Features:
- Enter your own personal fear
- Create a fear hierarchy
- Complete exposure tasks while live updating your anxiety levels
Effective against:
- Phobias (snakes, spiders, heights, flying, etc.)
- Social anxiety disorder
- Post-traumatic stress disorder
- Panic disorder
- Generalized anxiety disorder
- Obsessive-compulsive disorders
Overview:
Exposure therapy is one of psychology's greatest, most effective treatment tools that have been discovered over the past few decades. A key technique in behavior therapy for anxiety, exposure therapy involves gradually exposing someone to their feared object, situation, or task without any danger in order to overcome their anxiety. This app enables people to go through exposure therapy.
Before exposure, users first create a fear hierarchy - a list of activities that induce anxiety ranked from highest to lowest. Then, they work through the activities in the fear hierarchy, starting with the least anxiety-inducing activity and working their way up.
Warning: We highly recommend using this app under the guidance of a mental health professional.
Detailed Guide:
Many people with phobias recognize their fear as illogical, but their mind is still afraid nonetheless. This is because the primal fear centers of our mind act subconsciously whenever it spots anything it thinks is dangerous (such as lions or snakes) in order to escape immediately. However, in today's modern society when we don't have to worry about predators eating us, our minds can often trigger false alarms to things that aren't actually dangerous.
The fear center of our mind learns through association, not logic. If you were afraid of pigeons, every time you see a pigeon your fear would rise. Then when you run away, your mind becomes even more convinced that a pigeon is dangerous because you ran away, your fear levels dropped, and you were safe. This cycle repeats itself, sustaining the illogical fear until maybe you avoid going to certain places because there might be pigeons there.
To break this fear, the mind needs to learn to un-associate pigeons with fear. Luckily, the mind can only sustain a fear response for so long. So if you go to where pigeons are and just stay there instead of running away, eventually your mind will learn that pigeons are not actually dangerous. The most important principle is to make sure that the fear leaves before you do.
This app helps you break the fear. First, add what you are afraid of and then construct a list of activities that will induce various levels of anxiety. Then, you can start exposing yourself by doing these activities starting from what gives you the least amount of anxiety. During the exposure process, you can track your anxiety levels by updating it continuously, and finish when it falls to 20/100 or lower. As you work your away through the activities, your fear should continue to fall!
Warning: We highly recommend using this app under the guidance of a mental health professional. If you leave the activity before your anxiety falls, then this will actually reinforce your fear instead of lowering it. Try starting with the easiest activity first. Going straight to a challenging task might actually increase your fear. It is very difficult to stay in a situation when your entire body is screaming at you to leave, especially if there is no person there coaxing you to stay and wait.
