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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30 practices

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Friends who know what this feels like are worth a great deal. Leaning on them as your therapy is a different thing, and it tends to go badly for everyone.

One young woman put the line in exactly the right place. She wanted people who understood her, and she did not want to use them as counselling. Being…

Five minutesBeing seen and judgedNarrativeQur’an 18:28One line of research

Being articulate is not the same as being alright. Plenty of people who talk easily one to one are barely holding it together in the rooms that actually frighten them.

This is where families and clinicians get it wrong most often. Someone speaks well in a quiet office, so the fear gets marked down as mild, and the…

Five minutesBeing seen and judgedNarrativeQur’an 40:19One line of research

Build the ladder from what you do now, not from what you think you should be managing. If phone calls are currently impossible, the first rung sits somewhere below a phone call.

Have an honest look first. Which apps you talk on, whether you send voice notes or only type, whether you have ordered anything out loud in the past…

Twenty minutesBeing seen and judgedCBTQur’an 20:26One line of research

Social fear usually has a first address. School corridors, a year when appearance decided everything, a group that made a project of you. Knowing where it began does not undo it, but it stops it feeling like a fact about your character.

What often keeps it alive is that the rules of that place travelled with you. The hierarchy ended at graduation and the watchfulness carried on.…

Twenty minutesBeing seen and judgedNarrative

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

Growing empathy

Breathing

Shame and stigma

Being seen and judged

Making it stick

Structure and routine

Treatment and medication

Answering bids

Feeling from the inside

What you are actually defending

Breaking the worry loop

When you use something to cope

Emotions as signals

Repair after rupture

Facing it a step at a time

Shared spiritual life

Rebuilding trust

Fondness and admiration

Affection and touch

Obsessions and compulsions

Listening and understanding

Posture and how you carry yourself

Rituals of connection

Righteous anger and perfectionism

Anger, alcohol and the body

The cost of avoiding

Living with uncertainty

Rest and pacing

When you go numb

When anger turns to harm

Letting it out safely

Notice the pattern and flex

Your worth is not conditional

Reading, numbers and learning differences

Get it out of your head

Validate yourself and others

Find meaning

Help someone grieving

Keep the bond

Face it gently

Your window of tolerance

Care for yourself in loss

Qur’an 24:15

One line of research

Sometimes the help you need is not insight. It is someone sitting with you while you sort out what actually happened this week and which bit of it mattered.

When anxiety is running at full speed, everything arrives at the same volume and nothing can be ranked. A bad week becomes one undifferentiated bad…

Twenty minutesBeing seen and judgedNarrativeQur’an 15:97One line of research

Sometimes a parent who seemed cold or impossible to please turns out to have been working with a different wiring altogether. Learning that can loosen something no amount of arguing with yourself would.

One young woman spent years reading her father's behaviour as a verdict on her, and later came to understand him as autistic, which she had never…

Twenty minutesBeing seen and judgedNarrativeQur’an 49:12One line of research

Going from talking online to talking in person is not one more step up the same ladder. It is a different ladder, and it deserves rungs of its own.

Those rungs might run from voice notes, to a phone call, to a video call with the camera on, to meeting one person you already know somewhere quiet,…

LongerBeing seen and judgedCBTQur’an 20:28One line of research

When a step does not happen, cut the next one down without any speech about it. Smaller, and carry on.

Progress here is often slower than anyone would like, and that is the method working rather than the method failing. What does real damage is a run…

LongerBeing seen and judgedCBTQur’an 20:130One line of research

A group can help a great deal, and it is rarely the place to begin. Being in a room of people is a strong dose, and doses climb rather than start at the top.

Left too early it often ends with someone dropping out, and dropping out gets read as proof they were right about themselves all along. Once there is…

LongerBeing seen and judgedCBTQur’an 18:28One line of research

You will probably not feel yourself getting better. One day you will be halfway through a chat with a stranger and realise you are doing the thing you could not do.

This is worth knowing at the start, because the middle is where people decide nothing is happening and stop. The change comes in pieces too small to…

LongerBeing seen and judgedNarrativeQur’an 50:39One line of research