Sally鈥檚 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:
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| Step | Anxiety Rating 0-10 or Easy | Medium | Hard | Reward / Brace Bucks |
|---|---|---|
| Sally watches a video of a toilet flushing or a hand dryer turning on with the sound very low. | 1 | 1 brave buck |
| Sally listens to audio of toilets flushing and hand dryers turning on from outside of the bathroom at home. | 5 | 2 brave bucks |
| Sally listens to audio of toilets flushing and hand dryers turning on while in the bathroom at home. | 5 | 2 brave bucks |
| Sally goes inside a public restroom that is a single-person restroom and does not have an automatic toilet or automatic hand dryer (she does not have to use the restroom). | 6 | 3 brave bucks |
| Sally uses a single-person public restroom that does not have an automatic toilet or automatic hand dryer. | 7 | 3 brave bucks |
| With her mom and while wearing noise-cancelling headphones, Sally goes inside a single-person public restroom that does have an automatic toilet or automatic hand dryer (she does not have to use the restroom), mom will wash and dry her hands. | 8 | 4 brave bucks |
| With her mom and while wearing noise-cancelling headphones, Sally goes inside a single-person public restroom that does have an automatic toilet and automatic hand dryer (she does not have to use the restroom), mom will flush the toilet. | 8 | 4 brave bucks |
| With her mom and while wearing noise-cancelling headphones, Sally goes inside a single-person public restroom that does have an automatic toilet and automatic hand dryer. Sally will wash and dry her hands (but does not have to use the restroom). | 9 | 5 brave bucks |
| While wearing noise-cancelling headphones, Sally goes inside a single-person public restroom that does have an automatic toilet and automatic hand dryer. Sally will use the restroom and wash and dry hands. | 9 | 5 brave bucks |
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鈥檚 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.