Confronting Your A nx iety 83
First, positive reinforcement can help you gradually con-
front your fears. This entails using rewards, or aspects of
your environment that motivate you to respond by appropri-
ately approaching what you are afraid of, and strengthening
the use of approach responses in future situations (instead of
continuing to use avoidance responses). For example, if you
have a fear of germs and your goal is to be able to touch door
handles without becoming too anxious, you might add
money to a jar each time you touch a door handle, which you
can then spend any way you like. The money becomes a
motivation for you to touch door handles (which is an
approach response). (Note: W hen using a “motivation jar,”
choose the amount of money you will add beforehand,
ensuring that it’s proportionate to the behavior. For example,
decide that you will give yourself a dollar for every door
handle you touch. A penny would not be motivating enough,
and fifty dollars would be motivating for the wrong reasons.)
Second, in anxiety, avoidance is fundamentally a form of
negative reinforcement. Each time you avoid that which
makes you fearful or anxious, you are rewarding yourself,
because your behavior removes the unwanted stimulus or
feeling. Thus, the more you avoid anxiety- provoking situa-
tions, the more likely you are to keep avoiding them. This
pattern interferes with your goals, essentially because it
helps you avoid the experience of fear and anxiety that’s a
normal part of meeting challenges.
Physiological Inf luences on Behavior
in A nx ietyEmotions have long been of interest to scientists and
theorists, especially in terms of their relationship to physio-