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Areas › Low mood and hard feelings › Tolerate distress
One instance is an incident and three is a pattern, and the difference matters when you name it, because a pattern can be looked at together without anyone feeling caught out. In one session a woman wiped away the first tear and her face went flat, every time. The wiping was not tidiness. It was the thing that ended the feeling before it had arrived.
But it is best to be patient (Quran 12:83). Yaqub says the same words again on a second blow years later, and it is repetition that shows what a person's real response is.
يوسف
قَالَ بَلۡ سَوَّلَتۡ لَكُمۡ أَنفُسُكُمۡ أَمۡرࣰ اۖ فَصَبۡرࣱ جَمِيلٌۖ عَسَى ٱللَّهُ أَن يَأۡتِيَنِي بِهِمۡ جَمِيعًاۚ إِنَّهُۥ هُوَ ٱلۡعَلِيمُ ٱلۡحَكِيمُ
Their father said, ‘No! Your souls have prompted you to do wrong! But it is best to be patient: may God bring all of them back to me- He alone is the All Knowing, the All Wise,’
Qur’an 12:83read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A meta-analysis combining 241 effect sizes found habitual avoidance and suppression more strongly tied to anxiety, depression, eating and substance problems than acceptance and problem solving were protective. These are correlations rather than causes, and they concern broad habits rather than one specific gesture. Still, cutting a feeling off is the habit that travels with trouble.
Aldao A, Nolen-Hoeksema S, Schweizer S. (2010). Emotion-regulation strategies across psychopathology: A meta-analytic review.. Clinical psychology review doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A repeated gesture is doing a job, and waiting for the repetition is how you can tell.
Tell yourself the true thing: this feeling is real, and it is temporary. No state lasts. Ride it out.
Ask what you were taught about crying, about anger, about needing anything. Not what you believe now, but what you were told then, in the words that were actually used.
Before going towards a hard feeling, decide what will hold you while you are inside it: a way of breathing, a way of standing, a sentence, a person you can picture or ring.