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.

What matches

10 practices

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Whatever line you plan to use on yourself in a hard moment, say it in your own words rather than tidy ones. Polished phrasing tends to evaporate exactly when you need it.

If your inner voice is blunt, let the line be blunt. A therapist working this way will sometimes ask for the crude version of a coping phrase instead…

A minutePractising under provocationCBTQur’an 41:36One line of research

Call the practice whatever fits you. Stress inoculation, rolling with the punches, a Teflon mind, the art of not giving a damn: the name changes nothing about what you do, and a name you can stand makes you likelier to do it.

People come to this with different histories and some of them have been lectured before. If the language sounds like a self help poster to you, use…

A minutePractising under provocationCBTQur’an 29:69One line of research

Treat these as experiments rather than instructions. You are not obeying a programme, you are finding out what happens, and that difference changes how it feels to do them.

People who are quick to anger are often also quick to bristle at being told what to do, and a challenge sits far better with that than a homework…

A minutePractising under provocationCBTQur’an 3:200One line of research

Before you go looking for practice at staying steady, make sure you already have something to do instead of your usual reaction. Practising with nothing to put in its place mostly rehearses the old response.

Pick the alternative first and keep it small: a slow breath, one fixed phrase, a decision to say nothing until your hands unclench. Then you can let…

Five minutesPractising under provocation

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

Making it stick

Feelings and focus

When you use something to cope

Touch and bodywork

Breathing

Facing it a step at a time

Being seen and judged

Tolerate distress

Structure and routine

Shame and stigma

Posture and how you carry yourself

Feeling from the inside

What you are actually defending

When everything feels flat

Get started

Anger, alcohol and the body

Treatment and medication

Breaking the worry loop

Use your strengths

Growing empathy

Self-compassion

CBT

Qur’an 18:69

One line of research

Ask yourself what you would least like the person in front of you to be thinking about you right now. Whatever surfaces is usually what your anger has been guarding.

It tends to be one short sentence and an old one. That you are weak. That you are stupid. That you do not matter. In a session a therapist can ask…

Five minutesPractising under provocationCBTQur’an 2:45One line of research

Almost everyone says the same thing afterwards, that the waiting was worse than the thing itself. Say it out loud in your own words, because your own words land differently from anyone else's reassurance.

Before a difficult conversation, write one line about how bad you expect it to be. Afterwards, write one line about how it actually went. Over a few…

Five minutesPractising under provocationCBTQur’an 29:69One line of research

Rather than manufacturing a calm you do not feel, borrow one you have really had. Bring a settled memory to mind and hold it against the thing that usually stings.

Actors do this instead of faking a feeling: they call up a real moment and attach it to the cue until it starts arriving on its own. The same works…

Five minutesPractising under provocationCBTQur’an 11:114One line of research

Pick the calm memory with some care. Sun on a beach, a bike ride, someone cleaning up a scraped knee: what matters is that it is genuinely safe ground for you.

Childhood scenes are often the most vivid, which is what makes them useful and also why they can misfire. If your early years were not safe, a prompt…

Five minutesPractising under provocationCBTQur’an 2:153One line of research

Steadiness under provocation is built the way immunity is, in small doses taken on purpose, at a size you can still handle. Waiting for a real fight to test yourself is too big a dose to learn anything from.

In practice that means choosing something that stings a little and staying with it rather than swerving: the colleague whose tone you brace against,…

Twenty minutesPractising under provocationCBTQur’an 41:35One line of research

What you are proudest of will tell you where you are most easily wounded. The two grow on the same root.

Write down two or three things you would hate to be thought about you, then look at where they meet your ordinary week. Who is likely to imply it, in…

Twenty minutesPractising under provocationCBTQur’an 3:200One line of research