Rung 14 · Graded exposure
Go again within a day
After an attempt that went badly, approach someone else within twenty-four hours. Not to fix it — to keep the retreat from setting.
Your attempts
Nothing is recorded against this rung. The dread you feel next time will be a guess, and you will have nothing to check it against.
Why this one
What generalises after a bad night is usually not the night. It is the fortnight of not trying that follows it, which teaches you that the avoidance was what helped.
What it buys — This is the rung that stops one bad evening from costing you a month, which is what bad evenings normally cost.
Post-event rumination was associated with avoidance of similar situations afterwards — the retreat, not the incident, is what generalises.
What it cannot show — Self-report after real social episodes, in samples selected for social anxiety. It establishes that the replaying happens and tracks distress; it does not show that stopping it removes the distress.
When to climb
Three logged attempts running at 2 or under, each inside a day of one that stung. A calm week does not give you this rung.
Those two numbers are ours, not a finding. Graded exposure is clinical; where the line sits is our judgement.
Rung 15 — Three noes this weekSource
Rachman, Grüter-Andrew & Shafran (2000). Post-Event Processing in Social Anxiety. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 38(6).
The full version of this rung, with the rest of its topic, is exercise 08 of that lesson.