IHED, that's a spin on CBT that I'd never been exposed to before. My therapist at the time used to get frustrated with me because I'd always report back with no success every session. He'd have me do the same things over and over and over and wondered why I was not becoming desensitized to the situations. There were no 'levels' of exposure...just full-on exposure. Interesting, thanks!
Yeah, I've had the same experience with full-on exposure, it caused the anxiety to get worse. With the Workbook, I am actually seeing myself make a lot of progress.
To give you a vague outline:
- you create a heirarchy of behaviors that lead up to the most complex and most anxiety provoking behavior you wish to be comfortable in eventually, from the simplest (for example, simply going out and saying hi to people)
- you monitor your level of anxiety (it gives precise definitions to 4 different levels), and base when to go up a level, when to down one EJECT. (It explains how to make this decision intelligently so that what you are doing is practical.)
- the concept is that you always want to stretch your comfort zone little bits at a time, but not so that it's overwhelming. This way, you get comfortable with lower levels first, and it makes going up to each subsequent level much easier, just as easy as the last level was, and it's never so anxiety provoking that you can't handle it or think clearly about it all enough to correct any flawed cognitive-behavioral habits there.
- you rehearse each level in your imagination to desensitize to the anxiety it causes repeatedly, before going out and performing that level. Again, it makes it that much more likely that you are able to handle more in the field, and progress faster.
- in my own personal opinion, another reason this is better is because it's systematic, thus you can see yourself working toward your goals rather than wondering ("when do i finally get to be normal and confident", which again perpetuates anxiety). You beat a level, you go to the next one, like in a game. This gives the approach its own internal reward/motivation system, that wouldn't be there otherwise if you're just repeating the same things.
It also gives you a very simple, concise workable cognitive therapy for thoughts which perpetuate anxiety to watch out for in the field, so that you don't hurt yourself with unconstructive thinking:
- the 7 cognitive distortions devised by David Burns, that anyone who's been exposed to any kind of cognitive therapy most likely knows of. (these mostly have to do with self-esteem, which indirectly feeds into anxiety)
- also 4 different cognitive distortions that perpetuate and intensify anxiety specifically, preventing progress (labelled The Worrier, The Critic, The Perfectionist, and The Victim)
- and ways to correct each one in a way that is obviously much more logical when you read about it.
- it does this very simply and concisely. I've always found most cognitive therapy instructions and workcharts to be so overly cumbersome that it's discouraging to have to do all that, and this isn't like that.
Where can I get it?
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