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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212 practices

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You will not talk a driven person out of worrying, so give the worry a better job. If someone frets about their revision, have them fret about whether they are also taking breaks and sleeping, since those are part of the revision.

This works because it uses the drive rather than fighting it. The same conscientiousness that produces the twelfth hour at the desk will produce a…

Five minutesBreaking the worry loopCBTQur’an 73:8One line of research

A great many people worry silently and look perfectly calm doing it. Families are often astonished to find out how much has been going on.

If someone in your house goes quiet, spends longer alone, or seems flat rather than agitated, that can be worry rather than indifference. You will…

Five minutesBreaking the worry loopCBTQur’an 114:5One 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

Sourness, shutting down, snapping at everyone: these are as often worry as they are attitude. The person is not giving you a hard time, they are having one.

This matters because of what happens next. Read it as rudeness and the house responds with punishment, which adds to the load that produced the…

Five minutesBreaking the worry loopCBTQur’an 41:36

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

One line of research

When you help someone rethink a frightening thought, go slowly and stay honest. A cheerful line swapped in for a scared one tends to get refused, and fairly so.

The aim is not a brighter thought but a truer one that is also bearable. Something in the shape of "this is going to feel horrible and I can get…

Five minutesBreaking the worry loopCBTQur’an 3:159One 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

Whatever approach the anxious person is learning, teach it to the people they live with. A skill that only one person in the house knows gets overridden by everyone else's habits.

Families have a settled way of responding to distress, usually built out of love, and it will win against anything learned in an hour once a week. So…

Twenty minutesBreaking the worry loopCBTQur’an 2:153One 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

With a child, make it a job rather than a lesson. They are the detective, the worried thought is the claim, and the task is to collect what supports it and what does not before deciding anything.

Two columns on a page, in their handwriting, not yours. Ask what a friend would notice, what happened the last three times, what would have to be…

Twenty minutesBreaking the worry loopCBTQur’an 17:36One line of research

Sometimes there really is evidence for the fear. Say so. The balance comes from the other column being fuller, not from pretending the first column is empty.

Children are being bullied, are laughed at, do get things wrong in front of everyone. If you wave that away, they learn the exercise is fixed and…

Twenty minutesBreaking the worry loopCBTQur’an 53:28One 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