Today I want to present you with a very simple technique to face the fears that your students suffer with the best predisposition. It is a very simple, guided and scaled method that can be useful for those students who find it difficult to overcome a fear.

The scary ladder. A way to face and overcome fears.
Surely, throughout your life you will have experienced, lived or suffered some fear. And, surely, when you think about fear, you do so in absolute terms. There is a fear and this fear occupies everything, that is, it is as if fear could only be drawn with a single color. For example, black.
But you’ll agree with me that life, fortunately, has many nuances, it has many colors besides black.
Well, what it is about in the first place is to stop thinking about fear not only irrationally, but in absolute terms.
The good thing about any fear is that it is always scalable. And the fact that it is scalable makes it beatable. And what way is there to visualize the scale of any fear? Well, an excellent option is the ladder of fear.
I discovered the ladder of fear in a book that has been of great help to me. This book is none other than one by Elsa Punset and is entitled The Book of Little Revolutions. In it I have learned very effective techniques not only to overcome fears, but also to grow personally and, above all, emotionally. So, from now on, I recommend you read it.

As Elsa Punset states in her book:
“The most effective way to overcome fear is to expose yourself to that fear repeatedly, gradually and in a controlled way.”
This means that you cannot overcome a fear if there has not previously been a job, if a path has not previously been traced. Well, the best way to trace that path is through the metaphor of the ladder, that ladder that needs to be climbed step by step in order to ascend. You know that this climb is slow and tiring, but you also know that it has an end and in that end is the reward, in that end is the overcoming of your fear.
The ladder of fear. Teaching to dissect fears to overcome them.
I know of no better way to understand what one teaches than by example. Well, the example I want to give you is the following:
Imagine that one of your students is very afraid of cats. So, what it is about is facing that fear of cats in a controlled way in order to gain self-confidence as well as certain skills or abilities that make it possible to overcome that fear.
How would the ladder of fear be related to the fear of cats?
Depending on the type of fear, the steps can be chosen, that is, what the steps or stages will be towards overcoming that fear. In our case we are going to put a scale from 1 to 10, that is, the ladder of fear will consist of ten steps.

An example of the ladder of fear:

• Step 1: Find photos on the Internet in which cats appear.

• Step 2: Watch videos about cats on the internet.

• Step 3: Observe a cat from behind a window for a few minutes.

• Step 4: Observe a cat for a few minutes from the other pavement.

• Step 5: Observe from a medium distance a cat held in the arms of another person.

• Step 6: Closely observe a cat held by another person.

• Step 7: Stand next to the person holding the cat.

• Step 8: Being in a closed place accompanied by another person with a cat that no one is holding in their arms and at a considerable distance.

• Step 9: Approach a cat a few meters away without anyone holding the cat in their arms.

• Step 10: Put the cat on your knees, but always held by another person

Before continuing with the article, I want to make it clear that this example that you have read is, precisely, an example. This means that it should not be taken literally, but it can help you get an idea of what is meant by fear ladder.
Even in certain fears, on many occasions your work as a teacher can focus on a mere approach through images or videos. Teachers are teachers and as such, our work should not focus on eradicating fear, but rather teaching that overcoming fear is possible if it is scaled properly.

Work the ladder of fears.
Taking into account the example of the fear of cats, you will notice that the ladder of fear makes it possible to dissect that fear into ten parts. Knowing this, what you provoke is that the student understands that it happens to overcome the fear of cats, you do not have to take one and put it on your lap at the same moment in which he decides to face that fear.
Face a fear, overcome a fear. It is very important to verbalize before your students the small achievements that day after day, effort after effort, they make to reach the top of the ladder, to reach the last rung, that rung where fear no longer exists, where fear has been overcome.

Proposal for a tutoring activity for the ladder of fear:
It occurs to me that an activity could be worked on in a tutoring session with students that had the ladder of fear as its protagonist. Each student could be given a sheet with a ladder with several steps and a title that says something like: I want to overcome the fear of:
What it would be about is for each student to write down their fear and look for ways to scale it, that is, to think step by step how they could overcome it slowly.
The ladder of fear could be reviewed periodically and even the rungs that each student has been able to overcome in relation to the fear of it could be drawn in a certain color.

The ladder of fear. In conclusion.
The big problem with any fear is its irrationality. Well, the ladder of fear makes it possible for that irrationality to be transformed into small challenges, small achievements.
You may not get the students to reach the last step of their fear. No matter. And it doesn’t matter because with the ladder of fear you will have given them a very valuable lesson and that is that, to overcome any fear, you have to start from the bottom and do it with someone by your side to help you in that process.

I will end this entry with a quote from Françoise Mauriac that reads as follows:
Fear is the beginning of wisdom