Stimulus Response

While taking a walk with James, and our friend Jason, it dawned on me that maybe I can start to extinguish my fear of spiders (or really anything) by being conscious of my physical reaction to it.  And then choosing to do something about it.  Currently, my reaction looks something like this:

• A spider is detected
• Shivers run down my spine 
• Shivers extends into my limbs
• Reactive thoughts then occur like "gross, AHHHH..."
• Cycle repeats when thinking about the incident

With my new method I'm trying something like this:

• A spider is detected
• I start to feel shivers
• I stop the shivers and attempt to keep looking at the spider while controlling my physical response (and sometimes I try to think of something I like while looking at the spider...yay bunnies!)
• Thoughts then occur like "ok, it's still gross" but it's more like an observation than a reaction (I'd like to get to a place where I'm more neutral than "it's still gross" but it's a work in progress).
• I also notice that I don't tend to perseverate on the spider after that.

 James and I found a while back that if we were both getting bogged down by something tough to talk about we'd tend to find ourselves moving into a fetal position.  We've both found that when we call each other on this and then work to getting out of the position (standing right up, taking a walk, etc.) that it helps to change the mood dramatically.  So, why not do this with spiders too ;).

This all seems pretty obvious from when I was learning about extinguishing fears in psych class however I don't recall much attention being placed on consciously lessening the physical response.  Yay mindfulness!

~Danielle