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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1345 practices

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When something has gone wrong across several systems, expecting one treatment to fix it is usually the mistake. Movement, processing what happened, changes to food and work on calming the body tend to add up in a way that none of them manages alone.

This is not an argument for doing everything at once until you are exhausted. It is an argument against giving up on the whole idea when the first…

LongerFood, caffeine and fuelMedical and treatmentQur’an 36:33One line of research

You do not need a long list of feeling words. Half a dozen you can actually reach for under pressure will do more than forty you have to look up.

Angry, sad, afraid, ashamed, surprised, glad is enough to start with, and most hard moments are some mixture of the first four. The aim is not to…

A minuteEmotions as signalsEmotionally focusedQur’an 91:8One line of research

You cannot ask for something you cannot feel the want of. Before working out how to say it, spend a minute finding what you actually need.

This is why advice to communicate better so often goes nowhere. The words come out tidy and land as nothing, because there was no felt need inside…

Five minutesEmotions as signalsEmotionally focusedQur’an 26:13One line of research

Ask what the feeling is trying to do for you. Anger clears an obstacle, fear gets you out, sadness calls for comfort, shame hides you from being seen.

Once a feeling has a job it stops being a defect you have to apologise for. That matters, because the ones we treat as shameful are precisely the…

Five minutesEmotions as signalsEmotionally focusedQur’an 12:86One line of research

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

Practising under provocation

Feelings and focus

Shame and stigma

Making it stick

Treatment and medication

Cool the body first

What worry does

Being seen and judged

Breathing

Growing empathy

Remembering to do it

When you use something to cope

Feeling from the inside

What you are actually defending

Reading, numbers and learning differences

Fondness and admiration

Obsessions and compulsions

Tolerate distress

Answering bids

Righteous anger and perfectionism

Staying regulated in conflict

Shared spiritual life

Breaking the worry loop

Facing it a step at a time

Emotions as signals

Question the thought

Anger, alcohol and the body

Posture and how you carry yourself

Shame

Notice the pattern and flex

When you go numb

Your worth is not conditional

Living with uncertainty

When anger turns to harm

Get it out of your head

Find meaning

Care for yourself in loss

Safety and grounding

Rebuilding trust

The cost of avoiding

Listening and understanding

Panic and the body

Affection and touch

Listen to the body

Your window of tolerance

Often nothing is buried. The pieces are all there, they have simply never been put next to each other.

This hurts but I do not know why usually means the event, the feeling in the body and the meaning are being held separately. So join them up out…

Five minutesEmotions as signalsEmotionally focusedQur’an 28:10One line of research

If all you can say is that you want to get away, that is already information. Nobody moves away from nothing, so somewhere in there is something that felt hard.

You do not need to know what it is yet. Hold the smaller version for a while: something here is difficult, and the pulling back is how I have been…

Five minutesEmotions as signalsEmotionally focusedQur’an 91:8One line of research

Take one episode from this week and give it five lines: what set it off, how you read it, what happened in your body, what you took it to mean, and what you wanted to do.

Doing this with an actual event, rather than in general, is what makes it useful. Keep the lines short and resist tidying them into something more…

Twenty minutesEmotions as signalsEmotionally focusedQur’an 3:29One line of research

If you can do a cutting impression of someone, you already own the machinery for empathy. It is the same copying, pointed somewhere else.

People who get angry often are usually sharp readers of other people. They catch the tone, the face, the walk, and can play it back exactly. Try that…

A minuteGrowing empathyBody basedQur’an 49:11One line of research

Find a photograph of someone caught unguarded, ashamed or frightened or relieved, and look at it for a while. Notice what happens in your chest and around your own eyes.

Most of the time we glance at a face and move straight on. Holding your gaze long enough for something to stir is a small test of whether the feeling…

A minuteGrowing empathyBody basedQur’an 90:16One line of research

A good story about the brain is not evidence. Before you pass one on, especially to people who trust you, it is worth knowing whether it happened the way you tell it.

The famous account of how mirror neurons were found gets retold with the wrong animals and with details that could not have happened as described.…

A minuteGrowing empathyBody basedQur’an 49:12One line of research

It is tempting to decide that a cruel person simply came without the wiring for feeling. That story is far more confident than the research allows, and it quietly excuses you from seeing them as a person.

Low empathy is real and it does relate to aggression, but it is one strand among several rather than a switch that is on or off. The moment you file…

A minuteGrowing empathyBody basedQur’an 5:32One line of research

The real feeling usually crosses someone's face for less than a second before the polite version arrives. If your attention is elsewhere, the polite version is all you will ever meet.

This is why paying attention is not a separate hobby from being kind. They are the same work. Put the phone face down, look up when someone starts…

A minuteGrowing empathyBody basedQur’an 90:14One line of research

Arranging your face into a caring expression does not reliably produce the caring. Do not expect the feeling to turn up just because you set the mouth.

The idea that holding a smile makes you happier has had a rough time whenever researchers try to repeat it, so it is not something to promise…

A minuteGrowing empathyBody basedQur’an 76:9One line of research

You are allowed to try something because it seems sensible. What you should not do is tell yourself it is proven, because that is what stops you noticing when it does not work for you.

The idea that going without company makes you hungrier for it is a reasonable guess, and mostly still a guess. Keep it in that shape. If a quieter…

A minuteGrowing empathyMedical and treatmentQur’an 90:12One line of research

A drink does loosen people up, and that is not a reason to use it. Something can work and still be a poor way to get what you want.

This one matters because the reasoning holds right up until the moment it does not. If a thing softens you tonight and charges you tomorrow, it is…

A minuteGrowing empathyMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:263One line of research

Say it plainly when you do not know. This seems to help and I am not sure why costs you far less than confidence you cannot back up.

People trust someone who marks their own guesses. It keeps you honest with yourself too, because a claim you have labelled a hunch is one you can…

A minuteGrowing empathyMedical and treatmentQur’an 49:12One line of research

Reading about anger will not make you gentler. Warmth is a skill with reps, like anything else, and it fades when nobody practises it.

Most anger advice works on the mind: catch the thought, question it, breathe. Useful, and none of it is the same as actually feeling something for…

Five minutesGrowing empathyBody basedQur’an 90:17One line of research

If you have gone numb around other people's pain, the numbness almost certainly started as protection. It kept you upright at a time when feeling all of it would have flattened you.

The trouble is that it does not switch itself off when the danger passes. You find yourself unmoved in front of someone you love, and then you blame…

Five minutesGrowing empathyBody basedQur’an 6:54One line of research

Years of putting up with things build a thicker skin, and that same skin is what stops you being reached by the person in front of you. It can thin again.

Nobody sets out to get harder. It happens quietly, one shrug at a time, until a story that would have undone you at twenty barely registers at forty.…

Five minutesGrowing empathyBody basedQur’an 93:9One line of research

There is more than one way into someone else's world. You can picture yourself in their place, picture them in it, or simply let their state affect you, and the three do not feel the same or lead to the same place.

Picturing yourself in their place tends to raise your own distress, which can leave you wanting relief more than wanting to help them. Picturing them…

Five minutesGrowing empathyBody basedQur’an 17:24One line of research