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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90 practices

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Under the anger there is usually something you wanted and did not get, or something you are afraid of losing. Say that, and you have handed the other person something they can actually do.

"You never help" gives someone a charge to deny. "I needed you to take the kids for an hour and I was too proud to ask" gives them a job. The second…

Five minutesChoosing your responseCBTQur’an 5:8One line of research

If it really is that you feel too much for people, the useful move is not more feeling. It is learning to say no while still meaning them well.

Naming your softness as something that gets used is what makes a limit bearable to set. You are not becoming colder. You are stopping the slow build…

Five minutesGrowing empathyCBTQur’an 16:90One line of research

If you are helping someone with their sleep and eating, ask rather than instruct. The moment you sound like their mother you have lost the part of you that was useful.

Young adults are busy becoming separate people, and any adult who picks up the parental voice gets folded into that argument whatever they were…

Five minutesFacing it a step at a timeCBTQur’an 13:11One line of research

Rather than taking on someone else's routine, ask what actually makes you feel ready for a day, or better looked after. The answers tend to be specific and slightly odd, and they hold up better than anything prescribed.

For one person it is a shower before anything else. For another it is having the bag packed the night before, or eating something warm, or ten…

Five minutesFacing it a step at a timeCBTQur’an 18:69One line of research

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

Say out loud, before you start, that there will be bad weeks. Then when one turns up it is a thing you expected rather than proof the whole plan was nonsense.

Setbacks get read catastrophically when nobody warned you: back to the beginning, all that for nothing. Agree in advance what happens instead. You…

Five minutesFacing it a step at a timeCBTQur’an 65:7One line of research

Pick one picture and keep it. Shallow end, middle, deep end. Then the child, the parents and the school are all talking about the same thing without anybody needing the clinical words.

It makes the next step obvious instead of arbitrary. You are not being sent to the deep end, you are moving a bit further along the shallow end. It…

Five minutesFacing it a step at a timeCBTQur’an 2:185One line of research

Let the person facing it choose the first step, and let them choose an easy one. A rung somebody picked gets climbed. A rung assigned to them gets argued about.

Ask which one they would be willing to have a go at this week, not which one they ought to be able to manage. The answer usually sits somewhere in…

Five minutesFacing it a step at a timeCBTQur’an 29:69One line of research

No step happens without the person agreeing to it. Not ordered, not dragged, not talked round in a bright voice. Agreement is a condition of the thing working, not a courtesy.

Coerced exposure teaches two lessons at once: that the situation is dangerous, and that you are not safe with the people who arranged it. After that…

Five minutesFacing it a step at a timeCBTQur’an 20:46One line of research

Ask which step they are willing to try, and then go with their answer. A smaller step they chose themselves tends to get attempted, and a bigger one you chose for them often does not.

In practice this means holding the ladder loosely. You keep the shape of it, they pick the rung, and if they pick lower than you hoped you take the…

Five minutesFacing it a step at a timeCBTQur’an 2:286One line of research

A ladder worth climbing has six things: real steps, built with you rather than for you, in your own words, a first rung that is genuinely easy, your hand on the pace throughout, and practice often enough to add up.

Most ladders come apart for dull reasons. The bottom rung was somebody else's idea of easy. The wording came out of a manual. Nobody said you were…

Twenty minutesFacing it a step at a timeCBTQur’an 84:19One line of research

Years of avoiding people leave real gaps, not only fear. How to start small talk, how to join a group already talking, how to get out of a conversation. Those can be taught, and being taught them is not an insult.

Sending someone into a peer group without the ordinary moves risks a genuinely bad afternoon, which then teaches exactly the wrong lesson. Practise…

Twenty minutesFacing it a step at a timeCBTQur’an 20:28One line of research

Nobody puts a child who cannot swim into the shallow end and calls it teaching. Before anyone goes near the thing they dread, they need something to do with their body and their head when the fear arrives.

It takes only one overwhelming attempt to teach the opposite of what was intended: that it really was too much, and that the adults will push anyway.…

LongerFacing it a step at a timeCBTQur’an 2:286One line of research

If rating a feeling out of ten means nothing to you, use something that does. Colour in bubbles, point at a picture, hold your hands apart to show how big it is today.

This began as an adaptation for children, swapping the numbered anxiety ladder for bubbles to colour in, and it is just as useful for anyone who goes…

Five minutesFeelings and focusCBTQur’an 2:286One line of research

When someone has gone flat, the question is not what they ought to be doing. It is what still has any life in it for them, however small or unimpressive, and then how to get more of that.

Activities handed out from the outside do not lift much. Someone who brightens talking about their car, or a cousin, or a game has just given you the…

Twenty minutesFeelings and focusCBTQur’an 94:1One line of research

If you run a group for people with ADHD, keep it to about five or six, or bring in a second facilitator. Past that you spend the session keeping order instead of doing the work.

The limit is not really about behaviour. It is about how many people one person can genuinely track while also holding the thread of the session.…

LongerFeelings and focusCBTQur’an 8:46One line of research

When the words for feelings are not there, ask for a number instead. How much did the handwashing take over this week, one to ten, is a question someone can answer on a bad day.

A number asks far less of a person than a description, which matters when putting feelings into language is hard for them, and you still end up with…

A minuteObsessions and compulsionsCBTQur’an 2:286One line of research

Offer choices rather than instructions. With a problem that runs on control, being told what to do gives that control somewhere to dig in.

Two or three real options, the trade-offs said plainly, and then the pick is genuinely theirs. That holds for the big decisions too, like moving to a…

Five minutesObsessions and compulsionsCBTQur’an 22:78One line of research

If every step you try keeps not working, however small you make it, that is information rather than failure. A more intensive programme is the next thing to look at, and it should be put to you as an option.

The whole point of shrinking the steps is to find one that moves. When nothing moves at any size, staying in the same weekly arrangement out of…

LongerObsessions and compulsionsCBTQur’an 2:45One line of research

Going silent and hard is not a neutral act. A fixed stare and a set brow land on the other person's body as threat, even though you have not said a word.

People often think they are being restrained when they go cold, and are then surprised by how frightened or defensive the other person becomes. If…

A minutePractising under provocationCBTQur’an 25:63One line of research

Before anyone does something exposing, let them check their own conditions and give them a clean way to say no. A public yes given under pressure is not really a yes.

It can be as ordinary as asking someone to consider whether they have the privacy, the time and the state of mind for this today. Ask it first and…

A minutePractising under provocationCBTQur’an 2:45One line of research