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

13 practices

Narrow these down

The thought that nobody at the party will want to talk to you is chemistry, not a report about the world. You do not have to disprove it. You only have to notice where it came from.

Arguing with an anxious thought while the alarm is still ringing is heavy work and it rarely goes well. Reclassifying it is lighter: this is what my…

A minuteBreaking the worry loopCBTQur’an 50:16One line of research

Three moves, in this order: notice what is happening, settle the body, then put your attention somewhere useful. Short enough to remember when you are already going.

Elaborate plans fall apart at exactly the moment you need them, so it is worth having something this small. Notice covers naming it as anxiety rather…

Five minutesBreaking the worry loopCBTQur’an 2:45One line of research

Slow breathing and loosening your muscles are not decoration. A body that is braced keeps telling the mind there is something to brace for, so unbracing it takes away part of the evidence.

If this sounds like soft advice, try it as a technical one instead: long slow breaths out, shoulders down, jaw unclenched, and give it a few minutes…

Five minutesBreaking the worry loopCBTQur’an 20:130One line of research

Settling the body only goes so far for some people, and there is energy left over afterwards. That leftover needs somewhere to go, or it goes back into the worry.

This matters most if you run hot: the driven ones, the ones who cannot leave a thought alone. You do the breathing, you are still humming, and you…

Five minutesBreaking the worry loopCBTQur’an 11:114

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

Shame and stigma

Making it stick

Breathing

Structure and routine

What worry does

Treatment and medication

Tolerate distress

Feeling from the inside

Being seen and judged

What you are actually defending

Remembering to do it

Growing empathy

When you use something to cope

Reading, numbers and learning differences

Obsessions and compulsions

Fondness and admiration

Answering bids

Breaking the worry loop

Righteous anger and perfectionism

Emotions as signals

Self-compassion

Question the thought

Facing it a step at a time

Knowing your partner

Shame

Use your strengths

Posture and how you carry yourself

Anger, alcohol and the body

Repair after rupture

Shared spiritual life

When anger turns to harm

Gratitude

Letting it out safely

When you go numb

Living with uncertainty

Your worth is not conditional

Notice the pattern and flex

Rituals of connection

Keep the bond

Hold a boundary

Get it out of your head

Find meaning

Face it gently

Ride the urge

Care for yourself in loss

Work with your brain

Your window of tolerance

Listening and understanding

Validate yourself and others

One line of research

When two options are both decent, there is no right answer waiting to be found. The work is not in picking. It is in doing well by whichever one you pick.

Bright, anxious people stall for exactly this reason: the options really are close, so no amount of further thinking separates them. Set a time to…

Five minutesBreaking the worry loopCBTQur’an 65:3One line of research

Most decisions are not sealed. Choose, run with it for a set time, then look again and change course if it is clearly wrong. Knowing there is a review date takes a great deal of weight off the choice.

The weight comes from treating the decision as permanent, which almost none of them are. Put an actual date in the diary for the review. That gives…

Five minutesBreaking the worry loopCBTQur’an 18:24One line of research

A hammering heart during anxiety is the body doing what it does when it is braced, not a sign that it is being damaged. For a lot of people that single piece of information is the thing that finally lets the panic drop.

The fear of the sensation is usually the bigger half of the problem: the heart races, you read it as something going badly wrong, and the fear feeds…

Five minutesBreaking the worry loopCBTQur’an 39:42One line of research

Every worry has something you love sitting underneath it. Fear about the exam means you want to do well. Fear about your mother's drive home means she matters to you.

This does not make the worry pleasant, and it is not a trick to make it disappear. What it does is stop the second layer, the part where you are…

Five minutesBreaking the worry loopCBTQur’an 3:191One line of research

Some people never ask for help because they assume everyone's head is like theirs. If yours has been running like this since you were small, it does not feel like a condition. It feels like being you.

It is worth asking someone you trust, plainly, how often they worry about things and for how long. The answer is often surprising. Discovering that a…

Five minutesBreaking the worry loopCBTQur’an 13:28One line of research

Before you go towards the thing you are afraid of, it helps to have two things to hand: a way to settle your body, and a fairer account of what is likely to happen.

Neither of them is meant to take the fear away. They are there so you can stay in the situation long enough for it to teach you something, and that…

Five minutesBreaking the worry loopCBTQur’an 2:153One line of research

Ask one question about the worry: is there something to be done here that has not been done? If yes, make the plan. If the plan already exists, or there is nothing to plan, the worry gets no more of your time.

Making a study timetable is useful once. Making it for the fourth time is worry wearing the clothes of work. The test is not how serious the topic is…

Twenty minutesBreaking the worry loopCBTQur’an 3:159One line of research

Online you can edit, delete, mute and leave. People who have done most of their socialising that way often find ordinary company unbearable, because ordinary company cannot be controlled.

If that describes you, the answer is not to become a different sort of person. It is practice in rooms you cannot manage: a class, a job with shifts,…

Twenty minutesBreaking the worry loopCBTQur’an 29:45One line of research

Short sessions spread over days beat one long night. The settling of what you learned happens after you stop, and a short night undoes a good deal of the day's work.

A perfectionist will not cut their hours to be kinder to themselves, but they will cut them to get a better mark. So argue it on those terms.…

LongerBreaking the worry loopCBTQur’an 25:47One line of research