Well today is going to be a difficult day.  I\'ve already woken up at 4am anxious before having to face it.   My therapist has decided (well I suppose we did it together really)  anyhow WE decided that it would be good to tackle one of my major fears – LIFTS.  It seemed like a good idea when I was sitting in his office chatting about it.   Sure yeah – I\'m ready to get in a lift, other people do it all the time, I could do it.   After ten years of fear of confined spaces it felt like the easiest thing in the world to agree to.

But now today\'s the day I actually have to do it.   I feel like I have to go and fight a bear or something.  It feels like a really big, scary thing.  I\'m trying to deal with it by imagining myself trapped in an elevator with someone else who is panicking.  What would I do?   Well, obviously I\'d try and comfort them, reassure them that everything is going to be ok, we just have to wait and someone will come and get us out.   It seems to help and while I\'m imagining these events I feel myself begin to calm down.   But when it\'s just me in the lift I begin to wonder if I can actually survive the experience without going mad or having a heart attack or worse. 

And yet I know that out there right now are people go up and down  up and down in lifts, without even thinking about it.   Like it isn\'t the slightest bit dangerous or anything.   I know rationally it isn\'t dangerous, but for me, well you might as well ask me to jump into an erupting volcano.  There are even people in aeroplanes (another huge fear of mine) using lifts.   I try imagining that – me in a lift in an aeroplane.  An impossible situation.  How does anyone manage it?  But they do.  And maybe, just maybe I will too.   But I might just skip the aeroplane for now.   First step – the local department store.