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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981 practices

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When you are low, the thing most likely to help is the thing you have least appetite for. Make the first step small enough that appetite is not required.

Getting as far as the front door can be the whole task on a bad day. Standing up, putting your shoes on, then deciding, is a fair plan. Anyone…

Five minutesMoving your bodyBody basedQur’an 19:25One line of research

A movement practice comes apart into pieces: the shapes, the breathing, the noticing. On a day when the whole thing is beyond you, take one piece.

Just the breathing, sitting where you already are, is a practice. So is one stretch held for a minute. Doing a fragment keeps the thread going, and…

Five minutesMoving your bodyBody basedQur’an 2:239One line of research

Notice your repeating move under stress, please, withdraw, control, and name it. Naming loosens it.

The pattern runs you until you can see it. Once named, it becomes a choice, not a reflex.

Five minutesNotice the pattern and flexDBT skillsQur’an 59:18One line of research

When someone says they feel nothing, find out where the nothing reaches. All the time, or only towards good things, or only here, in this conversation, when criticism is in the air?

The three answers point in quite different directions. Numb everywhere, day and night, is worth taking to a doctor. Numb to good things while the bad…

Five minutesWhen you go numbEmotionally focusedQur’an 50:37One line of research

If a medicine has taken the edge off everything, including the good things, that is worth raising with whoever prescribed it. Taking the sharpness out of pain is one thing. Feeling nothing at all is not a way to live.

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

Breathing

Screens and attention

What worry does

Moving your body

Feeling from the inside

What you are actually defending

Feelings and focus

Making it stick

Being seen and judged

Structure and routine

Treatment and medication

Obsessions and compulsions

Remembering to do it

Growing empathy

Breaking the worry loop

Righteous anger and perfectionism

When you use something to cope

Tolerate distress

Self-compassion

Emotions as signals

Reading, numbers and learning differences

Posture and how you carry yourself

Question the thought

When anger turns to harm

Facing it a step at a time

Staying regulated in conflict

Anger, alcohol and the body

Use your strengths

Living with uncertainty

Shared spiritual life

Repair after rupture

The cost of avoiding

Get it out of your head

Knowing your partner

Let the wave come

Rest and pacing

Your worth is not conditional

Face it gently

Letting it out safely

Notice the pattern and flex

Your window of tolerance

It matters practically as well as personally. Anything you are trying to change, in a relationship or in yourself, needs some feeling to work with,…

Five minutesWhen you go numbEmotionally focusedQur’an 6:122One line of research

Going still and needing nothing is usually something a person worked out young, somewhere it was the sensible answer.

If reaching out met dismissal, or worse, then not reaching out is not a flaw of character. A child who stops asking, stops showing what they feel and…

Five minutesWhen you go numbEmotionally focusedQur’an 57:16One line of research

The thing your obsession keeps circling is usually something you care about a great deal. Contamination worry sits on top of wanting people safe, and harm worry sits on top of never wanting to hurt anyone.

This is worth saying out loud, because most people carry these themes as proof that something is rotten in them. Read the other way round, the theme…

Five minutesObsessions and compulsionsCBTQur’an 2:225One line of research

What the thought is about matters far less than what happens next. Germs, illness, something too silly to say aloud: the machinery running underneath is the same in each case.

Chasing the content puts you in a game that cannot be won, because the moment one worry is settled the next turns up wearing different clothes. The…

Five minutesObsessions and compulsionsCBTQur’an 114:4One line of research

Notice how when one worry is finally settled, another takes its place. That pattern is the thing you are actually dealing with, more than whichever worry is currently in the chair.

Most people work this out for themselves long before anyone names it. Naming it still helps, because it gives you something to watch that is bigger…

Five minutesObsessions and compulsionsCBTQur’an 17:36One line of research

Some worries are perfectly reasonable, and settling them still will not settle you. Someone living where the storms come can build the kit, check the kit, and find the worry has quietly moved on to something else.

This one is worth testing on yourself, because it removes the argument that you would be fine if only the fear were irrational. The probability was…

Five minutesObsessions and compulsionsCBTQur’an 23:98One line of research

Fears of doing something terrible, of hurting an animal or a person, are not treated by moving closer to the act. Nobody should be walking you up a ladder towards the thing you are terrified of doing.

These thoughts sit at the far end from wanting. They horrify you, which is exactly why they stick to you. The work goes on what you have decided the…

Five minutesObsessions and compulsionsCBTQur’an 33:5One line of research

Plenty of people quietly believe that thinking about something bad makes it more likely to happen. It has a name, it is a known part of this condition, and having the belief does not make you dangerous.

Hearing that it is a documented feature tends to do more than any argument about probability, because arguing about odds is a game the doubt plays…

Five minutesObsessions and compulsionsCBTQur’an 114:5One line of research

If you are stuck on whether having a thought makes you a bad person, that question is a symptom and not a case waiting to be settled. Name it as scrupulosity and let it stand unanswered.

Debating your moral standing is where this gets its fuel, and every reassurance you win, from a friend, an imam, a search at midnight, buys less time…

Five minutesObsessions and compulsionsCBTQur’an 39:53One line of research

It can help to give the parts of your brain jobs. The front of your head is the manager, the memory system is the librarian, and the alarm is a security guard who is good at his work and far too keen on it.

The point is not accuracy, it is having language you can reach for quickly. Saying the guard is overreacting again gets you further than trying to…

Five minutesObsessions and compulsionsCBTQur’an 70:19One line of research

If stopping the ritual is out of reach for now, do it differently every time. Different order, different hand, different room, as long as it is never the same twice.

Compulsions take a lot of their grip from exactness, and disturbing the shape loosens that grip while you are still allowed to do the thing. It also…

Five minutesObsessions and compulsionsCBTQur’an 17:110One line of research

Neurofeedback rests on a tidy idea: in ADHD the slower theta rhythm shows up when the faster beta rhythm should be running, so the training rewards you for shifting the balance. Knowing the idea is worth a few minutes, because it is what the brochure is built on.

Electrodes sit on the scalp, a screen animates when the signal moves the wanted way, and the person practises staying in a state of relaxed…

Five minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 3:191One line of research

Ask what happens after the course ends, not only what happens during it. A gain that fades once the sessions stop was probably never a change in the person.

Neurofeedback tends to look decent while it is being delivered and then drift back, and the studies that followed people afterwards did not find…

Five minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 13:11One line of research

Before committing to a course that runs into thousands, set the same money next to the other things it could buy. Tutoring, a proper assessment, a medication review and a well tested psychosocial programme all sit in the same envelope.

Neurofeedback courses often run for a month or more, insurers rarely pay, and the training of whoever delivers it varies a great deal. The cost is…

Five minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 6:141One line of research

When you read that a treatment worked, look for who judged the improvement and whether they knew what the child had been given. In much of this literature, they knew.

The design to look for is a sham condition, where everybody goes through the same routine and only some receive the active ingredient, with the…

Five minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 55:8One line of research

Brain training games make you better at the game. Sadly, that improvement tends to stay inside the game.

Sorting shapes faster or planning a conveyor belt more smoothly comes from learning the task, not from stretching a capacity, so the classroom and…

Five minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 53:39One line of research