DO NOT REINFORCE THE RETREAT!

You'll only ensure that you lose all resilience...

I know this lady who cant stand to sleep with her feet uncovered. It makes her nervous and she cant sleep.

Determined to overcome this fear, she decided to leave her feet uncovered every night for as long as she could stand it...

The idea here was that each night she would be able to go a little longer and a little longer, until finally she could forget about them being uncovered and drift off comfortably into sleep.

Good in theory, but actually counter-productive....

The problem with this sort of approach is that you do nothing about the anxiety of having your feet uncovered.

The first night she went as long as she could before giving in and covering up her feet to get some sleep. Night 2 she lasted a little longer, but the same happened...

The longer she went each night with her feet uncovered, the more she found herself thinking about getting past last nights record, and the more anxious she became.

She had been accomplishing the opposite of what she set out to do. She was reinforcing the retreat...

The body wanted relief, and that relief came when she covered up. The longer she denied that relief, the stronger the anxiousness until she relented.

The more she did this, the quicker her body escalated to last nights anxiety levels, to realize the reward more quickly...

It's the same principle that tells us never to give your child the toy they demand at the store when they're screaming like a spoiled little brat; because it teaches them the level to which they must escalate to get what they want. Next time, theyll go straight there...

so what should you do instead?

Grounding exercises.

Things that take you out of the fear and focus on the issue, and more into the present moment. You train your body to relax despite the otherwise anxiety inducing situation...

You teach your body a new way to respond when you take the time to breathe, and focus on the tangible environment around you. You monitor your stress level and track it downwards.

Only when it has gone down do you then reward yourself with relief.

This is, I believe, a primary problem with our youth.

We have so many distractions available to us, so many RETREATS from anxiety and discomfort that they never learn how to self-soothe in difficult situations.

When the going gets hard, they get going! Somewhere else...

Consequently, they lack stick-to-it-ness and then induce the shame associated with failure. It's a vicious cycle that will only serve to perpetuate the development of losers who have internalized the message of "I just cant do hard things"