Graded Exposure: 4 Things to Consider

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]What's up everybody? How you guys doing today? Jim here from the Pain PT. Hope you guys are doing well out there. Today we're going to talk about four things that I want you to keep in mind when you're doing exposure training, graded exposure training. This is one of the principles to recovery for some of you is to get back to the activities or things that you stopped doing because of your neuroplastic symptoms.

[00:00:27]And this is really important because we need to get back to life. If you want to get back to the things that we've stopped, we want to teach, show, tell the brain that these things are normal and that our brain can normalize around them. That's the goal here.

[00:00:41]So four things for you to consider when you're doing graded exposure training.

[00:00:46]Number one, you need to be consistent with the practice. You need to be consistent with the exposure. And I tell people it's not that you go do something one day and then you don't do it the next day or you up and down. It's sort of a roller coaster ride that we're trying to avoid. Some people all or nothing. They go all in and then they get a ton of symptoms and they stop everything.

[00:01:11]We want to do one step forward and then another step forward and another step forward in a very consistent way, right?

[00:01:19]We don't want to take a step forward and two steps back, two steps forward, three steps back, right? It's just a consistent practice of moving forward.

[00:01:28]And the reason again we're doing this is to show, teach, tell the brain that what we're doing is normal. And this is the truth here.

[00:01:37]And this leads us to number two.

[00:01:40]The second point I want to make is that what we're doing is normal. It is okay.

[00:01:46]And a lot of people I see are blaming inadvertently, incorrectly their symptoms on oh, I did too much.

[00:01:54]That was too much of this activity. So in a way they're blaming the activity, they're blaming what they did as being the problem.

[00:02:02]When it's not true, it is not the problem.

[00:02:05]The problem is or the issue is our own systems overreacting to something that's normal. It's called central sensitization. That's the definition.

[00:02:14]It's our nervous system and brain overreacting to something that's normal.

[00:02:20]So, we don't want to attribute the problem or the issue to the activity.

[00:02:24]Cuz that's only going to reinforce to the brain that that activity or thing you're doing is a problem, is a danger, is a threat. That would dial up your sensitivity and sensitization.

[00:02:37]Not what we want to do.

[00:02:39]All right, so we want to make sure that we're just reminding ourselves and remembering, "Hey, what I did was fine.

[00:02:46]It's my brain is just overreacting to this. That is the issue here. It's okay."

[00:02:51]Then we can calm down, right? The whole idea here is that we're reducing sensitivity, we're reducing this overactivation and this protection pattern that the brain's gone into because of what it's learned or what's been associated now with that activity.

[00:03:09]Number three, we're trying to ease forward, ease forward. We're not trying to force ourselves forward, push forward, grind forward, you know, blast ahead, force things. That is not going to work because that's more stress. So, when people are doing a graded exposure and they're saying, "I'm just going to do it. I'm going to put my head down.

[00:03:32]I'm going to grind through this. I'm just going to do it today and I'll do it tomorrow."

[00:03:36]Well, no, because you're kicking up a lot of stress, which is likely going to kick up a reaction to the symptoms now and give you more symptomology, which is going to lead us to that last point, which is how you handle those symptoms.

[00:03:52]So, number four, how you handle these symptoms, how are you handling them when they do come up is very important as part of your exposure training. If you freak out, you start worrying more, you start saying, "Oh, no. This is not good, you know, I did too much." You start getting into some reaction pattern to the symptoms and you handle them in a negative way, what you're doing is reinforcing to the brain that this isn't good, right?

[00:04:21]You're You're reinforcing to the brain that there's a problem again through these particular symptoms.

[00:04:27]So, we need to handle the symptoms with calming down, reminding the brain they're okay, they're just a reaction to what I'm doing because of the sensitization and the learning, everything's all right. Let's calm, soothe, settle down here.

[00:04:41]So, all these four points are really important for you guys as you guys move forward with exposure. Exposure training is really an important thing.

[00:04:50]And you want to be able to get back to the things you stopped doing because these things are typically normal, meaning most people can do these things.

[00:04:58]They're nothing, you know, crazy or something that's abnormal. So, our whole job here is to teach the brain that.

[00:05:08]So, let's keep going with the exposure training, everybody, bringing these four points that I made today. What you're going to see and find over time is that your nervous system and brain will desensitize, it will calm down, the reactions you have to these activities and things are going to diminish. It's going to give you proof again that, "Hey, wow. This is my brain and nervous system." And after a while, you'll find you'll do these things again with no symptoms. And the proof will be in the pudding, you'll see how this works.

[00:05:41]Reach out if you have questions, put comments in the comment section. If If today's video, please give it a thumbs up. I appreciate that. Subscribe to the channel if you haven't. And again, if you're looking for help, reach out. I can help you guys if you need it. You can find me at the painbt.com. Take care and have a good day, everybody. Bye-bye.