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Areas › Worry and anxiety › What worry does
If most of a person's social life happens online, how they talk about it is a fair guide to how they are. Weariness, bleakness, no pleasure left in what used to be enjoyable: ask about that as a question about mood, not as a question about the phone. A good opening is what it used to feel like, and when that changed.
truly where there is hardship there is also ease (Quran 94:6). It is repeated for people who cannot believe it the first time, which is roughly who you are sitting with here.
الشرح
إِنَّ مَعَ ٱلۡعُسۡرِ يُسۡرࣰ ا
truly where there is hardship there is also ease
Qur’an 94:6read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A systematic review found that repetitive negative thinking in adulthood is more common among people who were exposed to adversity in childhood. A bleak, circling way of talking often has a history behind it, so it is worth asking about gently rather than treating it as a bad habit to correct. Reviews of this kind show an association across studies, never a cause in any one person.
Mansueto G, Cavallo C, Palmieri S, Ruggiero GM, Sassaroli S, Caselli G. (2021). Adverse childhood experiences and repetitive negative thinking in adulthood: A systematic review.. Clinical psychology & psychotherapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
When somewhere is a person's main social world, how they feel about it tracks their mood closely.
Your alarm learned from something real, then started answering to things that merely resemble it. A rustle in the grass gets the same jolt as the animal that first taught you to run.
The pull you feel towards the screen was built on purpose by people paid to make it strong. That is not an excuse, but it does take some of the shame out of losing an hour to it.
When someone is genuinely distressed by what happens on their phone, treat it as a reading of their anxiety rather than as a complaint about screen time.