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Areas › Worry and anxiety › The cost of avoiding
A new school, a timetable that split them from their friends, someone who made the corridor unsafe, an exam, a long illness, a death at home, a separation. Each of those either takes away something that made the place feel safe or adds something that makes it feel dangerous. Once you know which, you know what the plan has to reach eventually, and what it can leave well alone.
No leaf falls without His knowledge, nor is there a single grain in the darkness of the earth, or anything, fresh or withered, that is not written in a clear Record (Quran 6:59). Nothing that happened to them was too small to count.
الأنعام
۞وَعِندَهُۥ مَفَاتِحُ ٱلۡغَيۡبِ لَا يَعۡلَمُهَآ إِلَّا هُوَۚ وَيَعۡلَمُ مَا فِي ٱلۡبَرِّ وَٱلۡبَحۡرِۚ وَمَا تَسۡقُطُ مِن وَرَقَةٍ إِلَّا يَعۡلَمُهَا وَلَا حَبَّةࣲ فِي ظُلُمَٰتِ ٱلۡأَرۡضِ وَلَا رَطۡبࣲ وَلَا يَابِسٍ إِلَّا فِي كِتَٰبࣲ مُّبِينࣲ
He has the keys to the unseen: no one knows them but Him. He knows all that is in the land and sea. No leaf falls without His knowledge, nor is there a single grain in the darkness of the earth, or anything, fresh or withered, that is not written in a clear Record
Qur’an 6:59read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A systematic review and meta-analysis comparing exposure with cognitive therapy in anxiety disorders found that approaching the feared situation carries much of the benefit. It compares whole treatment packages rather than isolating single ingredients, so the split between them is not clean. It is still a reasonable basis for making sure a plan eventually goes towards the specific thing that started it, and not merely around it.
Ougrin D. (2011). Efficacy of exposure versus cognitive therapy in anxiety disorders: systematic review and meta-analysis.. BMC psychiatry doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
The trigger tells you what a person is predicting will happen, and that prediction is the thing that has to be tested.
Two stretches of childhood carry most of this: the first years of school, and the middle years around the move to secondary. Knowing that lets you prepare instead of react.
If a child is at home, run the day as though it were a school day. Same wake time, same breakfast, bag packed, work starting when lessons would have started.
A child coming back after weeks away is walking towards a mountain of missed work. Cut that mountain down before the return date, or it will punish them for coming.