in cbt, a fear ladder is a list of the things you avoid, put in order from least scary to most scary. you give each one a number from 0 to 100 for how afraid you are of it. then you start at the bottom and climb, one rung at a time, and you don't move up until the rung you're on has gotten boring. (gayle's word. "boring" is the goal. i never thought i'd want anything to be boring.)

this is mine. i made it in my second session, last september, and i've been climbing it ever since. the numbers are how scared i was when i wrote it, not now.

it's a ladder, so start at the bottom.

	[  ] 100 · read something i wrote, out loud, at the coffeehouse open mic. not yet. before i graduate. you read it here first.
	[  ] 90 · a practice job interview at career services. it's on the calendar: tuesday, october 5. i made the appointment in person, which used to be its own rung.
	[x] 90 · give a five-minute presentation in class. thursday, april 22, 1999. american short story seminar, five minutes on kate chopin's "the story of an hour." my hands shook so much i put my note cards down flat on the table and read them from there. my voice cracked twice. i finished. five minutes and ten seconds; lindsay timed it from the back row. the professor wrote "clear and thoughtful" on my evaluation and i have it taped above my desk.
	[x] 80 · raise my hand to disagree with someone in class. thursday, march 4, 1999. a boy said a poem was "basically about nothing." i said, quietly, that i thought it was about his grandmother. it was. it said so in the title.
	[x] 75 · eat lunch alone in the dining hall. twenty minutes. no book. thursday, february 18, 1999. (first try, tuesday, february 9: four minutes, then i left with half a grilled cheese. gayle says that counts as practice.) the second time, i noticed something i had never once noticed in three years of dreading it: nobody was looking at me. everyone was looking at their own tray.
	[x] 65 · call the health center and make my own appointment. thursday, january 21, 1999. i got put on hold and almost hung up. i didn't.
	[x] 60 · go to a professor's office hours, alone. tuesday, december 8, 1998. to ask about my final paper. she talked to me for twenty minutes about the brontës and lent me a book. professors, it turns out, are lonely in their offices.
	[x] 55 · order a pizza on the phone. thursday, november 12, 1998. large, mushroom. i wrote a script, including a part for him. he said "that it?" which was not in the script. i said "that's it." and it was.
	[x] 45 · ask a question in class. tuesday, october 13, 1998. victorian novel seminar. "is the paper due on the 20th or the 27th?" i knew the answer. it was on the syllabus. that wasn't the point. my heart was going so hard i didn't hear her reply, and i didn't care. first time in three years.
	[x] 35 · say one thing in the tuesday group without being asked. tuesday, october 20, 1998. yes, i did the class question a week before this one. gayle says ladders are allowed to be a little crooked.
	[x] 25 · ask a reference librarian where to find something. tuesday, september 29, 1998. i knew where it was. see above re: not the point.
	[x] 15 · say "thank you" and one more sentence to the cashier at the campus bookstore. thursday, september 24, 1998. the sentence was "it's cold out." it was not cold out. it was september. she agreed with me anyway. people are nicer than the voice in my head.
	start here

a few things about ladders, in case you want to make one:

· make the bottom rungs really easy. easier than you think is worth bothering with.
· stay until the fear comes down. leaving at the worst moment teaches your brain that leaving is what saved you.
· do a rung more than once. i ordered four more pizzas before i moved up. (this was not a hardship.)
· it's ok to slide down a rung on a bad week. you didn't lose the ladder.
· if you can, build it with a counselor. mine kept me from putting "give a speech in the stadium" on rung two.