It depends. Are you in danger of harming yourself in order to avoid the thing you are afraid of? Or are you afraid the fear itself will kill you? If you are at risk of hurting yourself, let your T know this. She will know how to handle that.

If you're afraid of what being overwhelmed by fear will do, I can tell you that the best thing I ever did to work on my anxiety/panic attacks/phobias was to simply remain in the situation that was causing the fear. I eventually calmed the hell down, despite the way I felt at the start. It was a bit mindblowing, really.

From what I have experienced, exposure therapy is designed to go really slow. It is designed to deal with overwhelming feelings of fear.

Not sure if ths will help you or not, but one of the things I would try to remind myself is that even though it felt like my anxiety had to be the world's all time WORST EVER, all I was actually dealing with was anxiety and my T knew how to conquer it. Part of having an anxiety problem can be a feeling of OMG what if I am the ONE PERSON who will die from this, what if I am the special weirdo case?!?! It could be different for me!! I am the one perspn who can't handle it!!

So i would then remind myself that I am not the super special anxietymonster that i was afraid i was, and that those fears were actually just a typical symptom of an anxiety issue. One of the few times that NOT being special was actually a comforting thing