You’ve learned a general approach to stepping toward discomfort that includes building a practice ladder and the procedure that will help you get the most out of every practice. In the next three sections, you’ll learn how to apply this procedure in various ways. Typically, people with anxiety disorders avoid not only specific situations, such as driving on freeways, or specific objects, such as spiders, but also uncomfortable thoughts and images, as well as certain physical sensations that are all part of their particular anxious responses.

488