Free tool
Exposure Hierarchy Builder
Avoidance shrinks life. The way back is not one heroic leap — it's a ladder: list what you avoid, rate how hard each thing feels, and start with something small. This is one of the most-used exercises in all of therapy (Practice 104 in The Healing Trauma Workbook), and the ranking is the point: courage is titrated, not forced.
Completely private: everything happens on this page, in your browser — nothing you type is sent anywhere. Your draft is saved on this device only, so you can come back to it.
1 · What do you want back?
A ladder needs a top. Name the thing avoidance has taken — it becomes your top rung. (Optional, but it changes the exercise from a list of fears into a map to somewhere.)
2 · List what you avoid
Emotions, memories, places, conversations, activities — anything you steer around. You don't need the whole list at once; one situation is enough to start. Good ladders end up with 7–15 steps with small gaps between them.
If you faced this today, how anxious would you feel?
3 · Your ladder
Hardest at the top, gentlest at the bottom — you climb from the bottom. Tap a rating to change it (the rung moves itself), tap the words to edit them.
Here's the shape a ladder takes — yours will replace this as you add steps:
Start here
How to climb your ladder
Pick a rung around 2–3 — challenging, but clearly doable — and make gentle, time-limited contact with it: briefly, on purpose, with support. Stay with it until the anxiety comes down noticeably (at least by half is the classic rule), then rest. Repeat over several days, and vary when and where you practice — courage learned in one parking lot should travel. Before each attempt, notice what you predict will happen; afterwards, notice what actually did. Fear is a forecast, and exposure is how the forecast gets corrected. Leave your crutches behind when you can — the phone clutched like a talisman, the friend who has to come along, the exit you keep rehearsing. Safety behaviors feel kind in the moment, but they quietly teach the fear it was right. You're ready to move up a rung when the same challenge feels easier at the start, not just the end. 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.
What support might you need?
Bring your ladder to your therapist — it's a ready-made roadmap for graded exposure work. The small "practiced" button on each rung lets you log attempts — your before-and-after anxiety and what you learned travel into the PDF — and when a rung starts feeling easier, the ladder will quietly suggest the next one.
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.
Common questions
What is an exposure hierarchy?
It’s a ranked list of the situations, memories, places, and activities you avoid, each rated from 0 (no anxiety) to 10 (the hardest thing you can imagine). Sorted into a ladder, it turns a vague sense of “I avoid a lot” into a concrete map — and the ranking is the point: you climb from the bottom, so courage is titrated rather than forced.
Where on the ladder should I start?
Near the bottom — but not at the very bottom. The sweet spot is an item around 3: challenging but clearly doable. Make brief, time-limited contact with it — even 30 seconds — with support lined up. Breathe, back off if you feel overwhelmed, and repeat, gradually extending the contact over several attempts. Move up a rung when the same challenge starts to feel easier at the start, not just the end.
Is what I enter private?
Yes. Everything happens on this page, in your browser — nothing you type is sent anywhere. Your draft is saved only on this device so you can come back to it, and the Clear button removes it completely. If you want a copy, download the PDF or copy the text.
Can I do exposure work on my own, without a therapist?
Building the ladder on your own is a useful act of reflection, and gentle practice with low-rated everyday items can help. But this tool is psychoeducation, not a treatment plan. For trauma memories especially, exposure work is best paced with a therapist — please don’t use it to push yourself through overwhelming material alone. Setbacks are part of the method, not failure.
For therapists: writing treatment plans that hold up — turning a hierarchy into measurable treatment-plan goals.
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