Are emotions always perfectly in touch with reality? Absolutely not. They are based on our perceptions, and our perceptions are not always in line with reality. However, that is the goal – to make our feelings exactly match reality.

Think “Goldilocks”

As Goldilocks explores the house of three bears, she sits in three chairs: the first was too hard, the second was too soft, but the third chair was just right. The same idea applies anxiety: Given the reality of a specific situation, we want our anxiety to be not too much, not too little, but just right. After all, anxiety has a purpose: to protect us from danger.

The problem with having too much anxiety is that it can be very unpleasant and can lead to avoiding or limiting aspects of our lives (impairing social relationships, personal interests, home care, work/school, etc.), and the problem with having too much little concern is that we will not protect ourselves from real dangers or unwanted outcomes. So when thinking about how to manage anxiety, the goal is to have the right amount of anxiety based on the reality of the situation so that we can respond to the situation appropriately. Our level of anxiety must be sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Right.

Change anxiety by learning safety vs. danger

How do we achieve the goal of having realistic anxiety? An important method is to learn what is safe and what is dangerous. Anxiety involves learning about associations: about this the situation results in to feared outcome (e.g. if touch this dirty object results in gets sick; If swim in the sea results in gets attacked by a shark; If give a presentation/speech results in social rejection) (Beckers, et al., 2023; Duits, et al., 2015). When we learn about these relationships, we need to learn two different things: i) what is the probability of the feared outcome occurring, and ii) if the feared outcome occurs, how severe will it be? In clinical terms, this learning process is called exposure therapy (Parker, et al., 2018).

Exposure therapy involves approaching situations that the person believes will result in their feared outcome to test whether the feared outcome occurs and, if it does, whether the feared outcome was as severe as they originally predicted (Craske, et al., 2014 ; 2022) ).

For example, if a person is worried that giving a presentation/speech at work will lead to social rejection (or synonyms of “social rejection”, such as social criticism, negative feedback, negative judgment), exposure therapy would involve repeatedly giving presentations/speeches to test whether rejection occurs and how bad the rejection is if it occurs (eg is it a severe rejection, where the speaker is loudly ridiculed by all members of the audience or fired? Or is it no rejection or possibly even praise?). By making many exposures in a variety of situations, the person learns how likely rejection is to occur and how severe it is when it occurs. In other words, the person learns to calibrate their beliefs and anxieties to reality.

Often people are overly anxious, so exposure therapy reduces anxiety. But it’s important to remember the true goal: to have realistic anxiety—not too much, not too little. If the person from the example above has learned that an unprepared public speech to authority figures at work realistically results in some critical feedback from authority figures, then it would make sense to prepare the public speeches – that’s the reality. It would not make sense to over-prepare the speeches (at the expense of time, effort and interference in other aspects of life) nor to continue to under-prepare the speeches. Nor would it make sense to exaggerate in your own mind how bad the feedback was (was it catastrophic, or was it fair/less constructive criticism?).

Exposure therapy is like playing the piano

Importantly, exposure therapy is like playing the piano: anyone who presses a few piano keys is technically playing the piano. Playing the piano well requires practice, knowledge of music theory (eg chord construction) and often a conscious plan (eg which song to play and how to play it). Exposure therapy is the same: everyone who meets theirs fear technically can be making an exposure, but making exposures effectively requires theoretical knowledge, a detailed and nuanced exposure plan, and focus on the key elements of learning (Craske, et al., 2014; 2022).

Unfortunately, exposures without a deliberate plan can very easily be counterproductive – exposures are anxiety provoking, and if not well designed, the anxiety and underlying beliefs may not change, which can be discouraging. But with high-quality exposures, we can calibrate our anxiety to realistic levels, allowing us to live our lives more happily and more fully. A competent exposure therapist can guide people through the mechanics of exposures, calibrate their beliefs/anxiety to be based on reality/evidence, develop a long-term plan for independent exposure practice, and help ensure that the exposures being made are truly safe (wouldn’t want to expose to objectively dangerous things!).

Using the work presentation/speech example, there may be additional nuances, such as not knowing if negative feedback has occurred; this can happen in work environments, as the work culture may suggest that it is unprofessional to give negative feedback publicly. Rather, authority figures may provide this feedback at a later one-on-one meeting or performance review, making it difficult to know during the presentation/speech if negative judgment occurred. A competent exposure therapist can help the person navigate these nuances to optimize learning and long-term anxiety reduction from exposures.

Summary

To calibrate anxiety to realistic levels, we need to learn the likelihood that our feared outcome will occur and, if it does, how serious it really is. The main way to do that is exposure therapy, which involves approaching the anxiety-provoking situations to learn how likely our feared outcome is to occur and how severe it is when it does occur. This may seem easy to do, but there are many important nuances to doing exposure therapy well, which a competent exposure therapist can help with.

How do we know if we have mastered anxiety?

It’s hard to say, and I’m sure there are differing opinions. However, I think a big part of the answer is to have “Goldilocks” levels of anxiety consistently over time and across situations: not too much anxiety, not too little, but sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Right.