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Areas › Worry and anxiety › Breaking the worry loop
Elaborate plans fall apart at exactly the moment you need them, so it is worth having something this small. Notice covers naming it as anxiety rather than as news. Settle is breath, walking, loosening the shoulders. Redirect is choosing where the attention goes next rather than waiting for it to let go of you. Practise the order when you are calm, so the sequence is there when you are not.
Seek help with steadfastness and prayer (Quran 2:45). The same verse admits this is hard, which is a fair expectation to start from.
البقرة
وَٱسۡتَعِينُواْ بِٱلصَّبۡرِ وَٱلصَّلَوٰةِۚ وَإِنَّهَا لَكَبِيرَةٌ إِلَّا عَلَى ٱلۡخَٰشِعِينَ
Seek help with steadfastness and prayer- though this is hard indeed for anyone but the humble
Qur’an 2:45read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a randomised trial with students, three sessions of a structured attention training exercise reduced symptoms of depression and anxiety, performing about as well as a self compassion programme. Brief and teachable does appear to be enough to do something. It was a student sample over a short period, so treat it as encouraging rather than as proof that any three step routine works.
Haukaas RB, Gjerde IB, Varting G, Hallan HE, Solem S. (2018). A Randomized Controlled Trial Comparing the Attention Training Technique and Mindful Self-Compassion for Students With Symptoms of Depression and Anxiety.. Frontiers in psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A short sequence can be recalled under pressure, when longer instructions cannot.
Do not tell a child their thinking is wrong, and do not hand them the better thought. Ask the questions and let them arrive at it themselves.
Every worry has something you love sitting underneath it. Fear about the exam means you want to do well. Fear about your mother's drive home means she matters to you.
With a child, make it a job rather than a lesson. They are the detective, the worried thought is the claim, and the task is to collect what supports it and what does not before deciding anything.