I'm gonna teach you how to overcome any anxiety problem using exposure therapy in seven steps and show you how I applied this to my life and we're getting started right now I'm dr. Ali Mattu clinical psychologist in New York City and I've been treating anxiety disorders for over 10 years you've probably heard of exposure therapy this idea of learning to face your fears to overcome them and it's something that I have actually talked about on this channel before in a video about me facing my B phobia when you get anxious your urges to avoid of
situation while that makes you feel better it keeps you from learning that if you stick with a situation your body will adapt then your anxiety will come down on its own the more you expose yourself to anxiety the less anxiety you feel I've learned a lot since making that video and one of the things that I've learned is this idea of habituation of staying in a situation until your anxiety declines on its own well there's mixed evidence about that and in some situations people will experience it and then some people will not declining anxiety through
exposure is not necessarily predictive of good outcomes in treatment it might actually cause a lot of harm because it might give the message to people that anxiety is something that needs to be decreased the newest ideas of exposure therapy they're not about calming down or your feelings going away it's not about becoming more comfortable it's about becoming comfortable being uncomfortable your brain it's an association machine it connects things together let's say you go out for Italian food one night and a few hours later you get really sick well the next time you smell or see
or think about Italian food you're probably already gonna start feeling sick that's your brains associations at work surprising sensory filled emotional associations will win out the battle for recall and are much more likely to guide what you do this is what exposure therapy needs to address it has to break apart those associations imagine that right you are you is a new memory that you're trying to form a more realistic memory related to your fear imagine ken is a older very emotional sensory based memory let's say you have a fear of sharks and you're in the
beach environment well the much more emotional memory the one that has all these powers that's has sensory details that has been built up for years and years and years it's gonna win that fight so when you're at the beach you're gonna think of jaws you're gonna think of these really scary situations oh we have to do is give this more in this new memory that you're trying to form we have to power it up so it can possibly win this fight which I am going to attempt to do right now that's it so we need
to strengthen those new memories now I can go into the water traditional cognitive behavioral therapy might start by trying to help you to think more realistically by helping you gather facts about these things that you are afraid of by helping you learn how to relax yourself that can actually weaken the new memories you're trying to form the new experiences you're trying to get and it can actually make it harder for those new memories to win that battle this is where the inhibitory learning approach to anxiety disorders comes in it takes the best of cognitive science
and combines it with the best of behavioral therapy to create a much more I think effective and helpful way of dealing with anxiety if you have a mild anxiety disorder you might be able to do this on your own if you have mild to moderate maybe you want to work with the therapist on doing this and if you have moderate to severe you might need a professional therapist as well as medication to do it step number one is know your fear really know it not just the surface level I'm worried I'm gonna get anxious no
we're gonna dig deeper what would it mean if you get anxious what would that say about you what's the worst that can happen what would you do what would happen to you what would happen to those around you what what would it mean what would people think about you maybe the core fear is about about failure about being stupid about being unsafe about losing control about being trapped I've got this big fear of vlogging in public of taking my camera and going outside in public and recording videos I've done this once before on this channel
it was at the Grand Canyon but that was a very different context it was different equipment it was long ago I'm so much more scared of doing this in New York City because I'm afraid of running into someone I know I'm afraid of people seeing me who are likely to see me again I also have more people watching this channel so I feel like the stakes are higher being unsafe outside and of being judged and being seen as stupid or strange or dumb or even like super into themselves and narcissist and no Casey nice dad
does this all the time he lives like here in New York City that doesn't help me at all because it's not my thought it's not my it doesn't reflect my experience number two is know your why are you trying to overcome this anxiety for another person because of this important relationship in your life or is it because of what you value and who you want to be and your identity is it because you're afraid of missing out on opportunities that you want to be there for I really want to do YouTube well and I want
to make videos that help you all and to do that I need to be able to make videos in a wide variety of contexts so for me in order to move forward and not miss out on the opportunities of YouTube I need to overcome this barrier number three is tested out this is where I want you to take that core fear and make a list of all the kind of situations where you think you might experience that fear and then what we have to do is we have to become scientists we have to go to
those situations and see what actually happens the place you want to start is what's most meaningful to you before your exposure you want to take note of what you are most afraid is going to happen and I want you to rate it from zero to a hundred how likely do you think it is that that fear that worry is going to come true right now my fear is someone's someone's gonna see me they're gonna judge me they're gonna think I'm weird or strange I'm also really worried about like police officers and people coming up and
thinking like I'm doing something else and not okay I'm also worried about someone kind of grabbing my equipment stealing it being mugged it being kind of thrown on the ground being messed up I would say I believe that fear that people are gonna think I'm weird about 7580 percent when you're in these exposures you want to talk out your anxiety that fear of people judging me and looking stupid it's coming up strong I'm also really worried about running into stuff I'm worried about dropping stuff I'm worried about my equipment failing I'm much more on edge
my heart is beating really quickly and I feel kind of sweaty and there's like people with strollers and I'm kind of like looking like are that do they know me are they my daughter's friends my daughter's all that stuff I want you to stay in that exposure until you really get a lot of good evidence related to that fear that person right there in the corner she was kind of looking at me and there I felt a spike of that judgment didn't say anything though after the exposure you want to ask yourself did the thing
you were worried about happen how do you know if it did or not and then what did you learn so the percentage I believe that worried that I'm going to be recognized people are gonna judge me a soup stupid or strange or I'm gonna be an unsafe position cuz police or police are gonna come after me or someone's gonna grab my camera it's really gone down here I'd say it's maybe like a twenty percent and the reason I believe that the evidence I've got for that is because nothing's really happened a few people have kind
of looked at me maybe kind of like snickered or smiled something like that but things actually happened most people just seem to kind of go about their day step number four is combine your fears so maybe you have a fear of sweating and how people might see you and being in public situations and having to talk to someone else well you you can do you can test out each of those separately and then we're in information related to each of those and then you want to start combining them so maybe you bring about sweating in
a public place and talk to someone else my anxiety it leads me to breathe very heavily and have a racing heart rate I also get very sweaty so I'm going to bring about that sensation by doing something called an intercepted exposure I'm going to do some hyperventilating for about a minute feeling it so what a crappy things about being a behavioral therapist together practice what I preach getting some blurry vision now now worried people are really gonna notice like why is this guy to breath my fears probably 50 or 60 now feel hot especially with
this coat on after hyperventilating the thing I remind myself here's why I'm doing this and I'm doing this because I want to be able to do these situations I want to make more of these videos I want to get comfortable being uncomfortable I am uncomfortable right now I don't feel too good and I need to use this experience I need to get comfortable with it that doesn't mean feel better it means coming to terms with it learning from it experiencing it writing it out I need to get comfortable being uncomfortable gack boo those are the
moments I need to embrace the GECK boo of this moment still feel hot my breathing is getting a little bit back to normal and you know it's weird it's like no one seems to be noticing or probably caring step 5 is to get unsafe this means getting rid of your safety behaviors we all do little things that make us feel slightly more safe in a certain situation for many of us it's using your cell phone if you feel uncomfortable and having that as a distraction or only being able to go into a certain place if
we have a friend or a loved one with us maybe it's having a drink with us some kind of beverage to make ourselves feel a little bit better the sunglasses make me feel like I'm a little bit a little bit less likely to be noticed or recognized so to truly confront this fear I need to get rid of my sunglasses yeah that jump things up a bit step six is to mix it up mix up where you are the locations you're going to the time of day how you're feeling all of that kind of stuff
I've been on Flatbush for a while and it is more difficult here because it's so much more crowded there's so many more people this is a lot harder than the park all right heading in this subway I feel like there's a lot more police here New York City subway there's a lot more people and so I'm really nervous about what this is going to be like so that was a tree nose a son and I totally avoided vlogging on a train my anxiety was this way wait hi because I actually did see a lot of
people looking at me they were looking at my camera I didn't really feel safe now I have no idea it's over there but I don't really know how to do that really nice hot dog salesman should be how to get on and boom we're on the bridge plays IDs actually kind of dropped a it's good some spittle excited to be here this is by far the easiest of all the situation's a few like them one of the reasons why the bridge is so much easier is because it's a context that's so far removed from my
fear my fist is a context that's super different from my everyday life or the kind of places where I would want to vlog try and in the clear but just do ORS please one stop on the subway and of course there's like that train stand clear of the closing doors please one stop port this for one people are largely just better really maybe it's because of on the subway I'm looking right at the end maybe that's what this is a brooklyn-bound so it surprised me about that as no one really seemed to care much everyone's
kind of like doing their thing live their own life I passed by these police officers and they really scared me but they didn't really seem to care either I guess like this is kind of a much more common thing then I realized this is something that people are more used to seeing and just dropped about back off II had my bag so that was unexpected one more big spot I want to do is Chelsea Market it's kind of all indoors and I actually don't know if I'm allowed to do stuff like this I think it'll
be good for me if I do get stopped and if someone says put that camera away that'll be a good experience for me so my goal is just to kind of like walk through and vlog straight through so let's see what happens some people are noticing [Music] but honestly not much it's going on over here similar to the subway similar to Prospect Park similar to the High Line similar to the Brooklyn Bridge people largely just men go about their normal day and do do their own thing here I even pass my security people and didn't
really do anything here at all man pretty much every year I have not come true all right so I just walked through all of Chelsea Market nothing happened people just kind of went about the day and I walked by so many security people and no one had any reaction after a September line with attacks I've been so much more on edge about recording and doing things in public because I so often stopped by security at airports and things like that and one time with my buddy in college we were just this like 2003 we were
just filming and filming stuff in downtown LA and police stopped us there it's something that I've experienced before and I've been much more anxious about it step 7 is to face your fear to bring about the real core fear that you have the thing that you're most afraid of so if you're experiencing social anxiety we want you to actually get rejected if you have a fear of failure we want you to make mistakes and see what happens if you have panic disorder we want you to experience panic I'm gonna head over to Times Square super
crowded area a lot of people are gonna be there and I'm going to record and try to promote my youtube channel at the same time so I'm gonna try to find a good spot over there or there's a good amount of people and a good likelihood that people are gonna have some kind of reaction Indian price whats indian price $5 particular alright I'm not saying you're Indian yeah and I'll give you Indian price okay alright five dollars a ticket five dollars so let me see if I know you got you got my boy Hasan Minhaj
on here I'm gonna give me the Indian price I wanted to embrace that situation because it was someone who actually kind of called me out the guy didn't even at any point comment on the fact that I was vlogging in real-time so I got my cards I got my sideshow stickers aged I got the sake show no thanks okay hey check out the psych show no check out the psych show thank you check out the sake shirt hey guys gonna check out the sake show go and check out the sake show here check out the
sake show thank you let's do one more Hey you want to be in the vlog what's your name how's it going spider-man its Jason Bourne Jason Bourne nice to meet you you're gonna be on the psych show on Tuesday this video is me facing my fear of vlogging in public logging vlogging this right here recording in public maybe you need a mask haha I feel a lot easier to take care of the way yeah once I take off your mask yeah that's like your normal like it's like you're in the matrix alright I think my
my fear here I think it's done everything I've done today has helped me to develop new ideas that are through real experiences I feel like I can now go and film anywhere we've been having so many mind-melds on this channel so many of us have been talking about how we're trying to face our fears trying to do the tough stuff to learn from these experiences that are difficult for us that's why I wanted to make this video I wanted to make it for us for all of us mind-meld errs out there to be able to
learn and grow together so do you have a fear that you're trying to overcome do you want to support of all the mindmeldor 's in our community let me know in the comments below if you like this video give it a thumbs up if you want more fun psychology videos that celebrate mental health be sure to subscribe to the psych show and welcome to selim HP my newest patron thank you Salim and if you'd like to become a patron of the psych show check out patreon.com/scishow where you can help me make new and get behind-the-scenes
stuff in return
