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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Feelings and focus
The rule is short enough to remember at midnight: never worry alone. It does not have to be someone who can fix anything. A friend, a colleague, your sister on the phone. Putting the fear into full sentences for a person who is listening tends to shrink it back to its actual size, and if it does not shrink, at least you are no longer the only one holding it.
'Do not worry, God is with us' (Quran 9:40). The words were said by one person to another in a frightening moment, out loud, which is the whole practice in miniature.
التوبة
إِلَّا تَنصُرُوهُ فَقَدۡ نَصَرَهُ ٱللَّهُ إِذۡ أَخۡرَجَهُ ٱلَّذِينَ كَفَرُواْ ثَانِيَ ٱثۡنَيۡنِ إِذۡ هُمَا فِي ٱلۡغَارِ إِذۡ يَقُولُ لِصَٰحِبِهِۦ لَا تَحۡزَنۡ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ مَعَنَاۖ فَأَنزَلَ ٱللَّهُ سَكِينَتَهُۥ عَلَيۡهِ وَأَيَّدَهُۥ بِجُنُودࣲ لَّمۡ تَرَوۡهَا وَجَعَلَ كَلِمَةَ ٱلَّذِينَ كَفَرُواْ ٱلسُّفۡلَىٰۗ وَكَلِمَةُ ٱللَّهِ هِيَ ٱلۡعُلۡيَاۗ وَٱللَّهُ عَزِيزٌ حَكِيمٌ
Even if you do not help the Prophet, God helped him when the disbelievers drove him out: when the two of them were in the cave, he [Muhammad] said to his companion, ‘Do not worry, God is with us,’ and God sent His calm down to him, aided him with forces invisible to you, and brought down the disbelievers’ plan. God’s plan is higher: God is almighty and wise
Qur’an 9:40read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A meta-analysis of 36 randomised trials asked whether therapies that go directly at worry and rumination reduce that kind of thinking more than therapies that do not. The question is worth asking because circular thinking behaves like a problem in its own right, separate from whatever set it off. These were trials of structured therapy rather than of ringing a friend, so the everyday version borrows the principle and not the evidence.
Spinhoven P, Klein N, Kennis M, Cramer AOJ, Siegle G, Cuijpers P, Ormel J, Hollon SD, Bockting CL. (2018). The effects of cognitive-behavior therapy for depression on repetitive negative thinking: A meta-analysis.. Behaviour research and therapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Said aloud to somebody else, a fear has to take a definite shape, and a shape is something you can work with.
You are allowed more than one feeling about the same thing. Relief and grief when someone dies. Love for a job you would walk out of today. Neither one cancels the other.
A wave across the road, a joke with the man in the shop, asking someone how they are and meaning it. These unplanned seconds count for more than they look like they should.
Self-restraint runs on a supply that stress uses up. In a week when everything is late and nothing has been slept on, you will react to things you would normally let go.