Dares... The Art of Successful Recovery
Dares are the therapeutic antidote to the safety behaviours involving learning not so much at an intellectual but primarily at an experiential level, in the gut. Intellectual learning is very much hippocampal learning, where experiential is more at the amygdala based learning. Basically, if you look at how a young child can be taught to not be afraid of the water, they gradually increase the dares as such that are performed in learning to swim at the experiential level (doing) rather than the learning of physics principles, which is what then gives them the confidence to float at a basic level.
Dares are identified between closing the gap between current behaviours, opposed to pre-trauma behaviours. If you used to be capable to going to a crowed shopping centre, or standing in long waiting lines at the checkout, and now cannot, then these would facilitate the dares that you need to perform. These range across your entire behavioural patterns, and are not just limited to one or two of your symptomatic responses now. What must be stressed, is that experiential learning can only be accomplished by triggering the amygdala to the alarm position, which then the alarm rings and it will be quite uncomfortable to you, though afterwards the alarm will come back a notch. The payoff for the alarm coming back a notch is that you will begin to notice improved patterns, ie. sleep will improve with less need for sentry duty, concentration will improve with less effort focused upon your traumas, and the list carries on.
Dares must be timetabled, to prevent avoidance. For example, if you tell yourself your going to perform a dare by going into a crowded shopping centre at late night shopping, then something less trivial arises, you will talk yourself out of the dare. If you timetable yourself to meet someone, or have a coffee with your partner at a coffee shop within that crowded shopping centre at "x" time, you are then more likely to adhere to the appointment time, than talk yourself out of just going into a crowded shopping centre.
The intent of dares is not to be at ease afterwards, but instead disconfirm there expectations that you have created, and learn to tolerate rather than remove distressing emotions. Intentionally inducing the internal alarm to panic is so that the body and mind can see and learn that nothing terrible actually does happen. It is about beating your own thoughts and perceptions that you have now come to believe are reality, when in fact, they are just thoughts and perceptions, and not reality.
