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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1061 practices

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Plenty of people carry a piece of a condition without ever having the whole of it, and the piece still costs them something. Not meeting the threshold is not the same as being fine.

Subclinical is a word about paperwork rather than about suffering. Someone who avoids half of what they would like to do, but not enough of it to…

Five minutesWhat worry doesCBTQur’an 11:6One line of research

The pull you feel towards the screen was built on purpose by people paid to make it strong. That is not an excuse, but it does take some of the shame out of losing an hour to it.

Self blame usually ends in another late night rather than in any change. The steadier position is that the pull is real and engineered, and what you…

Five minutesWhat worry doesCBTQur’an 17:11One line of research

Strong feeling about injustice can look a lot like being argumentative. Do not file conviction as defiance without checking.

For many young people these commitments are not a phase but a large part of who they understand themselves to be. Treat them as beliefs to be…

Five minutesWhat worry doesCBTQur’an 8:2One line of research

Some young people are behind their age emotionally and socially, and the growing up genuinely has not finished. It is a question of timing rather than of character.

This lands very differently in a family than the words immature or lazy do. If you expect the emotional handling of a twenty year old from someone…

Five minutesWhat worry doesCBTQur’an 65:7One line of research

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

What you are actually defending

Food, caffeine and fuel

Making it stick

Feelings and focus

Breaking the worry loop

Tolerate distress

Reading, numbers and learning differences

When you use something to cope

Self-compassion

Growing empathy

Choosing your response

When everything feels flat

Anger, alcohol and the body

Righteous anger and perfectionism

Facing it a step at a time

Use your strengths

When anger turns to harm

Practising under provocation

Letting it out safely

Shame

Being seen and judged

Getting assessed and diagnosed

Question the thought

The cost of avoiding

Obsessions and compulsions

Feeling from the inside

Living with uncertainty

Rest and pacing

The mind that runs ahead into everything that could go wrong is the same mind that plans well, sees round corners and has things ready in time. One trait, pointed in two directions.

If you have been told all your life that you overthink, it is worth saying plainly that this trait has served you. The aim is not to flatten it. It…

Twenty minutesWhat worry doesCBTQur’an 6:59One line of research

If attention and planning are already hard work for you, then the very tools for handling anxiety are the things you find difficult. That is not a failure to try. It means the plan needs more scaffolding and more repetition.

Expect to need things that sit outside your head: written steps, alarms, someone who checks in, a shorter ladder with smaller rungs. Go slower than a…

LongerWhat worry doesCBTQur’an 65:7One line of research

Respect comes from the Latin for looking, with the prefix meaning again. It is literally the second look, the head that turns as somebody important walks past.

Knowing that does something useful. A word that felt close to sacred turns into a plain social behaviour you can examine: who gets looked at twice,…

A minuteWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 31:18One line of research

Disrespect is a paper tiger. It comes at you looking like something, and it has never once actually done you any damage.

Worth noticing what your body does anyway. The heart goes, the jaw sets, and you get ready as though something physical were about to happen. The…

A minuteWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 25:63One line of research

Anger and doubt cannot really occupy the same moment. Anger sharpens everything to a point, and a genuine maybe blunts it.

This is why an honest question does more than an argument. Not a challenge, which hardens things, but a real one: what if I have got part of this…

A minuteWhat you are actually defendingMindfulnessQur’an 2:206One line of research

Your mind is always slightly behind what is happening. Reality moves and you are the response, which leaves you permanently a step late and permanently not quite sure.

Put that way, uncertainty is not a flaw in your thinking, it is the position you are standing in. You are flying into the next moment without having…

A minuteWhat you are actually defendingMindfulnessQur’an 16:23One line of research

If you can see yourself, you need other people to do it far less. That is really the whole aim, and it is what takes the sting out of being misjudged.

Being seen properly by others is lovely, and it is also occasional, partial and outside your control. What you can do daily is notice what you did…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 91:9One line of research

Try saying the word until it goes silly. Respect, respect, respect: a socially agreed comment on how tall you are supposed to be.

The point of the joke is not to demolish respect, which is fine and worth having. It is to shrink the fear of not getting it, because that is the…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 7:48One line of research

Here is an uncomfortable way to look at it. To value someone is often to find them useful, and paying respect is a bit like looking after your tools: being nice to you is nice for me.

It is not the whole truth about people and it is not meant unkindly. It is useful because it makes generic respect a strange thing to organise a life…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 49:13One line of research

Some situations genuinely run on how you are seen. A job interview, a court hearing, a first meeting with in-laws: the image matters there, and it is honest to say so.

The claim is only that most of life is not one of those, and that the fear of disrespect is far larger than its actual cost. Keeping the exceptions…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 4:135One line of research

Demanding respect quietly puts you below the person you are demanding it from. You are asking for something only they can hand over, which makes you the one in need.

That is an odd position for a stance meant to prove you will not be pushed around. To anyone watching it usually reads as need rather than strength.…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 28:83One line of research

A lizard's temperature is whatever the rock is. A mammal shivers, sweats and pants, and stays roughly the same whether it is a good day or not.

Self-esteem works like the lizard. It rises when things go well and drops when they do not, and other people supply the weather. Self-acceptance is…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 39:22One line of research

A cold-blooded animal that catches its dinner after dark cannot digest it until the sun comes back. It has the meal and it cannot use it.

That is what it looks like when good things only count once somebody else notices. The work is finished, the result is in, and it means nothing until…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 64:16One line of research

Esteem shares a root with estimate, and estimating needs a measure. Look at what you are measuring yourself with and you will usually find it was handed to you: money, height, thinness, numbers on a screen.

Those measures move. They differ between one country and the next, and between your grandfather's time and your own. Anything you score yourself on…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 53:32One line of research

Feeling good about yourself is not the safe end of this. The high and the low come from the same borrowed source, which means the high can be taken back at any point.

You feel valuable while you are fitting in and worthless when you are not, and neither reading was ever yours. It is why an insult can go off like a…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 2:34One line of research

Giving up certainty is a loss, and it is fair to treat it as one. People do grieve the version of themselves who knew exactly what was going on.

The same piece of work gets called several things: getting used to uncertainty in small doses, learning to sit with confusion, or grieving the loss…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingMindfulnessQur’an 3:154One line of research