Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Worry and anxiety › The cost of avoiding
The child looking after an unwell parent, the teenager who has written the school off, and the one who cannot face the corridor all look the same on the register. They need three different responses, and a ladder of graded steps aimed at the wrong one can waste months. Ask what a morning they do not go actually looks like, and what would have to change for that morning to go differently.
Do not rush to recite before the revelation is fully complete but say, 'Lord, increase me in knowledge!' (Quran 20:114). Asking for more before you conclude is good practice and a prayer at the same time.
طه
فَتَعَٰلَى ٱللَّهُ ٱلۡمَلِكُ ٱلۡحَقُّۗ وَلَا تَعۡجَلۡ بِٱلۡقُرۡءَانِ مِن قَبۡلِ أَن يُقۡضَىٰٓ إِلَيۡكَ وَحۡيُهُۥۖ وَقُل رَّبِّ زِدۡنِي عِلۡمࣰ ا
exalted be God, the one who is truly in control. [Prophet], do not rush to recite before the revelation is fully complete but say, ‘Lord, increase me in knowledge!’
Qur’an 20:114read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A modelling study found experiential avoidance running as a shared thread underneath behaviours that look nothing alike, including substance misuse, binge eating and self harm. The design is cross-sectional and the model is one way of fitting the data rather than proof of it. Turned around, it makes the point here: what a behaviour looks like tells you less than what it is doing for the person.
Kingston J, Clarke S, Remington B. (2010). Experiential avoidance and problem behavior: a mediational analysis.. Behavior modification doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
The same behaviour can be held in place by very different things, and the help has to match whatever is holding it.
A shortened day, a pass on presenting to the class, a modified deadline, a quiet place at lunch: worth asking for when they let a child stay in the building rather than leave it.
Say the difficult parts out loud before you begin: the parent doing this alone, the younger sibling who now wants to stay home too, two adults who disagree, the week when it all slips.
If escape is holding the pattern in place, the plan closes off the escape a step at a time. If what waits at home is holding it, the plan moves those good things to the other side of the effort.