DO NOT scroll through the pictures ahead of time to “see if you can do it.” This won’t help you and may make your phobia worse.
SELF-HELP INSTRUCTIONS
- Note your anxiety level from 0-10 before you start. 10 is the worst panic possible.
- CLICK ON the picture to see the whole thing, and start the slideshow.
- If the slide advances automatically, it will go to another logo only. Click back for more time.
- Make sure you look at a picture until you feel no anxiety at all, only boredom
- Do not move on to the next picture until you’ve achieved this.
- Don’t use any safety behaviors to enable you to see the picture. This includes changing your breathing.
- If you feel a sense of relief when the picture is gone, then you need to spend more time with it. This relief feeling is like a reward for your brain, and brains like rewards better than punishments. So you don’t want to feel any reward for NOT looking at the picture, if that makes sense.
- If the pictures seem too easy, try making your anxiety go UP as high as possible. You can then click over to a page like this one. However, you must GO BACK and do this exercise with the same picture again and again until you CANNOT raise your anxiety no matter what you do or what you think about.
Good luck!
This “people after vomiting” page has four pictures of people after they vomit. Some of the people have norovirus (stomach bug or “stomach flu”), others have food poisoning, one is either drunk or has been on an amusement park ride and/or had too much to eat at a country fair.