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How often to practise, and how long to stay
Pace, repetition and duration: the three settings that decide whether a hierarchy does anything.
A hierarchy with no pace attached is a wish list. Three settings turn it into a plan: how often, how long each time, and how many times before moving up.
How often
Two to four practices a week is the usual working range for self-directed exposure, and more frequent is generally better than more spaced out. Weekly practice is enough to keep a plan alive but slow enough that most people lose the thread. Daily is excellent when the rung is small.
How long each time
Long enough that leaving is not what ends it. The traditional instruction is to stay until distress drops by roughly half, which for most rungs is somewhere between twenty and forty-five minutes. Leaving at the peak is the one thing that makes an exposure counterproductive, because it rehearses escape.
How many times before climbing
Three practices of the same rung is a reasonable default, and more if the rating has not moved. Repeating a rung is not failure or stalling; it is the part that does the work. Climbing on the first tolerable attempt is the most common way a ladder collapses at rung seven.
What you are watching for
Not the absence of fear. What changes first is usually confidence that the fear can be handled, and how quickly it settles afterwards. The rating on the rung follows, sometimes weeks later.
Build the ladder
Name the fear and Bia suggests the rungs. Free, and nothing about you is sent.