In the last post, we talked about how to expose yourself to your fears by using your imagination. As a refresher, the most powerful way people maintain their anxiety is by avoiding whatever it is that makes them anxious.

In previous steps of the Reduce Anxiety Series, we discussed how to (1) challenge your unhelpful thoughts, (2) reduce your emotional tolerance and (3) stop engaging in behaviors that make your anxiety worse. My hope is that one of the key messages you take away from these discussions is that by avoiding your fears, you are actually making your anxiety worse.

In step 2, we talked about how boosting our emotional tolerance can help reduce anxiety. If you haven’t read it yet, pop over to step 2 and check it out.

Now we are going to talk about how some of the things we do in order to improve our anxiety are actually making it worse.

In Step 1, we discussed how to recognize and confront our troubling thoughts in order to reduce anxiety. If you haven’t read it yet, start with Step 1.