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Areas › Worry and anxiety › The cost of avoiding
Explain the pattern rather than the pupil: the relief that follows getting out of something, and the way that relief quietly books the next absence. Staff who understand it stop reading a pale, silent child as rude, and they become the people delivering most of the help, since nearly all of it happens in the building rather than in a clinic. Twenty minutes at a staff meeting is well spent.
Do not follow blindly what you do not know to be true: ears, eyes, and heart, you will be questioned about all these (Quran 17:36). What we assume about a young person is not a small or private matter.
الإسراء
وَلَا تَقۡفُ مَا لَيۡسَ لَكَ بِهِۦ عِلۡمٌۚ إِنَّ ٱلسَّمۡعَ وَٱلۡبَصَرَ وَٱلۡفُؤَادَ كُلُّ أُوْلَٰٓئِكَ كَانَ عَنۡهُ مَسۡـُٔولࣰ ا
Do not follow blindly what you do not know to be true: ears, eyes, and heart, you will be questioned about all these
Qur’an 17:36read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A systematic review found people with social anxiety and depression tend to use expressive suppression more and reappraisal less, so feelings are pushed down rather than shown. It draws on cross-sectional studies and describes a tendency rather than any individual. It does explain a common misreading, since the child who looks blank or offhand may be holding a great deal down.
Dryman MT, Heimberg RG. (2018). Emotion regulation in social anxiety and depression: a systematic review of expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal.. Clinical psychology review doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
How the adults read the behaviour decides how they respond, and their responses are half of what the child is learning.
There is a particular good feeling in getting out of something you were dreading. Give it a name at home, because it is exactly what makes tomorrow harder.
Before choosing a method, work out what the avoiding is doing for the person. Two children keeping away from the same building can need opposite things.
A chart imposed on a fifteen year old will be beaten, ignored or fought. Agree the terms with them instead, in a conversation where they can genuinely change something.