Experiencing Feared Consequences
As we told you earlier, one of the thinking errors in anxiety is overestimating how bad it will be if an unpleasant or fearful event occurs.
Therefore, it is important to create opportunities for children to be exposed to appropriate types of outcomes in order to learn that they can cope with a feared outcome. Over time, this teaches them that, no matter what, they will be okay.
For example, Neil thinks he could not handle it if he got bitten by a bug.
If Neil and his parent are doing mission plan practice outside and he does get bitten by a spider, even though the scary thing happened, this gives Neil a chance to learn if he could handle it. So it can be okay if minor bad things happen during mission plans, and in fact, can help even more if children learn that they are tough and can handle it when bad things happen.
It can be very hard for lots of families to understand why we might prepare for the worst during mission plans. The truth is we all live with some level of risk in life - for example, every time you drive in a car or cross the street, you are taking a (very minor) risk. If your child can learn to live with things going “wrong” occasionally during mission plan practice, it will be much easier to handle when things go wrong in real life. For many kids, doing mission plan activities in which there is a real chance of a minor bad thing happening are the scariest, so make sure that they can earn lots of Brave Bucks or a really exciting reward afterwards!
