient in mind.
Interesting. Even when nothing bad happens? It has always worked for me.