Lesson 4 of 6 · Set the floor, not the ceiling
A floor, not a ceiling
Almost everyone in this state reaches for a target. I will do a juz a day. I will pray tahajjud. I will get back to where I was in Ramadan.
Targets are set on good days for bad days, and they fail on the first bad day. Then the failure becomes evidence, and the evidence feeds the loop from lesson two.
A floor works the other way round. It is the smallest amount you could still do on your worst day, in your worst week, when you are ill and someone is shouting. It is set low deliberately, and it is set so that it does not break.
Two rakahs. Ten ayahs. One page. Whatever survives a genuinely terrible Tuesday.
It is worth saying what this is, because it is not a piece of folk wisdom. The floor is the religious form of an approach called behavioural activation, which is the treatment with the strongest record for low mood, and of the values work that usually travels with it. Its whole claim is that you decide by what matters and by what you can carry, and act before the feeling arrives, rather than waiting for the feeling to authorise the act. The reports in the next step were saying something very close to that a long time before the trials existed.
What the research says
The approach breaks into parts: noticing what you actually do, scheduling more of what matters, working on avoidance, and getting clear on values. The floor described in this lesson is the smallest possible version of the scheduling part.
Breaks the approach into its parts: monitoring what you actually do, scheduling more of what matters, working on avoidance, and clarifying values. The floor in this lesson is the smallest form of the scheduling part. The review describes the treatment and its components, and it does not test it in a religious practice, which nobody has.
Kanter JW, Manos RC, Bowe WM, Baruch DE, Busch AM, Rusch LC (2010). What is behavioral activation? A review of the empirical literature. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(6), 608 to 620 doi
Pooled trials are why this approach is named here rather than something more elaborate. The honest limit for this course is that those trials were in depression and not in spiritual dryness, so this is a borrowed method and we are saying so rather than implying otherwise.
A pooled analysis of trials of the approach, and the reason it is the one named here rather than something more elaborate. The honest limit for this course is that these are trials in depression, not in spiritual dryness, and no trial of any of this in worship exists. The claim being borrowed is about how acting and feeling are ordered, not about what it treats.
Ekers D, Webster L, Van Straten A, Cuijpers P, Richards D, Gilbody S (2014). Behavioural activation for depression: an update of meta-analysis of effectiveness and sub group analysis. PLoS ONE, 9(6), e100100 doi