How to practice your skills

The Don't Panic Self-Help Kit, Section I: Practice Success Imagery Tape 3B: Three-Minute Success Imagery

Now you are ready to begin working on the tasks you outlined above, while applying the knowledge and skills from all of these sections. The stages of this step are: preparing for practice, beginning practice, responding to worried thoughts, responding to uncomfortable physical sensations, and ending the practice.

As you begin your practice, remember to face tasks one at a time. Don't look back to your last practice unless it is to remind you of your skills and capabilities. And don't look ahead as a way to remind yourself how far you have to go. Continue to practice a specific task until you feel relatively comfortable (never wait until you are completely comfortable), then begin the next one. Don't measure your progress by how quickly you improve your skills. Measure your progress by how persistent you are in your determination to reach your Short-term and Long-term Goals. Shaping your positive attitude each day, and developing a consistent schedule for practice -- these two intentions will pay off with success.

Choosing a Short-term Goal

You will be practicing the Short-term Tasks listed under one or more Short-term Goals, so your first decision is to choose a beginning Short-term Goal. There are no rules for selecting the perfect Short-term Goal to work on; use your best judgment to pick one. You have rank ordered your Goals in two ways: how difficult they seem and how important a priority they are. Let those rankings help you make your decision. For instance, there may be a Goal that is moderately hard on your difficulty list but is a high priority. Your desire to accomplish that Goal may help motivate you to work on it now, even though there are easier items on the list.

You also can work on more than one Short-term Goal at a time. Perhaps you choose to focus both on the goal of driving comfortably to the mall and the goal of tolerating exercise that elevates your heart rate. You may have time in your week to practice driving skills every two days and practice cardiovascular workouts on the opposite days.

Preparing for practice

There is a great array of options for practicing Tasks. In the beginning weeks, I suggest that you follow a structure similar to the one I am presenting in this section. As you get more proficient at designing and implementing your practices, then feel free to take "short cuts" in the process. By the end, your practice can be as informal as this: "Hmm . . . I feel anxious about doing something like that. I think I'll try it!"

For instance, one of my clients is working construction in an office building. One day last month his co-worker reported that one of the elevators had been temporarily stuck between floors for a few minutes. Upon hearing that, Alan became anxious and worried about getting stuck himself. Within a few minutes he excused himself, walked to the bank of elevators and rode one to the top floor and back. He simply would not allow his fears to begin to take hold of him anymore.

Before practicing any Short-term Task that moves you closer to your Goals, consider each of these questions in detail. You will benefit from writing your answers down, making them concrete.

Deciding how long to practice

Whenever possible, practice your task for 45 to 90 minutes at a time. It is true that shorter practices also will help your confidence, and some types of practices can only last a few minutes (such as looking people in the eye and smiling as you go through a reception line). However, from research we know that one of the most important purposes of Task practice is to develop habituation: during prolonged exposure to an anxiety-provoking situation, intense anxiety gradually decreases. As your anxiety diminishes, you can think more clearly. In the future, when these situations occur again, you will react with some anxiety, some distress, but not the terror that you once had.

So when you can, design your sessions for this 45- to 90-minute length, which promotes habituation as well as confidence. That may mean you will have to repeat the same behavior several times. Forty-five minutes will afford you many elevator rides. An hour's shopping may require a trip to the grocery store then a walk next door to the pharmacy. Ninety minutes of aerobic exercise can mean that you run in place 5 minutes, then spend the next 15 minutes calming yourself down if you got too scared, then another 5 minutes of aerobics and 10 minutes of calming yourself, and so forth, until the time is up. The definition of "practice" means anything that you do while still facing the anxiety-provoking situation. For instance, you might enter the grocery store and stay only 5 minutes, then have to leave because of your distress level. For the next 30 minutes you may need to sit in your car, practicing your breathing skills to calm down enough to re-enter the store. Then you enter the store for another ten minutes before finishing your practice. That equals 45 minutes of practice -- even though most of it was in the car -- because all of that time you were working.

Creating supportive statements

Study your answers to questions 4, 5 and 6, above. These Negative Observer statements will be the most likely ways you will sabotage your efforts in the practice. Use them to design your supportive statements (question 7). Write these positive statements down on a card to carry with you during practice.

Increasing you commitment

As you plan your practice, consider what you can do to support your commitment. Certainly reviewing the eight attitudes is a positive step, because they will remind you that taking risks is the smartest way to get stronger.