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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143 practices

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When medication works, its best effect is often on everything else you were already trying. Coaching, exercise, a routine: each of them needs enough attention to get started, and attention is the thing in short supply.

That is why setting medication against the other approaches usually misses the point. The plan you could not keep last year may be perfectly keepable…

LongerMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 4:28One line of research

Unmanaged ADHD wrecks sleep, food and movement, and wrecked sleep, food and movement make the attention worse the next day. The loop feeds itself, which is also the hopeful part: a small repair anywhere in it pays back more than it should.

Short sleep hits the same front part of the brain that is already struggling, so a late night costs you more than it costs other people. Pick the one…

LongerMedication and how it worksADHD skillsQur’an 7:31One line of research

Give a new habit two months rather than two weeks, and change one thing at a time. The old line about thirty days sets you up to feel like a failure on day thirty one.

Routines that wobble make repetition harder, and repetition is the whole mechanism, so it simply takes longer for some of us. Pick one change, keep…

LongerMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 106:2One line of research

Unstructured play in a big open space settles a child. A structured class teaches them how to be with other children. You want some of each, for different reasons.

If you only ever book the class, you take away the roaming that calms them down. If you only ever send them out to roam, they miss the taking turns…

LongerMoving your bodyMedical and treatment

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

Get started

Facing it a step at a time

Cool the body first

Bringing the future closer

Breathing

The moment before you snap

What ADHD actually is

Panic and the body

What worry does

Living with uncertainty

Touch and bodywork

Structure and routine

Practising under provocation

Breaking the worry loop

Exercise, food and other supports

Feeling from the inside

Qur’an 71:19

One line of research

Whatever gets you outside and quiet for a stretch of time counts. Fishing, sitting in a hide, weeding, waiting in the car park with the window down.

Nobody has to call it mindfulness for it to work like mindfulness. Hours of low demand attention outdoors, with nothing much required of you, is the…

LongerMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 28:24One line of research

Martial arts happen to bundle four useful things at once: hard physical work, a fixed structure, feedback in the moment, and a teacher who stays. That is why they suit restless minds so well.

Any one of those on its own helps a little. Together they cover the arousal, the shapelessness of time, the need for a reward that arrives today…

LongerMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 34:11One line of research

Long goals need markers you can reach this month. Belts work because you get a visible, earned step every so often instead of one distant summit.

Build the same thing into anything you are trying to keep up: a distance, a number of sessions, a move you could not do in January. Make it something…

LongerMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 53:40One line of research

For a child having a hard time, one adult who plainly thinks well of them makes more difference than almost anything else. A coach or a teacher can be that person.

Studies of children growing up through poverty, hunger and worse keep landing on the same finding: those who did well usually had somebody who…

LongerMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 28:26One line of research

A practice kept up for years stops being something you do and becomes part of who you are. That is when it no longer needs willpower.

People who started something physical as children and carried on often point to it as where their steadiness came from. The early years are the…

LongerMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 30:54One line of research

Keep a movement practice going long enough and your body starts doing it without you. People who have practised for decades describe the form running itself while their mind is elsewhere.

In the early months it takes all your concentration, which is why it feels expensive. Later it stops asking for that, and you get the calm without…

LongerMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 106:2One line of research

A few sessions give you an effect that fades. A few months of it starts to change your baseline. Plan for the longer version if you can.

One class leaves you calmer for an afternoon, which is real and also temporary. Fifteen weeks of the same practice is where people start reporting…

LongerMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 12:47One line of research

An hour a day of moving enough to warm you and shorten your breath. Keep a record of it, on a watch or on a scrap of paper, because meeting a number you can see turns out to be quietly satisfying.

It does not have to arrive in one block and it does not have to look like exercise. Walking to the shop, taking the stairs, standing at the desk for…

LongerMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 53:40One line of research

If talking about it has not shifted things, a body based practice is worth trying next. It is not a consolation prize.

Some of what trauma leaves behind sits underneath words: the flinch, the going blank, the pull towards hurting yourself. Practices that work through…

LongerMoving your bodyBody basedQur’an 2:60One line of research

If this has been going on for years, medication is often part of what helps, and it usually needs a longer run at it than people expect. Starting low and building up slowly is the normal way of doing it.

The slow build is there to keep side effects bearable through the first few weeks, which is where most people quietly give up. It helps to agree with…

LongerObsessions and compulsionsCBTQur’an 4:28One line of research

If every step you try keeps not working, however small you make it, that is information rather than failure. A more intensive programme is the next thing to look at, and it should be put to you as an option.

The whole point of shrinking the steps is to find one that moves. When nothing moves at any size, staying in the same weekly arrangement out of…

LongerObsessions and compulsionsCBTQur’an 2:45One line of research

Play therapy and insight based psychotherapy do not treat ADHD. There is no buried, unexpressed feeling driving it that talking will let out.

The difficulty sits in executive control and how it develops, not in hidden conflict. That said, a child with ADHD can also be anxious, grieving or…

LongerExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:153One line of research

The strengthened warning on this class covers misuse, addiction, physical dependence and withdrawal. The part most people miss is that dependence builds with ordinary correct use over weeks, with nobody doing anything wrong.

That distinction needs handling gently, because patients hear dependence and hear addict. Physical dependence is the body settling around something…

LongerPanic and the bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 4:28One line of research

The shape of the whole thing is simple. Find the judgement that stings, meet it, talk it through, meet it again with a different intention, talk it through, then mark that you did it.

The talking between rounds is not a break, it is where the moment turns into something you can use. Marking it at the end matters too. Saying plainly…

LongerPractising under provocationCBTQur’an 20:130One line of research

A belief you have carried since childhood will not fall over because you asked it a good question this afternoon. You are planting something, not winning an argument.

The temptation, once a thought starts to look flimsy, is to press harder, and pressing usually makes the belief dig in. Leave the question where it…

LongerQuestion the thoughtCBTQur’an 20:114One line of research

There are two jobs here, not one. Free up the time, and then be able to sit in it without feeling like a fraud.

Working more efficiently buys hours back, and that is the easier half. The harder half is the belief that rest is only for people who have finished…

LongerRest and pacingADHD skillsQur’an 9:91One line of research