If you find yourself struggling to analyze things in your past that may be contributing to your current behavior, you can break them into small tasks.Practice evaluating yourself every day for a few minutes to establish what the unpleasant things.Have an accountability partner, some people struggle with motivating themselves.For example, if you have decided to throw out physical clutter that could be causing you anxiety and stress, you may find it hard to part with some items.Ask yourself the benefits of putting it off against doing it, asking this kind of question will help persuade you to do the unpleasant thing of transforming your thinking patterns.But it isn’t the usual, healthy fear that everyone feels from time to time.Whereas healthy fear prompts us to make a decision and fades as we move forward, anxiety creates a fear that persists long after the trigger is behind us.It sticks to us like a shadow, and as time passes by it worsens until it’s well beyond our control and has come to dominate our lives.It’s a tremendous relief to be sure, but how do we get to a point where we can even see the distortions that clearly?Let’s talk about the distortion first.Fear, to a degree, is a healthy response to the things and situations we perceive as dangerous.It may influence a decision we make for a brief period of time, but once that decision is made it’s gone.As a result, we feel as though we need to be constantly on guard.And as we keep thinking about it our brain scrambles to find more and more ways for what we fear to become a reality, limiting how we choose to live our lives.Well, this may not happen, but what if this does? Because of the cyclical nature of our thinking, we seek these things out even though they make us totally miserable.It’s almost like an addiction, and in short order, we have a list of reasons to be afraid that’s increasingly more removed from where we started.To get on with living we need to take a step back and put them in a proper perspective.Generally, you can do this by trying one of the strategies outlined below.It is especially helpful for those dealing with intense fear and anxiety.The idea behind this technique is to conduct a thought experiment or a ‘rehearsal in your mind.You set out to imagine the worst possible outcome to a situation, and then let the event play out in your mind.By doing this, you can learn that no matter what happens, things will likely turn out okay.To start, you will want to articulate what you’re afraid of.Is it a consequence of something you think you’ve done?Is it how you perceive others will feel about you, and if it is, be honest with yourself and put it down on paper.The benefit of having your fear in a tangible form cannot be understated.Now write how you think this could come to reality.This part proves to be difficult for some, but it’s also very revealing as to how you think.How does what you fear become a reality?Connect as many dots, as many as there may be.How realistic is the result?Let’s say that, for example, you have a phobia regarding being around large groups of people and you avoid going out with friends.One of your fears could be that they’ll learn of something embarrassing you did years ago and will think less of you because of it.How would they learn about it?Obviously, you don’t want to tell them, so it must be some other way.Does someone else know?Perhaps an old friend you haven’t seen in a long time was present.They could resurface ad decide to tell everyone.It’s entirely possible, sure, but how possible is it?This is where the details of the previous step come into play.How many dots did you have to connect to make your fear reality?This is a useful way to gauge how plausible your fears may or may not be.Of course, because of the way your phobia distorts your thinking, you may find it difficult to see things as they really are.It is important to be thorough when you make your list so that you don’t have any serious jumps between numbers.The idea is that by the time you have mastered the activity you will have become used to that level of your specific stressor, so you can more easily move on to the next.As such, it is important not to get ahead of yourself and try and bite off more than you can chew.A slow and steady buildup is going to be far more effective than a dramatic spike all at once.Journaling is sometimes combined with exposure therapy so that you can record and understand how you felt during the exercise, and how you managed the feelings that you had.An example of exposure therapy would be if you were afraid of bees and wasps and you eventually worked your way up to being able to put yourself in the vicinity of them to illicit the fearful response.Then, as you are in their presence and the fear begins to arise, you recall information about bees and wasps that remind you about how positive they are to the environment and how unlikely it is that you would be stung by one.Continue to remain in their vicinity and allow the fear to run its course.Interoceptive exposure is another technique used to treat panic disorder and anxiety.It involves exposure to feared bodily sensations that simulate how they feel during a panic attack.The purpose is to then challenge the unhelpful and automatic thoughts that have been associated with these sensations, and to be able to manage them in a controlled environment.