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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Coming back after a bad patch is quicker than getting there was the first time. Most people expect the opposite, which is why a setback feels so final.

What you learned did not vanish. It went out of reach for a while, usually because something else was going on in your life. Pick up a rung or two…

A minuteFacing it a step at a timeCBTQur’an 3:139One line of research

If you are helping someone with their sleep and eating, ask rather than instruct. The moment you sound like their mother you have lost the part of you that was useful.

Young adults are busy becoming separate people, and any adult who picks up the parental voice gets folded into that argument whatever they were…

Five minutesFacing it a step at a timeCBTQur’an 13:11One line of research

Say out loud, before you start, that there will be bad weeks. Then when one turns up it is a thing you expected rather than proof the whole plan was nonsense.

Setbacks get read catastrophically when nobody warned you: back to the beginning, all that for nothing. Agree in advance what happens instead. You…

Five minutesFacing it a step at a timeCBTQur’an 65:7One line of research

Being shown a breathing technique is not the same as being able to use one. Practise it while nothing is wrong, often enough that it runs without you having to remember the order.

At the height of fear the only skills within reach are the overlearned ones. Something demonstrated once in a quiet room will not turn up in a school…

Five minutesFacing it a step at a timeCBTQur’an 73:20One line of research

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

Remembering to do it

Breaking the worry loop

When you use something to cope

What you are actually defending

Making it stick

Cool the body first

Growing empathy

The moment before you snap

Feelings and focus

Facing it a step at a time

Righteous anger and perfectionism

Choosing your response

Self-compassion

Use your strengths

When everything feels flat

Anger, alcohol and the body

Tolerate distress

Being seen and judged

Emotions as signals

Shame

Obsessions and compulsions

When anger turns to harm

Touch and bodywork

Practising under provocation

Getting assessed and diagnosed

Question the thought

Rest and pacing

Feeling from the inside

Pick one picture and keep it. Shallow end, middle, deep end. Then the child, the parents and the school are all talking about the same thing without anybody needing the clinical words.

It makes the next step obvious instead of arbitrary. You are not being sent to the deep end, you are moving a bit further along the shallow end. It…

Five minutesFacing it a step at a timeCBTQur’an 2:185One line of research

Before a step, write down what you will do when the fear arrives. Which breathing, what you will say to yourself, who you will speak to. Nobody invents a plan in the moment, they only follow one.

Keep it short and specific enough to be followed while frightened. It also gives you something to go over afterwards: what you used, what you forgot,…

Five minutesFacing it a step at a timeCBTQur’an 20:26One line of research

Years of avoiding people leave real gaps, not only fear. How to start small talk, how to join a group already talking, how to get out of a conversation. Those can be taught, and being taught them is not an insult.

Sending someone into a peer group without the ordinary moves risks a genuinely bad afternoon, which then teaches exactly the wrong lesson. Practise…

Twenty minutesFacing it a step at a timeCBTQur’an 20:28One line of research

Put a number on each step, nought to ten, and let it be your number. Two people facing the same school will not agree about which part is worst, and the ladder has to belong to the person climbing it.

One child dreads the bus and is fine once inside the building. Another would happily ride the bus all morning and cannot get through the front door.…

Twenty minutesFacing it a step at a timeCBTQur’an 23:62One line of research

Run it in your head first, then act it out with someone safe, then do it for real. It is a preseason, and nobody thinks the preseason is cheating.

Each round adds a little pressure while help is still to hand. Imagining it stirs the fear enough to show whether your plan holds up. Acting it out…

Twenty minutesFacing it a step at a timeCBTQur’an 92:7One line of research

Nobody puts a child who cannot swim into the shallow end and calls it teaching. Before anyone goes near the thing they dread, they need something to do with their body and their head when the fear arrives.

It takes only one overwhelming attempt to teach the opposite of what was intended: that it really was too much, and that the adults will push anyway.…

LongerFacing it a step at a timeCBTQur’an 2:286One line of research