Free tool
Exposure Hierarchy Builder
Avoidance shrinks life. The way back is not one heroic leap — it's a ladder: list what you avoid, rank each item by how distressing it feels, and start with something small. This is one of the most-used exercises in all of therapy (it appears as Practice 104 in The Healing Trauma Workbook), and the ranking is the point: courage is titrated, not forced.
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1 · List what you avoid
Emotions, memories, places, conversations, activities — anything you steer around. Rate each from 1 (least distressing to confront) to 10 (most distressing). Examples from the workbook: "Looking at old photos (4)," "Driving on highways (7)," "Talking about a lost loved one (2)."
2 · Your hierarchy
Most distressing at the top — like a ladder you'll climb from the bottom. Click a row's × to remove it.
Start here
What support might you need?
Bring your hierarchy to your therapist — it's a ready-made roadmap for graded exposure work. The workbook's pacing advice: start with brief contact (even 30 seconds) with a low item, breathe, and back off if overwhelmed. Expand in increments. Celebrate every rung.
How to use an exposure hierarchy
Pick one of the lowest-rated items and make gentle, time-limited contact with it — briefly, on purpose, with support. Pause, resource yourself, and repeat, gradually extending the exposure over multiple attempts before moving up a rung. Setbacks are part of the method, not failure: return to the breach thoughtfully rather than forcing through. Over time, the nervous system relearns that the avoided thing is survivable — and the ladder gets shorter from the bottom.
This tool is for reflection and psychoeducation; it is not a treatment plan. For trauma memories especially, exposure work is best paced with a therapist — please don't use this to push yourself through overwhelming material alone.
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