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Say so out loud, because most people apologise for it and then clamp down on the very thing that was starting to shift. A simple 'that is a good sign, let it happen' is enough. Watch for the company it keeps: a longer breath arriving by itself, shoulders dropping, a gurgle from the stomach.
'Do not worry: your Lord has provided a stream at your feet' (Quran 19:24). Maryam is told that the relief she needs is already there, which is worth remembering when a small sign of ease shows up and gets talked over.
مريم
فَنَادَىٰهَا مِن تَحۡتِهَآ أَلَّا تَحۡزَنِي قَدۡ جَعَلَ رَبُّكِ تَحۡتَكِ سَرِيࣰّ ا
but a voice cried to her from below, ‘Do not worry: your Lord has provided a stream at your feet
Qur’an 19:24read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A systematic review of oxytocin's prosocial effects in humans is a useful caution here, since the mechanism gets invoked confidently for all sorts of closeness and calming while the human evidence is genuinely mixed. Read a yawn the same way, as a welcome sign rather than proof that a particular nerve has switched on. Welcoming it costs nothing either way.
Macdonald K, Macdonald TM. (2010). The peptide that binds: a systematic review of oxytocin and its prosocial effects in humans.. Harvard review of psychiatry doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Signs of settling can look a lot like switching off, so everyone in the room misreads them.
Lead with what has evidence behind it. Save the thinly supported options for when the person brings them up themselves.
The first twinge often brings back every previous episode with it, and that dread is not separate from the pain. Fear tightens the muscles and turns the volume up.
Finish by letting your eyes travel slowly from one side to the other a few times, open or closed, then bring them back to the middle and notice how you are.