Welcome to the seventh module of LUNA! This week, continue to help your child complete their activities and make progress on their plan. By this point, most of your child’s time should be spent practicing the activities in their plan of action.
Just like you did before, make sure your child creates a new schedule for this week using the Weekly Practice Plan worksheet. Your child can create this schedule based on a new plan of action, or they can continue working on the same plan from the previous week(s). Different children will need different levels of parent support to accomplish this. Remember, to create a new plan of action, look back at Module 4 and use the My Plan of Action worksheet.
Whenever your child practices an exposure activity, make sure they write it down in their Plan of Action Activity Log to keep track of their progress. In this module, you will learn more about how to help your child reflect after an exposure activity and put their anxious thoughts to the test.
You will spend about 30 minutes reading, watching videos, and doing activities. We encourage you to take breaks and come back to the material as much as you need.
Challenging Your Child's Expectations
In Module 5, George worked on his plan of action for his fear of germs and contamination. Let’s check in with him to see how it went.
George recently challenged himself to touch a dirty shirt from the laundry hamper without washing his hands right after. This was a very big deal for George since his fear of germs is intense. This fear often gets in the way of his daily life and stops him from doing things he wants to do. But George was able to overcome part of this fear by doing something he normally avoids. He was able to challenge his anxious thoughts and discover what he was capable of.
Before completing the exposure activity, George thought that if he touched dirty laundry without washing his hands, he might become sick or feel so dirty that he wouldn’t be able to handle it. During the exposure activity, George did feel very uncomfortable, anxious, and even gross. But after waiting a few minutes without washing his hands, George noticed that the activity was not as scary as he thought, and physically, he felt fine! George realized that he had overestimated how bad it would be to touch something dirty without washing his hands. He realized that touching the dirty shirt would likely not make him sick and that the shirt probably wasn’t too dirty to begin with.
As we have seen, exposure activities can help us face our fears and challenge our anxious thoughts. They can also teach us that a little bit of uncertainty is okay. For example, what if something bad did happen while George was doing the exposure? What if harmful germs did get onto George’s hands after touching the dirty shirt? Would those germs make George sick? Maybe, but we can’t ever know for sure. But by challenging his fear, George realized that it’s ok to not know what will happen if he encounters germs, and if he does end up getting sick, it will likely not be so bad. Even though George already sort of knew all of this, experiencing it by taking steps on his plan of action helped him really believe it.
Exposure activities can help you learn new things about your fears. George learned that touching dirty laundry is not as difficult as he thought it would be. It did not make him sick, and even if some germs did pass onto his hand, George realized he would probably be able to handle it. This does not mean your anxieties and fears will immediately go away after you face them. The more exposures you do, the easier it will be to overcome your fears.
For George, the more he’s able to practice touching things that his anxiety tells him are “dirty”, and the more he’s able to practice NOT washing his hands after, the easier it will be for him to overcome his fear of germs.
Types of Thinking Errors
One benefit of using a plan of action is that it is designed to help your child challenge their ideas and expectations about their fears. Anxious thoughts can often trick us into assuming the worst. If your child is always assuming that something bad is going to happen, this can stop them from having new and enjoyable experiences. It can also stop them from doing things they need to do in their daily lives. Identifying your child’s expectations about their fears and using exposure activities to test those expectations can help your child learn new things about their fears and worries.
Unhelpful anxious thoughts are the result of something called thinking errors. The two types of thinking errors that generally cause anxiety are:
- Probability: Overestimating how likely it is that something bad will happen
- Consequences: Overestimating how bad it will be if something bad does happen
View some examples of these thinking errors below or view the PDF version.
- "If I don't write a perfect paper for English class, then I will get a bad grade"
- "I will embarrass myself if I try to make friends"
- "If I do get a bad grade, that means I am bad at writing papers. I might fail the class and then I won't get into college!"
- "If I embarrass myself, it will be the worst thing ever and everyone will hate me"
The fear behind these thoughts is that if something bad happens, you won't be able to handle it.