Sally’s fear of public bathrooms is an example of a fear that has overlap between anxiety and sensory sensitivities. She is worried about germs, but she is also anxious about going into public restrooms because of how loud hand-dryers and flushing toilets are.
Here is an example of a mission plan that Sally could use to tackle her fear of public restrooms:
Note: Sally could repeat the first three steps while increasing the volume each time if it gets too difficult for her to move on to the next step. For the fourth step, Sally could first do this with her mom first and then independently; she could also wear noise-cancelling headphones here if needed.
Sally’s overall goal is to use a public restroom that has multiple stalls when other people are also using the restroom while wearing her noise-cancelling headphones. Step 9 does not quite represent her meeting her goals, so after completing the above steps, she plans to repeat steps 6-9 in a larger public restroom. She also plans on not using the same restroom every time so she knows she will be better at using all public restrooms, not just certain ones.
