Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Worry and anxiety › Facing it a step at a time
Refusal that looks like defiance is usually fear sitting on top of a missing skill, and those two call for different responses. Treat it as defiance and you end up enforcing. Treat it as fear and you end up teaching. Children tend to read which one you have settled on well before you say it out loud.
Facing a fear in steps works, and it works best with someone guiding the ladder. Read this as an explanation of how it works, and take the steps themselves to a therapist.
God wishes to lighten your burden; man was created weak (Quran 4:28). Human weakness is spoken of here as something to be met with lightening rather than with pressure.
النساء
يُرِيدُ ٱللَّهُ أَن يُخَفِّفَ عَنكُمۡۚ وَخُلِقَ ٱلۡإِنسَٰنُ ضَعِيفࣰ ا
God wishes to lighten your burden; man was created weak
Qur’an 4:28read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Reviews of how exposure works describe it as new learning rather than simple wearing down, built by varying the setting, letting go of safety props and allowing expectations to be proved wrong. A separate review reports that neither the amount fear drops during a session nor the fear level at the end predicts outcome, so visible distress is a poor read on whether the work is landing. Both are theoretical reviews of mechanism, not trials of what a therapist's stance does.
Craske MG, Treanor M, Conway CC, Zbozinek T, Vervliet B. (2014). Maximizing exposure therapy: an inhibitory learning approach.. Behaviour research and therapy doi
Craske MG, Kircanski K, Zelikowsky M, Mystkowski J, Chowdhury N, Baker A. (2008). Optimizing inhibitory learning during exposure therapy.. Behaviour research and therapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A child who can tell you think they are trying has much less reason to fight you.
Reading every refusal as fear can miss a child who is refusing because something outside the room is wrong and needs looking into.
If you are helping someone with their sleep and eating, ask rather than instruct. The moment you sound like their mother you have lost the part of you that was useful.
Years of avoiding people leave real gaps, not only fear. How to start small talk, how to join a group already talking, how to get out of a conversation. Those can be taught, and being taught them is not an insult.
Run it in your head first, then act it out with someone safe, then do it for real. It is a preseason, and nobody thinks the preseason is cheating.