Chapter 8
Working Through Fear and Worry
Key Learning Points
Introduce the concept of a “fear ladder”: In the last chapter, we learned that practicing on something easier (a boggart) is a good approach to mastering fear. A “fear ladder”, the format of Lupin’s lessons, takes this idea further by structuring specific types of fear into a list and gradually exposing a person to them from easiest to hardest.
Introduce activities that make you happy and provide a sense of mastery: People who are anxious or sad often avoid activities that give them pleasure and a sense of accomplishment in addition to more emotionally difficult ones. One of Harry’s most effective strategies for feeling better is playing Quidditch and students can similarly add activities they enjoy/that give them a feeling of accomplishment to their list of stress busters.
Return to cognitive distortions and introduce “automatic thoughts”: This chapter includes three examples of distorted thinking (one by Lavender about her rabbit and two by Harry about Lupin and Snape respectively). These provide an opportunity for further discussion of thinking errors and how to deal with them as well as for introduction of the idea that we all have “automatic thoughts” (ideas that pop into our mind which can be thinking errors).
CBT Foundations
The concept of anxiety was first introduced in Chapters 3-4. In Chapter 7, we saw that CBT encourages people experiencing anxiety to expose themselves to their fears. For this to be most effective, those with anxiety must face as many of their feared situations as possible. This can be a daunting task, but a process called systematic desensitization offers a road-map:
Systematic Desensitization
Systematic Desensitization is an anxiety treatment strategy involving a series of exposures in which anxious youth or adults face their feared object or situation. Practically, this involves a sequence of exposures beginning with the least anxiety-provoking situations and ending with the most feared ones. This ordered list of feared objects and situations is called a “Fear Hierarchy” in CBT but for simplicity we can call it a Fear Ladder. As people march through the ladder, they gradually learn to tolerate the source of anxiety so that later exposures (i.e. the most feared ones) become possible to manage. Note that Professor Lupin’s lessons are structured as a fear ladder with students learning to handle less challenging monsters (boggarts and red caps) while working their way up to the most fearsome ones (e.g. a werewolf).
As mentioned in the last section, public speaking is a common fear for school-aged children as well as adults. In the following example, a simple Fear Ladder is depicted using the situation of presenting a speech in front of the class (note that actual fear ladders require input from the anxious person as one person’s list of feared situations often differs from another’s).
Here is another example of a fear ladder, this time for someone who is afraid of spiders:
You can see from the examples above that using the gradual fear ladder approach, gains from lower-level exposures can be leveraged as more frightening ones are introduced.
Activities that make you happy and provide a sense of mastery
One of the most common strategies in CBT is behavioural activation. Put simply, this involves getting people to do things (which as we’ve discussed can be a challenge with someone who is anxious or depressed). While exposing people to their fears can be an important strategy, just as important is encouraging them to engage in activities that are pleasurable and give them a sense of accomplishment.
Finding joy and meaning are crucial parts of life and they help people feel happier and less anxious. For Harry, Quidditch function as both an enjoyable pastime (he loves riding his broom) and a challenge that gives him a sense of purpose and accomplishment (to try to win games and eventually the Quidditch Cup). There are any number of activities that can function in this way in the real world. These include:
· the visual arts
· music
· dance
· sports
· creative writing
· spending time with and training animals
· travel
· volunteer work
· public speaking (if you can manage performance anxiety, this can be fun and rewarding too)
Automatic Thoughts and Cognitive Distortions Revisited
See the synopsis below for situations in which Lavender Brown has a thinking error about the death of her rabbit and Harry has thinking errors about the thoughts of both Lupin and Snape. Each case is similar in that all three thoughts are “automatic”:
Lavender suddenly thinks Professor Trelawney’s ominous prediction came true.
Harry suddenly thinks Professor Lupin has no confidence in him.
Harry suddenly thinks Professor Snape is trying to poison Professor Lupin
All three thoughts occur immediately and spontaneously in reaction to an event. They are automatic thoughts. Automatic thoughts are words and images that pop into our heads when we are confronted with a situation. These thoughts don’t arise from reasoning and they have no logical sequence. The fact that one has had an automatic thought is often outside of conscious awareness and they can be hard to turn off.
One technique for evaluating automatic thoughts, which both Harry and Lavender illustrate in this chapter, is to share them with others and ask for their reaction. If a person is not aware of her automatic thoughts, another option is to write a list of thoughts when there is a sudden negative change in emotion. If Lavender and Harry did this, they would discover:
That Lavender assumes that bad things will repeatedly happen as predicted by Professor Trelawney
That, after the dementor attack, Harry assumes that others will have a low opinion of his abilities
That Harry assumes that all actions by Professor Snape are malicious and intended to harm those he cares about.
Remember CBT Core Principle #1 - that knowing your own pattern of stressors and symptoms is crucial for overcoming distress. In this spirit, understanding our automatic thought patterns provides us with clues about our thinking errors and opportunities to restructure our negative thoughts.
How is Chapter 8 Related to CBT?
In chapter 8, Harry and his classmates are introduced to the concept of a fear ladder. Lupin introduces this ladder by gradually exposing students to the easiest and then more challenging creatures. This chapter focuses heavily on anxiety, sadness and ways of reducing them.
Early on in the chapter, Harry gets to practice with his Quidditch team. Quidditch is clearly an activity that gives him a sense of pleasure and mastery (Harry is the only seeker who “has never failed to win…a match”).
Participating makes him feel happier:
“no amount of mud, wind, or rain could tarnish Harry's wonderful vision of finally winning the huge, silver Quidditch Cup”
Harry’s positive feelings post-Quidditch diminish, however, when he learns that there is a trip to Hogsmeade and he will not be able to attend. Harry is described as “thoroughly depressed”, listless, and wandering around Hogwarts “dispiritedly”. Here we see a protective factor for Harry (Quidditch) followed by a risk factor (inability to join his friends on outings) and how each affects his mood. The fact that Harry cannot go to Hogsmeade is so painful not only because he will miss an enjoyable activity but because he feels separate and excluded from the rest of his class. One of Harry’s typical protective factors is his close connection to his friends and schoolmates, but in this specific case, he cannot access that.
The brief dialogue between Lavender and Hermione while in line outside Transfiguration class illustrates an excellent and explicit example of challenging a cognitive distortion. Lavender learns that something bad has happened (her rabbit has been killed by a fox) and she concludes that Professor Trelawney had correctly predicted it when she said “That thing you’re dreading, it will happen on the sixteenth of October”. Hermione shows Lavender the flaw in her logic given that she had not, in fact, been dreading her rabbit dying and that the death did not even happen on October 16th (that was just the day on which Lavender learned about it).
While stuck in the castle during the field trip, Harry meets with Professor Lupin who notes that Harry is being troubled by cognitive distortions (suffering from “enough tea leaves”). Lupin’s underlying message is that Harry’s fears may not be as insurmountable as he thinks. He points to the frightening looking water demon as an example: “The trick is to break his grip. You notice the abnormally long fingers? Strong but very brittle.” Lupin is using a metaphor to suggest that our fears may not be as powerful as we think. It is when we ourselves imbue our anxieties with power and control that they feel unstoppable. Lupin is saying that we can take control back and that he will help Harry do that.
Harry feels comfortable with Professor Lupin and resists the urge to hide his worries. He asks Lupin why he had not allowed Harry to face the boggart. This is a key example of Harry looking for evidence that might support or refute his worry thought. Lupin explains that Harry is mistaken and that he had prevented him from facing the boggart because he assumed it would take the form of Voldemort and terrify the rest of the class. This cognitive restructuring has immediate effects on Harry’s mood. After understanding that Lupin actually thought highly of Harry including believing that he could handle a boggart, Harry “was suddenly feeling a lot happier.” This is also a good illustration of CBT Core Principle #3 – that it’s not the situation that matters, it’s how you think about it. When Harry’s thoughts changed, his mood did too.
Interestingly, immediately after that reaction, Harry is faced with another situation that leads to a cognitive distortion. As he had done with Professor Lupin initially in the example above, he engages in jumping to conclusions and mind reading, this time worrying that Professor Snape is trying to poison Professor Lupin: “Harry had a crazy urge to knock the goblet out of his hands”. As we will see later in the book, Harry’s thought is again incorrect. Note that misunderstandings and distorted thoughts about Snape’s intentions and motives by Harry and his friends are a theme throughout the Harry Potter series. The evidence they use to evaluate their thoughts is always incomplete as they have no relationship with Snape or his confidants and cannot ask. Only when full evidence emerges at the end of each book (and eventually, the whole series) can they correct their thoughts regarding Snape.
Core Lesson Plan - Working Through Fear andWorry
Understanding Fear and Worry
Duration: 1 to 2 50 min periods
LESSON OBJECTIVES
Introduce the concept of a fear ladder as a way to gradually face fears.
Introduce activities that give a sense of pleasure and mastery as a way of preventing and/or coping with distress.
Introduce the concept of automatic thoughts which involuntarily pop into our heads and can sometimes be distorted.
Reinforce the idea that we should try to spot and challenge thinking errors.
SUMMARY OF TASKS/ACTIONS
Suggested Actions / Lesson Planning:
Students are to complete the attached worksheets independently.
Once the students have completed the worksheets, volunteers can share their responses with the rest of the class. Please do not ask specific students to participate – only choose those students who volunteer to share with the larger group.
Entire Lesson Plan
Teacher Answer Key
1: No Answer Key
2: No Answer Key
3: No Answer Key
4: No Answer Key
Guiding Questions
Optional Lesson Plans and Activities
The following lessons and activities are optional. You may download the full set of optional lesson plans, activities, and chapter questions. Alternatively, you can download each activity or worksheet separately.
Entire Set of Optional Activities