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Areas › Your body › Your nervous system
Some people are very good at this because they were handed the job at six years old, in a house where somebody had to keep everyone level. It becomes a way of being useful and it works, and the cost is that simply being present, with nothing to manage, feels almost unbearable. Try one situation a week where you are not in charge of anybody's state. A walk, a class where you are the student, a seat at the back of a gathering.
'In His mercy He has given you night and day, so that you may rest' (Quran 28:73). Rest is listed as something given to you as well, not only as something you provide.
القصص
وَمِن رَّحۡمَتِهِۦ جَعَلَ لَكُمُ ٱلَّيۡلَ وَٱلنَّهَارَ لِتَسۡكُنُواْ فِيهِ وَلِتَبۡتَغُواْ مِن فَضۡلِهِۦ وَلَعَلَّكُمۡ تَشۡكُرُونَ
In His mercy He has given you night and day, so that you may rest and seek His bounty and be grateful.’
Qur’an 28:73read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A review and meta analysis of mindfulness based stress reduction in healthy people found it reduced stress, including against active control conditions, though the effect was smaller than in clinical groups. People who are functioning well still gain something from a deliberate practice. What that literature does not address is the particular cost of having been the family's regulator.
Chiesa A, Serretti A. (2009). Mindfulness-based stress reduction for stress management in healthy people: a review and meta-analysis.. Journal of alternative and complementary medicine (New York, N.Y.) doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Steadying other people is a skill you already have, and receiving is the one that never got practised.
If you cannot feel your own state yet, a device that shows it on a screen can stand in until you can.
Whatever happens in a session, the change gets built in the other hours. Choose things you can do at a bus stop with nothing in your hands.
When somebody tells you a practice will calm you, treat that as a hypothesis about you rather than a fact. Try it and watch what actually happens.