Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Worry and anxiety › Breaking the worry loop
A conclusion someone reaches on their own stays with them. One that was given to them falls apart the moment they are frightened, because it was never really theirs. So keep asking: what makes you think that, what else could explain it, what happened the last time. With teenagers there is a second reason to hold back, which is that being corrected by an adult ends the conversation on the spot.
Call on Me and I will answer you (Quran 40:60). The answer follows the asking, which is a fair model for how this goes in the room.
غافر
وَقَالَ رَبُّكُمُ ٱدۡعُونِيٓ أَسۡتَجِبۡ لَكُمۡۚ إِنَّ ٱلَّذِينَ يَسۡتَكۡبِرُونَ عَنۡ عِبَادَتِي سَيَدۡخُلُونَ جَهَنَّمَ دَاخِرِينَ
Your Lord says, ‘Call on Me and I will answer you; those who are too proud to serve Me will enter Hell humiliated.’
Qur’an 40:60read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a randomised writing experiment with 182 students, writing about an interpersonal hurt in an experiential way reduced negative feeling and softened the effect of going over the anger. Working something through in your own words did the job, without anyone supplying the conclusion. It was a writing task with students, so it supports self generated processing broadly rather than this specific way of talking to a child.
Liao KY, Wei M, Russell DW, Abraham WT. (2012). Experiential self-focus writing as a facilitator of processing an interpersonal hurt.. Journal of clinical psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A conclusion you worked out yourself holds up under pressure, and one you were handed does not.
Most decisions are not sealed. Choose, run with it for a set time, then look again and change course if it is clearly wrong. Knowing there is a review date takes a great deal of weight off the choice.
Some people never ask for help because they assume everyone's head is like theirs. If yours has been running like this since you were small, it does not feel like a condition. It feels like being you.
Asking again and again whether it will be alright, and being told yes, buys a few seconds of calm and guarantees the next round of asking. The kindness in the answer is what keeps it going.