Practices

Every practice in the library, in one list. Narrow it by how long you have, who it is written for, and where you are right now.

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248 practices

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Blood pressure on a stimulant is an individual matter. For most people it is a non-event, and where it does rise the answer is often a different stimulant rather than none at all.

No blood test or cheek swab will tell you in advance which one suits you. Finding out means trying, measuring and being willing to change, which is…

LongerMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 33:5One line of research

If the first medicine disappoints, that is information about the first medicine. Plenty of people who get nothing from one class do well on another.

Methylphenidate and amphetamine are not the same drug at different strengths. They work by partly different routes, so a poor result on one says…

LongerMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 94:5One line of research

Finding the dose is a search rather than a calculation. It goes up in small steps until either the effect you want turns up, or the side effects get annoying enough that you come back down a step and settle there.

There is no way to work the right dose out from body weight or from how bad things look, which surprises people who expect medicine to be more exact…

LongerMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 94:5One line of research

Classes and clubs work mostly because somebody notices when you are not there. It is the being expected, more than the workout, that gets you out of the door.

A running club, a swimming group, a friend at the gate at seven. On the evening when you feel like nothing, an arrangement with another person…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 28:26

Looking for a whole subject rather than a single practice? Start from the nine areas.

Exercise, food and other supports

Obsessions and compulsions

When you go numb

Moving your body

Grounding and settling

Get started

Making it stick

Remembering to do it

Righteous anger and perfectionism

Choosing your response

Structure and routine

Use your strengths

What you are actually defending

Your nervous system

One line of research

Moving your body and being with people you like are the two most reliable things for feeling well. Doing both at once is not a trick, it is just efficient.

Each of them changes how you feel through the body, and neither depends on you having a good week. A walk with a friend gets you both. If you can…

Twenty minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 22:46One line of research

The same sentence lands completely differently depending on who says it. If nothing stirs when it is described second hand, let the person it belongs to say it to you directly.

A therapist repeating what your partner said is information. Your partner turning to you and saying it, in their own voice, is an event. That is why…

Five minutesWhen you go numbEmotionally focusedQur’an 8:2One line of research

Rather than arguing with someone who says they feel nothing, say plainly what would ordinarily hurt about it. Hearing that the person you love is disappointed in you is a hard thing to hear.

Said warmly, this is not a challenge. It sets out what a person would usually feel and leaves them to notice the gap between that and what they are…

Five minutesWhen you go numbEmotionally focusedQur’an 15:97One line of research

Agree a short phrase to use at home. Saying I am having OCD worries tells a parent what is going on without handing them the worry to solve.

Once a parent hears the details they will nearly always try to help by answering, and answering is the thing that feeds it. A label gives them…

A minuteObsessions and compulsionsCBTQur’an 23:97One line of research

You can take someone's fear entirely seriously without walking through the frightening story with them. Say you can see how frightening it feels, and leave the plot alone.

It reads colder written down than it lands in the room. What the person needs is to feel believed. What they do not need is a second person weighing…

Five minutesObsessions and compulsionsCBTQur’an 50:16One line of research

Headsets have become cheap enough to sit in an ordinary consulting room, and the use with the best backing is graded exposure. You can set the intensity exactly and repeat it as often as the person needs.

The value is in the control. A feared situation can be dialled up in small steps, run again the moment it stops being frightening, and ended without…

Twenty minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 73:20One line of research

With some sensory routines, the part doing the work may be a parent's steady hands and full attention rather than the technique itself. Worth knowing, because contact carries into the rest of the day and a protocol does not.

Views differ on this and the research has not sorted it out. What follows practically is that a family who cannot keep the exact routine going has…

Twenty minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:185One line of research

Before you practise something exposing with someone, say out loud what is not at risk. I will not think less of you, and nothing between us changes here.

It sounds obvious and it does a great deal of work. If the relationship really is on the line, then the discomfort is not symbolic and no amount of…

A minutePractising under provocationCBTQur’an 8:46One line of research

A good deal of what stings in a tense moment is what you imagine the other person is thinking. Sitting inside a silence and watching your own mind fill it shows you that plainly.

Practitioners run this on purpose. Half a minute or so of held silence, with the client asked to notice what happens inside them. Since nothing is…

Five minutesPractising under provocationCBTQur’an 49:6One line of research

Run the same moment twice. The second time, change nothing except what you do with it, and let yourself not mind what the other person might be thinking.

Keeping the situation identical is the point, because then the only thing that moved was you. In a session that means the same silence and the same…

Five minutesPractising under provocationCBTQur’an 12:83One line of research

Practice gets more useful when someone is really watching. It also gets harder, so agree that part before you begin instead of adding it once the person is already in the middle of it.

An audience raises the stakes in a way that makes the rehearsal more like life, which is exactly why it helps. It is also where consent gets…

Five minutesPractising under provocationCBTQur’an 49:6One line of research

Practise not needing the praise, not only the approval. If a compliment can lift you that much, the same dial is being turned when somebody criticises you.

The mirror version of this exercise has someone hold a flattering thought about you while you sit with it and stay level. It feels odd, because few…

Five minutesPractising under provocationCBTQur’an 13:24One line of research

If you have someone safe to do it with, ask them to say the thing you dread being thought about you, on purpose, while you practise staying level.

Home is usually where the anger actually happens, so practice that stays in a therapy room or in your head only goes so far. Agree the words…

Five minutesPractising under provocationCBTQur’an 18:69One line of research

The shape of the whole thing is simple. Find the judgement that stings, meet it, talk it through, meet it again with a different intention, talk it through, then mark that you did it.

The talking between rounds is not a break, it is where the moment turns into something you can use. Marking it at the end matters too. Saying plainly…

LongerPractising under provocationCBTQur’an 20:130One line of research

The more one person checks up, the more the other hides, and the more they hide the more the checking looks justified. Both are responding reasonably to the last move and nobody is having a good time.

Getting out of it usually means the monitoring comes down first, which feels like the wrong direction to whoever is doing the monitoring. A workable…

Twenty minutesRemembering to do itADHD skillsQur’an 3:159One line of research

There is a steadiness worth aiming for: hearing someone disagree with you without either going off at them or going quiet and small.

Those are the two ways it usually falls over. Either the temper goes and the point is lost, or the confidence goes and you find yourself agreeing…

Five minutesRighteous anger and perfectionismCoreQur’an 31:17One line of research