📖 5-minute read
Avoidance shrinks life. Every time you avoid something scary, the fear grows a little stronger. Exposure reverses that: you approach the thing gently, and the fear starts to shrink.
The rule is graded — never flooding. Build a ladder from least scary to most scary. Start at the bottom. Stay long enough that the anxiety peaks and drops. Then move up.
For trauma, this needs to be paced carefully and often with a therapist. Exposure without safety is retraumatising. But small, chosen exposures — sending the message, going to the shop, saying the sentence — are healing.