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Areas › Low mood and hard feelings › Question the thought
The temptation, once a thought starts to look flimsy, is to press harder, and pressing usually makes the belief dig in. Leave the question where it is and come back to it another day, then another. If you are walking alongside somebody else through this, the same applies, and your impatience will be visible to them long before it is any use.
do not rush to recite before the revelation is fully complete but say, Lord, increase me in knowledge (Quran 20:114). Not rushing and wanting to understand sit side by side there, which is roughly the posture this asks of you.
طه
فَتَعَٰلَى ٱللَّهُ ٱلۡمَلِكُ ٱلۡحَقُّۗ وَلَا تَعۡجَلۡ بِٱلۡقُرۡءَانِ مِن قَبۡلِ أَن يُقۡضَىٰٓ إِلَيۡكَ وَحۡيُهُۥۖ وَقُل رَّبِّ زِدۡنِي عِلۡمࣰ ا
exalted be God, the one who is truly in control. [Prophet], do not rush to recite before the revelation is fully complete but say, ‘Lord, increase me in knowledge!’
Qur’an 20:114read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a trial with 240 socially anxious adolescents, both a computerised bias training and school based CBT were followed by lower anxiety two years later, with neither approach clearly ahead of the other. The part worth holding on to is the timescale: what was measured was where people had got to after two years, not after a session. Slow is the normal shape of this work.
de Hullu E, Sportel BE, Nauta MH, de Jong PJ. (2017). Cognitive bias modification and CBT as early interventions for adolescent social and test anxiety: Two-year follow-up of a randomized controlled trial.. Journal of behavior therapy and experimental psychiatry doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Old beliefs loosen through repetition over time, not through force in one sitting.
Name one hard thing today and ask what it might be growing in you: patience, humility, nearness to God.
When a thought lands hard, ask whether you know it for certain, and what you would actually put forward if you had to make the case. Then go looking for the bits that point the other way.
Take the thought that is upsetting you and ask: what is another way to read this?