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Areas › Worry and anxiety › The cost of avoiding
Attendance is easy to count, which is why plans get built around it. A plan that only presses for attendance leaves the frightening thing exactly where it was, so whatever compliance you win tends to collapse within a fortnight. Spend the first while finding out what the fear is made of: a person, a subject, a corridor, a test, or simply being away from home.
God does not change the condition of a people unless they change what is in themselves (Quran 13:11). The change that lasts is the one that reaches what sits underneath.
الرعد
لَهُۥ مُعَقِّبَٰتࣱ مِّنۢ بَيۡنِ يَدَيۡهِ وَمِنۡ خَلۡفِهِۦ يَحۡفَظُونَهُۥ مِنۡ أَمۡرِ ٱللَّهِۗ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ لَا يُغَيِّرُ مَا بِقَوۡمٍ حَتَّىٰ يُغَيِّرُواْ مَا بِأَنفُسِهِمۡۗ وَإِذَآ أَرَادَ ٱللَّهُ بِقَوۡمࣲ سُوٓءࣰ ا فَلَا مَرَدَّ لَهُۥۚ وَمَا لَهُم مِّن دُونِهِۦ مِن وَالٍ
each person has guardian angels before him and behind, watching over him by God’s command. God does not change the condition of a people [for the worse] unless they change what is in themselves, but if He wills harm on a people, no one can ward it off–– apart from Him, they have no protector
Qur’an 13:11read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a randomised trial comparing acceptance based behaviour therapy with applied relaxation for generalised anxiety disorder, improvement in symptoms and quality of life was mediated by reductions in experiential avoidance, the habit of turning away from unwanted inner experience. Those were adults with a diagnosis rather than children refusing school, and a mediation analysis suggests a route rather than proving one. It still points the same way: what moved was the avoiding itself, not the surface behaviour.
Eustis EH, Hayes-Skelton SA, Roemer L, Orsillo SM. (2016). Reductions in experiential avoidance as a mediator of change in symptom outcome and quality of life in acceptance-based behavior therapy and applied relaxation for generalized anxiety disorder.. Behaviour research and therapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Pushing on the surface behaviour leaves the thing being avoided untouched, so nothing shifts underneath.
If a child is being bullied or hurt at school, the first job is making the place safe, not working on their fear of it.
When a young person will not go in, social fear is the most common thing underneath. Start there, before anyone reaches for words like lazy or defiant.
Listen for the moment a young person starts explaining why home is better. A preference with reasons attached is much harder to shift than plain distress.
When the schoolwork is finished early, what follows is chores and dull jobs until the school day would have ended. The good things wait for the hour they would have waited for anyway.