1It helps to have one small set of moves you use whatever the worry is wearing today. Not a fresh technique for each fear, just the same few steps, learned well enough to reach for without thinking.
Anxiety changes costume. This month it is contamination, next month it is being late, next year it is your health. If every version needs its own method you are permanently starting again, and remembering which method applies becomes another job. A short portable routine you can run in a queue, in a corridor, in bed at two in the morning, is worth more than a clever technique you only half recall.
Islamic evidence
Seek help with steadfastness and prayer (Quran 2:45). What is named is two things a person can return to, whatever the particular trouble turns out to be.
“Seek help with steadfastness and prayer- though this is hard indeed for anyone but the humble”
Qur'an 2:45
Psychological evidence
A systematic review and meta-analysis comparing exposure with cognitive therapy across the anxiety disorders found that exposure based procedures carry much of the therapeutic weight, whichever diagnosis is in front of you, which supports having one approach that travels. It also sets a limit on what a calming routine can claim. A meta-analysis of attention bias modification, a trainable technique for social anxiety, found the benefits inconsistent, so a portable skill is a way to stay in the situation rather than a treatment in its own right.
Ougrin D. (2011). BMC psychiatry · doi
Heeren A, Mogoașe C, Philippot P, McNally RJ. (2015). Clinical psychology review · doi
Review detail
Why it works. Something you can reach for without thinking is the only thing available to you when you are frightened.
Feedback
none yet2Coming back after a bad patch is quicker than getting there was the first time. Most people expect the opposite, which is why a setback feels so final.
What you learned did not vanish. It went out of reach for a while, usually because something else was going on in your life. Pick up a rung or two below where you stopped and you will generally find yourself back at your old level in a fraction of the original time. Knowing that beforehand is what stops a rough fortnight turning into a decision to give up.
Islamic evidence
Do not lose heart or despair (Quran 3:139). The address is to people whose attempt has just gone badly, not to people who are doing well.
“Do not lose heart or despair- if you are true believers you have the upper hand”
Qur'an 3:139
Psychological evidence
A meta-analysis found that a drug promoting fear extinction enhanced the effects of exposure therapy, which is evidence that exposure works through new learning rather than by wearing fear away, and learning is the kind of thing that can be held and recovered. Worth adding that when all the trials of that drug were pooled at the level of individual patients, its advantage turned out smaller and more conditional than the early results suggested. Neither piece of work set out to measure how quickly people recover from a setback.
Norberg MM, Krystal JH, Tolin DF. (2008). Biological psychiatry · doi
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Review detail
Why it works. The learning is still there even when your performance drops, so you are starting from a foundation and not from nothing.