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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11 practices

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A small child does not have a feeling, they are the feeling, entirely, until it passes. Growing up is largely a gap opening between feeling something and doing something about it.

If that gap is narrower for you than for other people your age, it is a lag on a road everyone is on rather than a defect. The framing is worth…

A minuteFeelings and focusADHD skillsQur’an 8:11One line of research

If rating a feeling out of ten means nothing to you, use something that does. Colour in bubbles, point at a picture, hold your hands apart to show how big it is today.

This began as an adaptation for children, swapping the numbered anxiety ladder for bubbles to colour in, and it is just as useful for anyone who goes…

Five minutesFeelings and focusCBTQur’an 2:286One line of research

Worry done on your own goes round in circles. Said out loud to one other person, it usually turns into a problem with edges, and sometimes into a next step.

The rule is short enough to remember at midnight: never worry alone. It does not have to be someone who can fix anything. A friend, a colleague, your…

Five minutesFeelings and focusADHD skillsQur’an 9:40One line of research

Setting out to get rid of worry altogether sets you up to fail twice, first at the worry and then at the failing. A kinder aim is to change how you sit with it.

Anxiety and ADHD keep close company, and for most people some background hum does not go away. What can change is what happens next: whether you…

Five minutesFeelings and focusCBTQur’an 13:28One line of research

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

Letting it out safely

Shame

What you are actually defending

Bringing the future closer

Exercise, food and other supports

Treatment and medication

Structure and routine

Your sense of time

Self-compassion

Righteous anger and perfectionism

Reading, numbers and learning differences

Making it stick

Getting assessed and diagnosed

Feeling from the inside

Growing empathy

Food, caffeine and fuel

Remembering to do it

Anger, alcohol and the body

What ADHD actually is

When you use something to cope

Get started

Rest and pacing

Obsessions and compulsions

When your child comes to you in a spin, the kind thing is to stay warm and steady rather than to promise that it will be fine. Reassurance settles the next ten minutes and feeds the asking.

It sounds cold and it is not. What your steadiness says is two things at once: this feeling is real, and I think you can carry it. Keep it short and…

Five minutesFeelings and focusCBTQur’an 2:153One line of research

Self-restraint runs on a supply that stress uses up. In a week when everything is late and nothing has been slept on, you will react to things you would normally let go.

That is worth knowing because it changes what you work on. Instead of trying to be more patient at the moment of provocation, look at what is quietly…

Five minutesFeelings and focusADHD skillsQur’an 20:25One line of research

Step in while a child is only starting to wind up, and offer something calming rather than a correction. Slow breathing, counting, a soft toy, a quiet corner for a few minutes.

Three to ten minutes in a set place is plenty. It works best when the offer is warm and matter of fact, one sentence, no lecture about what they did.…

Five minutesFeelings and focusADHD skillsQur’an 13:28One line of research

The whole value of a calming corner is that the child can take themselves there. An adult may suggest it, but if it is only ever ordered, what gets learned is obedience rather than self-regulation.

Make it clearly available rather than assigned. They go, they take their few minutes, they come back with a short hello and a nod at whatever they…

Five minutesFeelings and focusADHD skillsQur’an 2:45One line of research

Instead of sending a child out to sit and stew, send them to a side table for three very easy worksheets, then straight back to whatever everyone else is doing.

It takes them out of whatever was rewarding about the behaviour without leaving them with nothing to do and an audience to play to. Keep the work…

Five minutesFeelings and focusADHD skillsQur’an 20:26One line of research

Worry does two things at once. It makes the problem bigger than it is and it makes you smaller than you are. The second half is the one that usually goes unchallenged.

After years of being told you get things wrong, a low estimate of yourself does not feel like a distortion, it feels like the evidence. So argue with…

Twenty minutesFeelings and focusCBTQur’an 2:286One line of research

If you are permanently behind, short of sleep and scrambling, that is not the backdrop to your short fuse. A good deal of the time it is the cause of it.

This is what makes the dull organisational work worth doing, because it buys you something you actually want. A morning that is not a panic leaves…

LongerFeelings and focusADHD skillsQur’an 94:1One line of research