Worry Off-Ramp Part 3
Chapter 5 Chapter 6
Part 3 Facing Your Fears Using Imaginal and In Vivo Exposure
03Part

Facing Your Fears Using Imaginal and In Vivo Exposure

Start Chapter 6 Back to Part 2
Part 3 · opener

PART 3: FACING YOUR FEARS USING IMAGINAL AND IN VIVO EXPOSURE

Part 2 prepared the ground. Part 3 is the work itself — writing your fears out on paper until they lose their charge, then meeting them in the world, then changing the thinking underneath them.

This opener is navigation, not manuscript text. In Workbook Revision #2, Part 3 is a single line — the part title above — followed straight away by Chapter 6. Everything else on this page was added for the web edition and can be cut or rewritten without touching the book.

Chapter 6

Preparing to Write Your Fears (Imaginal Exposure)

The imaginal exposure chapter: how writing doses exposure, three worked clinical examples with their trigger hierarchies and worst-case scenarios, and the two exercises that build your own. About 4,150 words, published as three pages.

  1. 1Why writing works as exposure, and Getting Ready to WriteReading · one subheading
  2. 2Three clinical examples — social anxiety, contamination, and a child's accountReading · two hierarchies, three narratives
  3. 3Build your hierarchy, then writeTwo exercises, both printable
Chapter 7

Living Your Fears Away Through Exposure (In Vivo)

The shortest chapter in the book, and one page here. In vivo exposure — what it means to take the opportunities the day hands you, including the first author's own account of learning to drown-proof in the deep end of a pool.

  1. 1Living Your Fears Away Through Exposure (In Vivo)Reading · about 970 words
Chapter 8

Cognitive Restructuring

The longest chapter in Part 3, at about 4,300 words. The GOFAR analysis for testing a thought against five criteria, a nine-step utility analysis, and the Relabel, Reframe, Redirect method with the metaphors and acronyms clients have built from it.

  1. 1Identifying and changing dysfunctional thinking with GOFARReading · worked example and form
  2. 2The GOFAR analysis log and the utility analysisTwo exercises, both printable
  3. 3Relabel, Reframe, Redirect — metaphors, acronyms, acceptance, and self-talkReading · about 1,700 words
Next

Coming in a later pass

Part 4, “Keeping Your Fears at Bay,” closes the manuscript with the relapse prevention plan and its three conditions — green, yellow, and red — followed by the closing and the appendix. It is not in the web edition yet.