I was subscribed to Barbara Heffernan, Certified Coach, LCSW. And her most recent emailed topic is about interoceptive exposure.
It is a CBT called gradual exposure technique category. Just that it is more focused on the internal feeling. Here is an easy to understand illustration of CBT4Panic:
As an introvert myself (INFP personality) I easily refer to my feelings as predictive of how a job for example can suit me. It's my personal tendency being both introverted and then intuitive. If experience have been the things that made me choose a job more wisely and not dismiss it easily as not suitable for me just because of a feeling, then I thanks God for it. However, I think I've been too picky.
So in you're discernment on what job or course to take, it is still the principle of testing the spirit. But of course as a human being wary of loosing the cocoon or of leaving a familiar job, while maybe the Lord is calling one to really change a part of one's life, an internal familiarity of feeling might lead one to dismiss one's real calling.
One can practice a simple activity first of internal muscle relaxation this night. While preparing to sleep and already lying down, try to feel where your muscles are still tight and what have already relaxed. It turns out you really need to maximize your 15 minute break time to relax your whole body since by realizing something from that night relaxation activity, you will now become aware that it takes time for most muscles to relax completely.
With such relaxation as your base, you can now try to introduce gradually a feared situation, dry running it with a focus to relaxing in the face of a tough or stressful situation. It turns out it's a skill to learn such or number of experiences nearing familiarity can help one manage things unknown before. It's the reason an honor student fails a board while a non-honor excels, because the latter at least had a number of training and felt experience timing oneself to answer the standard quantity of questions, and feedback telling oneself that such slow speed of answering won't make one finish all the questionnaire in time with a passing grade. An adjustment will have to be made and makes a speed fair enough for one to register in one's mind as the minimum speed one can use to finish the whole board exam. Feeling the pressure to speed up answering correctly, while thinking what is the correct answer, is the internal exposure one wants to feel and learn to manage consequently. That's 2 to 4 hours per set the whole day. And physicians have three days of board exam! As if, it's not just exposure and familiarity, but training your brain for stamina. As if, this time, you just don't need spinning exposure but the whole training of jet fighter pilot. Be it overcoming your fear of spinning or training to become a jet fighter pilot, the therapy is called gradual exposure, with an emphasis on gradual.
The main project for one to do is trying something one is afraid to do that one has prayed for but found out still needs to be done. What is that in your life right now?
Yup it's still if you feel consolation, if it is morally good and information gathering has pointed to the target job or course as fit for one's life, then it's a go. The Spirit will actually guide one away from the wrong decision despite one feeling consolations. Just charge it to experience later after realizing a wrong decision was made.
If one feels desolation despite weeks of praying while the decision seems good and somehow fitted for one's life, then one can do this interoceptive exposure before dismissing the good choice as not fitted for one's life if after the exposure the Spirit is still sending desolations.
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